the Democratic wing of the corporatist duopoly thread

and yet, maybe it's a typo or something, somehow Charlie Rangel (hey maybe Morbius has an irrational hatred for "Chuck"s and "Charlie"s!) is a single-payer co-sponsor

neither of these things have anything to do with private accounts or other elements of the Bush approach, but of course 'doing something to social security' makes you a corporatist to to the New Know-Nothings

Maybe I was thinking of Medicare. I think that's the one that is more clearly in funding trouble, no?

or are you calling me a Whig?

David Sirota was all 'he represents one of the poorest congressional districts in America'! i suppose in his world Carolyn Maloney (D-Upper East Side) should decamp for GOP-land

http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010305F.shtml

http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_05_29_a_risk.html

http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Music/9902/24/grammy/link.alanis.morisette3.jpg

Any solution will cause some pain, according to Rangel. "If you call tax increases pain - and I do - that'll be a part of the mix, too," he said. "There's no easy way to do it, but it has to be done."(emphasis mine)

for "tax increases" here, read "raising substantially -- if not eliminating -- the salary ceiling on Social Security taxes" (said ceiling being approx. $94.5K for this year, and approx. $97K or so for 2007).

"I have said that any future tax cuts are going to be targeted toward the middle class.(emphasis mine) I personally believe that repealing tax cuts that are locked into place, that people have depended on these tax cuts, invested in these tax cuts, not only is it bad tax policy to repeal it retroactively, but it's dumb politics to do it especially when it's going to get vetoed. Forget about it."

puts a little different spin on which particular "tax cuts" are being discussed here, doesn't it?

First let's yield the floor to a Republican, Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon, who recently proclaimed, "We have no business being a policeman in someone else's civil war. I welcome the Iraq Study Group's report, but if we are ultimately going to retreat, I would rather do it sooner than later." Not cut and walk. Cut and run.

Now let's go to a Democrat, Representative Silvestre Reyes of Texas, Pelosi's pick as head of the House Intelligence Committee. The freshly anointed Reyes told Newsweek, "We're not going to have stability in Iraq until we eliminate those militias, those private armies. We have to consider the need for additional troops to be in Iraq, to take out the militias and stabilize Iraq...I would say 20,000 to 30,000--for the specific purpose of making sure those militias are dismantled, working in concert with the Iraqi military."

Reyes comes to his important post with an open mind, meaning an empty one. He knows nothing of the region. This became clear in his brief parley with a reporter from Congressional Quarterly who had the impudence to ply him with questions at the end of a tiring day, when men of mature judgment head for the bar. CQ's man asked Reyes if Al Qaeda was Sunni or Shiite. Reyes tossed a mental coin. "Predominantly--probably Shiite." Wrong, of course, since Al Qaeda is Sunni, of a notoriously intolerant strain. It's as if Reyes had called the Pope a Presbyterian....

At least Gordon Smith can publicly concede that as things stand, the Iraq mission is a disaster, and quitting time is here. No prominent Democrats in Congress besides Jack Murtha can bring themselves to do that. (I include here Senator Slither, otherwise known as Barack Obama, who trims to every shift in the wind.) The language is always of pleasing schedules, in which a (fictional) entity called the Iraqi Army, at the disposition of an (imaginary) power called the Iraqi government, can be welded into an (entirely fantastical) nonsectarian force by (as yet unavailable and putatively suicidal) US military trainers....

You would have thought that Democrats would rush to hang their hats on the bipartisan ISG report, calling for cut and walk. But the long-awaited report is dead shortly after arrival. There aren't more than a handful or so of Democrats who are going to be caught in the same room as a report that calls for the return of the Golan Heights to Syria and dares to raise the issue of the right of return of Palestinians to their homeland. In America these days persons in political life can describe reality only if they are self-employed, with a guaranteed independent income and above 75 years of age. Jimmy Carter and James Baker are two prime examples of this truth. Otherwise fantasy rules in Congress and the press, which has consistently misrepresented the extent of the disaster in Iraq, preferring to promote fatal illusions about a viable central government and fantasies of the United States being able to shape a new model army of Iraqis.

and very much not lol at "fictional," "imaginary" iraqis

xpost

The point is that given the near-total absence of courage among elected pols, Carter and Baker are suddenly 'honest' because they can be.

"If Hillary Clinton were president, Wall Street robber barons would be jailed, young people could afford college and find jobs and 6 million homeowners wouldn’t face foreclosure.”

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/12/21/Draft-Hillary-robo-calls-hit-some-states/UPI-92851324474342/

http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2011/12/21/new-draft-hillary-robo-call-plays-throughout-u-s/

http://www.runhillary2012.net/index.html

"a project of the 99%"

apart from the hopeless website this is pretty good ratfucking!

lotts SS-cut apologists 5 years ago huh

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001227369415

when it comes to apologists, gabbneb has always been in a class by himself. you'd think he was a paid lobbyist sometimes.

http://www.mrkhealthcare.com/images/nuneb_nebulizer_o.jpg

Pretty hilarious that Morbs posts in this thread about Larouche-(if not Rove- or Koch-)funded robocalls via a link to the Moonies' wire service.

If we live in a "corporatist duopoly," guy, why would they bother spending all this money on our precious horserace?

Simple enough, CK. Not all corporations have fully aligned interests, so that both parties may be captives of corporations, but the agendas of those corporations are not identical, so they fight fiercely over who captures the lion's share of the spoils of the system.

denial is just kind of sad past a certain point, even from a total asshole.

:--------------------)

also, "Coke vs Pepsi," Dextneb

if it doesn't matter to the serfs who the tsar is how come the boyars care so much

or something

Greenwald dissects the new secret-target Democratic neofascism:

The Most Transparent Administration Ever™ not only prevents public debate by shrouding the entire (drone) program in secrecy — including who they’re killing and why, and even including their claimed legal basis for these killings (what Democratic lawyers decried during the Bush years as the tyranny of “secret law”) — but they then dispatch their own officials to defend what they’re doing solely under the cover of anonymity so there is no accountability. And, of course, the Post (in an otherwise good though imperfect article) dutifully allows them to do this. In other words: if you ask us about our systematic killing operation, we’ll refuse to answer or even acknowledge it exists and we will legally bar critics from talking about it in public; nobody in government can comment on any of this except us, which we’ll do only by issuing anonymous decrees declaring it Good and Right....

Obama officials love secret, targeted killing far more even than Bush officials did. They’re “always ready to step on the accelerator” (and, of course, they went further than Bush by even targeting U.S. citizens far from any battlefield). Only Admiral Blair raised objections, and was fired for them, and is now reduced to explaining in Op-Eds that these killings at this point do relatively little to harm Al Qaeda but rather do the opposite: they increase the risk of Terrorism by fueling anti-American hatred, predictably left in the wake of the corpses of innocent men, woman and children throughout the Muslim world piled up by the Obama program.

Americans love to think that they are so very informed as a result of the robust, free press they enjoy, while those primitive, benighted Muslims are tragically manipulated and propagandized by their governments. Yet here we have an extraordinarily consequential “vast drone/killing operation,” and while those in the Muslim world are well aware of what it is and what it does and debate all of that openly and vigorously, Americans are largely kept in the dark about it. That’s because: (a) the U.S. Government shields it all in secrecy (hiding it from nobody except their own citizens); (b) the U.S. media generally avoid highlighting the innocent victims of American violence; and — most of all — (c) this is all now enshrined as bipartisan consensus, with the GOP consistently approving of any covert government aggression that kills foreigners, and Democrats remaining mute because it is their leader doing it. That’s why this Post article provides such a vivid snapshot of what Washington is and how it works.

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/28/snapshots_of_washingtons_essence/singleton/

denial is just kind of sad past a certain point, even from a total asshole.

I resisted posting anything earlier, because why bother, really. But I can't resist when the Attention-Deficit Disaffected claim to have superior knowledge of The Way Things Work. Tell us the real story of 9/11 next, Doc.

No doy, "corporations" and other interests seek to "buy" influence wherever possible (what corner of the globe is free of all corruption, even in the most representative democracies? we just happen to live in the biggest casino worldwide, or did until recently). And just as surely they find success among representatives in both parties(, sometimes justifiably so where the corporation employes a great number of people in a given jurisdiction or, you know, on those odd instances when they actually have a good policy argument, which of course is completely impossible despite their being closer to the action and having armies of the well-educated on retainer - amateur kibbitzers know better by default). Sometimes they bet on the obvious-looking winner, whoever he or she may be. That's just good business.

But to ignore the fact that on balance one party is ideologically committed to reducing taxation and regulation and investigation, and the other to an activist government, and that both make strenuous moves against one another and our by-design-inertial system that retards them (and progressive change) is to cynically and offensively whistle past the graveyard. It's a very (Catholic-ly?) absolutist way to avoid dealing with the difficult details (because right from wrong is always apparent in an interdependent economy linking 300 million people to a complex global society, of course) of what has always necessarily involved the art of compromise, i.e. politics. You aren't principled, you're a small-potato poseur, apparently blind to even the most simple facts like that one party sought to put Elizabeth Warren in charge of consumer financial protection, and the other fought her tooth and nail, a process now being repeated in the Senate race that may decide control of the body. I suppose she's just a shill with the rest, of course.

"Coke vs Pepsi," Dextneb

Oh man, you're blowing my mind here. I suppose a more apt beisbol analogy would be closer to home?

Aimless, if I understand you correctly, you're suggesting something quite different from Dr Clueless' sports model, though no more correct imo. Which corp interests have "captured" the Dems to the exclusion of the GOP, precisely? I can think only of labor unions and maybe Silicon Valley, the former because they pretty legitimately represent people (or will find no purchase in the other party), and the latter because they're composed of very smart people who understand how govt r&d drives (their) growth (and who often happen to have more than a profit motive, though some of the affiliation is probably branding).

You're apparently blind to the fact that consumer financial protection aint gonna mean shit when we're all underwater serfs.

Bam doesn't "compromise," retire that fucking word.

Exhibit A

Which corp interests have "captured" the Dems to the exclusion of the GOP, precisely?

There is a flaw in your thinking here, that in order for the two major parties to form a corporate duopoly the members of each party must be the exclusive captives of a discrete set of corporations, who then fight out their proxy battles of corporate interest exclusively through one party or the other. That is too neat a dichotomy and simple observation of the parties and the Congress shows this is not how it works.

The slicing and dicing of power in DC apportions power in inequal amounts among a wide variety of players. For example, the committee system coupled with the seniority system makes it smarter for corporations to capture as many members of the relevant committee as they can, of both parties, while paying scant attention to the more irrelevant congresscritters. This allows them to control that committee without regard to which party controls the speaker's chair.

There are dozens of ways for corporations to game the system for their advantage and they are adept at all of them. The need for keeping up appearances for the sake of gulling the voters is duly acknowledged as a necessary part of the process, but that doesn't prevent captive politicians from inserting obscure amendments that thwart the effective enforcement of whatever was a bill's original intent, while allowing them to posture as if that intent were being served.

When the corporations lose a battle, as for example when the EPA was established, they simply move to the long game and hollow the agency out like a jack o'lantern, so that eventually they win the war.

To a large extent the mere fact that corporations control very large sums of money will ensure that their interests would be well-served, even if the most radical reforms desired by liberals were enacted and enforced. Under the current system, where huge sums can be funneled directly to politicians "war chests", or spent on their behalf during campaigns via super-PACs, and unlimited sums can be spent to maintain year-round lobbys on E Street, and no worthwhile limits on the corporate control of the media are exercised, the grip of those well-funded corporations on the government is almost total.

The only battles that are ever in doubt nowadays are when two behemoths clash, as when big oil squashed the insurance industry over global warming policy after Katrina.

There is a flaw in your thinking here, that in order for the two major parties to form a corporate duopoly the members of each party must be the exclusive captives of a discrete set of corporations, who then fight out their proxy battles of corporate interest exclusively through one party or the other. That is too neat a dichotomy and simple observation of the parties and the Congress shows this is not how it works.

Sorry, that was just my best reading of what you were saying. I entirely agree.

the committee system coupled with the seniority system makes it smarter for corporations to capture as many members of the relevant committee as they can, of both parties, while paying scant attention to the more irrelevant congresscritters. This allows them to control that committee without regard to which party controls the speaker's chair.

I disagree. Subject-committee chairs tend to be the members with the strongest interest in the given subject (which is often but not always an ideological one, tending left on the Dems' side and right on the GOP's). Their interest, in turn, while sometimes personal, is also often a product of their constituencies. Constituencies and interests go hand-in-hand - the former provides justification for the latter's influence. It's papering over the the real differences between the parties to point at committee chairs as an institution (they of course change with a change in power) and indict them equally. I note as an addendum that the current Republican House appointed perhaps the most ideologically rigid chairs in memory.

When the corporations lose a battle, as for example when the EPA was established, they simply move to the long game and hollow the agency out like a jack o'lantern, so that eventually they win the war.

Corps absolutely seek influence over the regulatory process, and often gain it, including in the highest reaches of the Executive (personal to Morbs: teach yourself about OIRA). And you're absolutely right that their greater resources allow them greater capacity to produce information to sway the agency (and understaffed members of Congress). And I'd add that agency staffers know who will pay them best if and when they leave - many join for this purpose. But again, it's papering over the differences to deny that the agencies are the both ideological and actual products of one party (Nixon signed off on the EPA, yes; but it was the Dem Congress (and public opinion) that made it happen), which today seeks to appoint people dedicated to their missions, while the other side seeks to defund them and appoint anti-regulatory figureheads. Thankfully, there's inertia in Washington, so the agencies last through GOP threats (and continue to work through cautious Dem politics). Unfortunately, the way the agency rules are structured, they often have to work as slowly and conservatively as Congress, which again is a function of the institutional setup, not the parties themselves.