The Mojo is the Message

I read the news today, oh boy, and found how badly we are being screwed.

Ironies and paradoxes and incest abound in today's New York Times. The government is close to calling some of those bad Libor miscreants to account at the very same time one of the chief Libor enablers (Timmy Geithner) is negotiating with Congress on our supposed budgetary behalf. A former Goldman Sachs trader is close to being indicted at the same his unindicted boss is negotiating with Timmy Geithner on his own budgetary behalf: how deeply to cut the social safety net and further enrich himself and his fellow plutocrats.

 Meanwhile, a very disturbing story about how both political parties are shafting the poor has been buried, inexplicably, in the Style section of The Times, under a subsection cutely called "Motherlode -- Adventures in Parenting!"  The editors of the Gray Lady must think that people getting kicked off their heat, rent and disability assistance is a thrilled-packed Odyssey. Poor people are now equitably sharing space with society brides! It must be the new shabby-chic! See, things can't be as bad as all that.

The latest slant in the interminable Fiscal Cliff Disaster Theater coverage is not what Barack Obama will inevitably cede to the deficit scolds of the ruling class, but how he has miraculously discovered his own rock-hard, macho mojo. The pseudo-liberal class is thrilled that at long last, Barry hasn't caved before he's even started. He has left John Boehner in a state of sputtering impotence. The Democrats have political capital to spend, and they're on a spree. Root root root for the hometeam. Call Congress and tell them you want #My2K. (However, if you aren't solidly middle class or higher, with an internet connection, forget about it. The Democrats do not want to hear about your day care subsidies being slashed. Refer again to that buried Times story.)

Paul Krugman has pivoted back to reveling in Republican stupidity after a couple of great columns attacking bipartisan austerity. The commenting choir is harmoniously celebrating right along with him, paying little to no heed to the bitter pill Obama has already promised his loyal base. It's Give Em Hell Barry time in the land of kool-aid.

This time is different, insist even some erstwhile Obama critics from the left. Adam Green of Progressive Change, for example, gushes:“Eventually the Republicans have to name names on the cuts they want to make. They’ll likely propose entitlement benefit cuts, and then the president will hopefully be able to come back with budget cuts that don’t take a single penny from benefits.”

So stay tuned for the next episode, in which shocked Democrats arrive back in deja vu territory. The president has already vowed to cut "entitlement spending", that annoying austerian term for the taxpayer-funded insurance programs of Social Security and Medicare. He embraced Bowles-Simpson in his acceptance speech as stunned Democratic partisans dutifully cheered anyway. Never mind that the B-S Plan was shot down a long time ago. Its two zombie perpetrators have been reanimated as senile rock stars (The Debt Duo) who are making $40,000 a pop speechifying on how much fun it is to hate on poor people. They're getting puff-pieced to death by the corporate media, while society's victims are being spread-sheeted to death. 

As the Roosevelt Institute's Bryce Covert writes in his ignored Times post, low-income Americans are the ones who will disproportionately suffer, grand bargain or no grand bargain. Watch for the national poverty rates to shoot up again next year as both parties blithely snip away at the safety net and we all grovel at Obama's feet for saving the lucky-ducky average middle class family two grand.

Forget about a war on poverty, though. It's a war on poor people, and it's bipartisan. But whatever -- as long as Barack got backbone.

 



Cruelty (Hogarth)



 

Poor Wand'ring Major General Diplomat

I am the very model of a modern major Villager,
I own much stock in banks and biz and filthy tar sands minerals,
I schmooze with kings of Africa and many a great potentate,
And very much would like to be new Secretary of the State.
 

I'm the product of Elite Class Washington Metropolis,
My hubby ran the Sunday show for Georgie Stephanopoulos,
I'm eminently qualified, and therefore shouldn't be denied
My place at the Tip-Top of This.

(sung to the tune "Modern Major General" by Gilbert and Sullivan)

I hadn't been weighing in on Susan Rice-gate, because at first glance it seemed like just more of the same inside-the-Beltway grandstanding and backbiting. The Three New Republican Amigos (Ayotte, McCain and Graham) were belaboring her misguided Benghazi talking points because of some convoluted plan to get John Kerry in as Secretary of State so that Scott Brown can come back to the Senate. Pseudoliberals were all in a tizzy because of perceived Republican racism and misogyny directed against Rice and by extension, against Barack Obama. It was the usual tempest in a teapot, one more enervating episode in Culture Wars Theater to distract a divided populace from the real war: the class war of the Plutocracy against the rest of us.

But new developments have elevated RiceGate way beyond its status as a latter-day Gilbert and Sullivan boffo operetta. First, is the revelation of her sizeable and possibly interest-conflicted investments. Then came her thinly-disguised tirade against Palestine at the U.N. General Assembly this week. And further reading (h/t Black Agenda Report, linked below) reveals Susan Rice's troubling history with certain thuggish African dictators.

Plus, it turns out that she is married to the former producer of ABC's "This Week" in the triumvirate of Sunday propaganda fests manufactured by the insiders, for the insiders. ABC/Disney Star Stephanopoulos is the poster-boy for Revolving Door Washington: from Clinton Cabinet member to influence peddler to pundit. ( Hubby Ian Cameron, incidentally, recently left his producing job for the usual reason: to spend more time with the family) 

Actually, Susan Rice would be a fairly typical Secretary of State. An overachieving, independently wealthy, pragmatic, super-connected salesperson for American corporate interests in far-flung outposts of the globe, where human rights are not exactly top priorities.

Muckety has quite the eye-opening graphic on Susan Rice's family and corporate tree. The elaborate relationships are a veritable parody of Beltway nepotism and interconnectedness. The private schools, the think tanks, the corporate boards... it's all there. It is the very model of a modern major power clan. Check it out.

The Roots Action public interest group is circulating a petition demanding that Rice either divest herself of her holdings in companies directly connected to the Keystone XL Tar Sands pipeline, or pre-emptively withdraw her expected nomination as Secretary of State. In that position, she would be the ultimate judge of whether final approval for the controversial pipeline is granted, and would stand to gain financially if she gave it the thumbs up. "Did they think we wouldn't find out?" asks Roots Action. 

According to the National Resources Defense Council, "Rice’s personal net worth is tied up in oil producers, pipeline operators, and related energy industries north of the 49th parallel -- including companies with poor environmental and safety records on both U.S. and Canadian soil. Rice and her husband own at least $1.25 million worth of stock in four of Canada’s eight leading oil producers, as ranked by Forbes magazine. That includes Enbridge, which spilled more than a million gallons of toxic bitumen into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River in 2010 -- the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history."

(Rice's journalist-TV executive husband is a native of Canada.)

Meanwhile, over at Black Agenda Report, Glen Ford continues his investigative reporting on Susan Rice's alleged complicity in African human rights abuses perpetrated by a panoply of dictators. (She has long expressed regret for not urging intervention in the Rwandan genocide during her stint in the Clinton Administration.) Ford's wording is strong, to say the least:

Susan Rice, as an energetic protector and facilitator of genocide, should be imprisoned for life (given that the death penalty is no longer internationally sanctioned). But of course, the same applies to her superiors, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. One would think that the Congressional Black Caucus would be concerned with the threat of a second wave of mass killings in Congo. Not so.

(snip) 

Instead, incoming Congressional Black Caucus chair Marcia Fudge, of Cleveland, held a press conference with female Caucus members to defend Rice, “a person who has served this country with distinction,” from Republican criticism of her handling of the killing of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya. “We will not allow a brilliant public servant’s record to be mugged to cut off her consideration to be secretary of state,” said Fudge.

In the Congressional Black Caucus’ estimation, Rice’s “record” as chief warmonger in Africa and principal suppressor of the facts on genocide in Congo makes her a role model for African Americans, especially young Black women. 

Not so poor wand'ring maligned diplomatic one, indeed, wand'ring through the hallowed halls of Congress to plead her case. As usual, the politicians and corporate media are concentrating on the mundane, (parsing meaningless TV talking points) and ignoring the glaringly obvious. Hidden finances, influence peddling, international intrigue, questionable human rights bona fides? That's just business as usual.

"Though thou hast surely strayed/Take heart of grace/Thy steps retrace," as G&S advised one globe-trotter more than a century ago. Maybe she can check out the Muckety Map for inspiration. She'll always have Paris... or Brookings... or Stanford... or Oxford.