Fact-esque

The Plutonomy Score: Wall Street 1, Main Street -1

Two articles this week demonstrate between them how our new plutonomy works, and you'll notice that in neither case does any actual product have to be made or sold. Nodody has to build anything so it doesn't have to be quality-controlled and no laborer has to be paid to put it together. In fact one of them requires that you stop paying a certain number of your employees. (Via eRobin by email. Remember her?) Viz:

Dem Sen Jim Webb Defends Reverse Racism Myth and Nobody Notices

Just how fucking right-wing is the New Democrat/Blue Dog party? So fucking far right-wing that Rahm Emanuel protege Jim Webb, Sen from Virginia and an undeniable star in the ND/BD firmament, could actually write a WSJ Op-Ed against diversity and affirmative action policies using the same exact argument for ending them that we've heard from right-wing GOoPer kooks like Tom Tancredo and Jim DeMint, and which King Conservative Bigot Pat Buchanan had no difficulty defending. Viz: that diversity and affirmative action programs are reverse racism and just aren't fair because they hurt white people.

Third Parties and the Nader Derangement Syndrome

Even the WSJ has noticed. (Via Roy Edroso)

At the largest progressive gathering ahead of the 2010 elections, liberal activists huddled Friday in a session to plot strategy to protect Social Security from renewed Republican efforts to privatize the program. A woman stood up and asked: "Why is it with a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House, and a Democrat in the White House do we need to be worried about this?"

Why, indeed? Well, we've been over all that and we know why. The New Democrat party is nothing but another corporate captive, panting after the moneybags. That isn't the question we need to be asking. The question we need to be asking is why, with every poll against their policies by wide margins, is the New Democrat party so unconcerned about its base that it's going out of its way to pander to right-wing meatballs like Andrew "Scumface" Breitbart?

Ralph Nader, that's why.

Groundwork Laid for SocSec Slash

It has become pitifully clear in the last few weeks that Obama's so-called "Deficit Commission" was deliberately overloaded with deficit vultures who would march in lockstep to gin up yet another Social Security "crisis" as propaganda. The agenda these right-wing experts, led by billionaire Pete Peterson, are following has a single item, a single goal: to weaken all "entitlement" programs, especially Social Security, by creating an atmosphere of dread in which everyone finally accepts that SocSec is not a permanent feature of the social network but a temporary, unreliable, and hopelessly vulnerable mistake whose time has come and gone.

Open Letter to Paul Krugman: They Can't, Silly

Dear Mr Krugman:

I am a big fan and much appreciative of the courageous stands you took during the Bush Years and the balance you've tried to maintain in the early Obama Admin, but I must say I think you continually miss the point when it comes to explaining Obama's actions (or lack of same), your latest column being a case in point. You write:

Democrat Strategists v Reality: What Depression? More Bush! More Bush!

Blue Texan at FDL catches Slate's Gingrich Pin Up Boy William Saleton opining that any lefty who doesn't support Obama's every move is a political idiot and a danger to the race of real men.

I'm happy with everything he's [President Obama] done. [...] For them [progressives] to be complaining just shows how little they know about politics.

Now I seriously doubt Will Saletan knows more about politics than Paul Krugman or Dean Baker or Robert Scheer.

But leaving aside his silly "you'd have to be a naive idiot not to agree with Obama" thesis, what's particularly annoying about this segment is John Dickerson frames the issue as whether Obama "has done enough." That's not the issue. Nor are liberals upset with Obama because getting things done in politics sometimes requires compromises - even though Obama was given huge historical margins in the House and Senate.

The fact is, as Commander-in-Chief, Obama doesn't have to compromise on foreign policy and civil liberties. He could've ordered the troops home in Afghanistan and Iraq. He could've rolled back the most odious Bush-era executive power policies. And the public option wasn't traded away as some sort of grand bargain to win the votes of recalcitrant Blue Dogs or Republicans - it was a blatant backroom sell-out to hospitals-exactly the kind of sleazy shenanigans Obama decried during the campaign.

Yeah, pretty much. So, as Digby and David Dayen and Avedon Carol and others including me have wondered so many times, are the geniuses behind the Democrat party strategy going to come up with some new ideas to win back that disaffected base? Well, according to a symposium put together by that bastion of the SCLM, the NYT, the answer is a resounding YES! The only problem is that it's not entirely clear which base it is the Dems want to win.

The Rich v Reality: It's Not All Raffia Sno-Cones and Mink-Lined Toilet Bowl Scrubbers Any More

One hardly knows what to say. Dares one hope that some form of reality, however weak and watered down, is finally forcing its way through the gated, security-guarded, and electrified fences of the corporate aristocracy? Or not? On the one hand Goldman got away with its illegal stock-maneuvering-to-destroy-the-global-economy ploy by settling for a pittance of its ill-gotten gains.

Up and down Wall Street, the government's $550 million legal settlement with Goldman - to some, a slap in the face, to others, a slap on the wrist - has banking executives running the odds.

***

After two months of strident claims and equally strident denials, the matter was finally settled, and for a price Goldman could easily afford. The penalty amounted to about 15 days of profits. On Friday, as other banking shares tumbled along with the broad market, Goldman's share price rose again.

(emphasis added)

This is the Wall Street equivalent of fining a rapist $10 for the panties he ruined, or ordering the mugger who shot you for your shoes to turn in one of his bullets. It is beyond insulting, proving once again if more be needed that America has been corposmacked so completely that it can no longer tell the difference between justice and a keg party.

Low Confidence in Obama? Who Could Have Predicted That?

A new WaPo/ABC Poll has voters' confidence in Pres Obama at an all-time low.

Public confidence in President Obama has hit a new low, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. Four months before midterm elections that will define the second half of his term, nearly six in 10 voters say they lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country, and a clear majority once again disapproves of how he is dealing with the economy.

***

Just 43 percent of all Americans now say they approve of the job Obama is doing on the economy, while 54 percent disapprove. Both are the worst, marginally, of his presidency. Even a third of Democrats give him negative marks here. And overall, intensity runs clearly against the president on the issue, with twice as many people rating him strongly negative as strongly positive.

So let me get this straight: the guy gets elected by promising to change Bush's policies, then he doesn't change Bush's policies, and now people don't trust him?

Go figure. People are funny, aren't they?

The lesson that will be drawn from this by the Children of the Village Media is, of course, that Obama is in trouble because he didn't go far enough copying Bush's policies. They don't really know how to read polls. In fact most of them are still working at Hop On Pop (which Chris Matthews thinks is about Buddy Holly for some reason) and haven't got past page 3 yet.

We most likely shouldn't be trusting them to understand our political future, much less pundify on it, until they prove they can pass at least a 5th grade history test. That requirement alone would remove about 9/10ths of MSM loudmouths and everybody on Fox.

Unfortunately, Harry Reid and Rahm Emanuel and the rest of the Third Wave Mafia that's running the Democrat party have come to the same conclusion and we can't apply such a test to the likes of them because we'd have no government left.

It's a conundrum.

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It's Illegal to Be Homeless Near DisneyWorld

Just about a year ago, a Deutchebank analyst figured out that by the end of this summer, more than half the mortgages in the country would be underwater. That process has begun. In May the mortgage delinquency rate - which the Masters of the Universe and their media puppets insisted would decline - rose almost 10%. (Via Avedon)

Wal-Mart Spends $2M Fighting $7K Fine; Obama Admin Mystified

Although why they should be defies explanation.

The fine arose from an incident wherein a WM employee was trampled to death in Long Island two years ago during the insanity of the day-after-Thanksgiving bargain shopping.

Wal-Mart Stores has spent a year and more than a million dollars in legal fees battling a $7,000 fine that federal safety officials assessed after shoppers trampled a Wal-Mart employee to death at a store on Long Island on the day after Thanksgiving in 2008.

***

Wal-Mart's all-out battle against the relatively minor penalty has mystified and even angered some federal officials. In contesting the penalty, Wal-Mart has filed 20 motions and responses totaling nearly 400 pages and has spent at least $2 million on legal fees, according to OSHA's calculations.

OSHA assessed a relatively modest $7,000 fine ($6-7K being the amount corporate-owned courts have decided is what a human life is worth [see decisions after Imperial Sugar and BP Houston explosions, as well as various mine disasters, all due to corporate negligence and a refusal to follow safety procedures because they were "too expensive" and interfered with profits]) but Wal-mart isn't having any and the poor old regulators can't figure it out. What's the big deal? Well, it's all right here: