More On That Rolling Stone Endorsement Of The Status Quo Establishment Candidate

Several congressmen who endorsed Hillary early on have told me they wish they had never done so and had just remained neutral. "My record obviously has a lot more in common with Bernie," one told me. "I wish I had never endorsed her... I hope the voters here forget I ever did it." I bet, on one level, Jann Wenner wishes he had never sullied his magazine's credibility by endorsing the candidate that has been soundly rejected by people under 50. Wenner is 70-- Hillary's prime demographic.

Recall, that on Thursday we pointed out that it wasn't really Rolling Stone magazine, in any meaningful way, that had endorsed Hillary Clinton and her conservative outlook but a publication of the singular opinion of the 70 year old near-billionaire flying around in his private jet. We contrasted Rolling Stone owner Jann Wenner, a conventional, establishment Democrat, with the magazine's brilliant politics commentator Matt Taibbi, who had written about why Bernie's campaign was worth taking seriously early in the campaign. Friday Rolling Stone, which had been barraged with a tidal wave of negative comments after Wenner's tone-def Hillary propaganda, ran a powerful new Taibbi feature about how the youth vote is right to reject Hillary.

Taibbi was disappointed Wenner's endorsement was being billed as the magazine endorsing the candidate not well-liked or respected by so many of the readers and fans of the thesis and analysis he has developed about the country's politics over the last few years. He respectfully, gingerly, laughed at Wenner's apologia for an endorsement he suspected would be reviled. "It," wrote Taibbi, "would be a shame if we disqualified every honest politician, or forever disavowed the judgment of young people, just because George McGovern lost an election four decades ago." He then goes right into the territory Thomas Frank has been talking about in his new book, Listen Liberal-- What Ever Happened To The Party Of The People.

That '72 loss hovered like a raincloud over the Democrats until Bill Clinton came along. He took the White House using a formula engineered by a think tank, the Democratic Leadership Council, that was created in response to losses by McGovern and Walter Mondale.

The new strategy was a party that was socially liberal but fiscally conservative. It counterattacked Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy, a racially themed appeal to disaffected whites Nixon tabbed the "Silent Majority," by subtly taking positions against the Democrats' own left flank.

In 1992 and in 1996, Clinton recaptured some of Nixon's territory through a mix of populist positions (like a middle-class tax cut) and the "triangulating" technique of pushing back against the Democrats' own liberal legacy on issues like welfare, crime and trade.

And that was the point. No more McGoverns. The chief moral argument of the Clinton revolution was not about striving for an end to the war or poverty or racism or inequality, but keeping the far worse Republicans out of power.

The new Democratic version of idealism came in a package called "transactional politics." It was about getting the best deal possible given the political realities, which we were led to believe were hopelessly stacked against the hopes and dreams of the young.

In fact, it was during Bill Clinton's presidency that D.C. pundits first began complaining about a thing they called "purity." This was code for any politician who stood too much on principle. The American Prospect in 1995 derisively described it as an "unwillingness to share the burden of morally ambiguous compromise." Sometimes you had to budge a little for the sake of progress.

Jann describes this in the context of saluting the value of "incremental politics" and solutions that "stand a chance of working." The implication is that even when young people believe in the right things, they often don't realize what it takes to get things done.

But I think they do understand. Young people have repudiated the campaign of Hillary Clinton in overwhelming and historic fashion, with Bernie Sanders winning under-30 voters by consistently absurd margins, as high as 80 to 85 percent in many states. He has done less well with young African-American voters, but even there he's seen some gains as time has gone on. And the energy coming from the pre-middle-aged has little to do with an inability to appreciate political reality.

Instead, the millions of young voters that are rejecting Hillary's campaign this year are making a carefully reasoned, even reluctant calculation about the limits of the insider politics both she and her husband have represented.

For young voters, the foundational issues of our age have been the Iraq invasion, the financial crisis, free trade, mass incarceration, domestic surveillance, police brutality, debt and income inequality, among others.

And to one degree or another, the modern Democratic Party, often including Hillary Clinton personally, has been on the wrong side of virtually all of these issues.

Hillary not only voted for the Iraq War, but offered a succession of ridiculous excuses for her vote. Remember, this was one of the easiest calls ever. A child could see that the Bush administration's fairy tales about WMDs and Iraqi drones spraying poison over the capital (where were they going to launch from, Martha's Vineyard?) were just that, fairy tales.

Yet Hillary voted for the invasion for the same reason many other mainstream Democrats did: They didn't want to be tagged as McGovernite peaceniks. The new Democratic Party refused to be seen as being too antiwar, even at the cost of supporting a wrong one.

It was a classic "we can't be too pure" moment. Hillary gambled that Democrats would understand that she'd outraged conscience and common sense for the sake of the Democrats' electoral viability going forward. As a mock-Hillary in a 2007 Saturday Night Live episode put it, "Democrats know me… They know my support for the Iraq War has always been insincere."

This pattern, of modern Democrats bending so far back to preserve what they believe is their claim on the middle that they end up plainly in the wrong, has continually repeated itself.

...You can go on down the line of all these issues. Trade? From NAFTA to the TPP, Hillary and her party cohorts have consistently supported these anti-union free trade agreements, until it became politically inexpedient. Debt? Hillary infamously voted for regressive bankruptcy reform just a few years after privately meeting with Elizabeth Warren and agreeing that such industry-driven efforts to choke off debt relief needed to be stopped.

Then of course there is the matter of the great gobs of money Hillary has taken to give speeches to Goldman Sachs and God knows whom else. Her answer about that-- "That's what they offered"-- gets right to the heart of what young people find so repugnant about this brand of politics.

One can talk about having the strength to get things done, given the political reality of the times. But one also can become too easily convinced of certain political realities, particularly when they're paying you hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour.

Is Hillary really doing the most good that she can do, fighting for the best deal that's there to get for ordinary people?

Or is she just doing something that satisfies her own definition of that, while taking tens of millions of dollars from some of the world's biggest jerks?

...My worry is that Democrats like Hillary have been saying, "The Republicans are worse!" for so long that they've begun to believe it excuses everything. It makes me nervous to see Hillary supporters like law professor Stephen Vladeck arguing in the New York Times that the real problem wasn't anything Hillary did, but that the Espionage Act isn't "practical."

...Young people don't see the Sanders-Clinton race as a choice between idealism and incremental progress. The choice they see is between an honest politician, and one who is so profoundly a part of the problem that she can't even see it anymore.

They've seen in the last decades that politicians who promise they can deliver change while also taking the money, mostly just end up taking the money.

And they're voting for Sanders because his idea of an entirely voter-funded electoral "revolution" that bars corporate money is, no matter what its objective chances of success, the only practical road left to break what they perceive to be an inexorable pattern of corruption.

Young people aren't dreaming. They're thinking. And we should listen to them.

Jann Wenner is not going to deliver Hillary a vote of anyone from outside of his own demographic. And, after being hollowed out by the DLC, the Blue Dogs, New Dems, systemic corruptionists, the lesser-of-two-evils argument-- that and the lowest common denominator of identity politics-- is, sadly, all the Democrats have left as a political party.

What Does Rolling Stone REALLY Think Of Hillary Clinton?

The Agenda Action Project explained in great detail why their members had chosen, by an overwhelming margin, to endorse Bernie for president. The head of APA, Erik Altieri, announced the endorsement yesterday, saying, that "Bernie Sanders' campaign has ignited a fire in this country that we are honored and humbled to stoke and grow until that warm light becomes a beacon of hope-- not just for the every citizen in this country, but for people around the world. Now is not the time to resign ourselves to the sidelines, now is the time to stand up and fight back. Enough is enough." He points out that his organization "is built on the same values that Senator Sanders has been preaching since the beginning of his political career. Bernie Sanders' policy positions have mirrored our hard hitting and unapologetic ad campaigns such as 'Granny Off the Cliff' when we fought against the privatization of Medicare, 'Hold Your Breath' when we took on outrageous student loan debt, and 'Stop the Greedy Clown' when we fought for a fair minimum wage."

I've heard a lot of analysis-- most of it relatively shallow-- about why Hillary can't win a general election. No one ever mentions that she's generally disliked by independent voters (at least 40% of the electorate). The Clinton Machine's overriding strategy is to always push, first and foremost, that no matter how awful she is, she's the lesser of two evils-- not as bad as either Cruz or Trump. The latest Quinnipiac poll, released yesterday, bears out that she could possibly squeak through if either of them is the nominee (and, like all the polling firms, Quinnipiac refuses to pull the likely GOP nominee, Paul Ryan). But head-to-heads show her beating Trump, 46-40%, beating Cruz 45-42% and being taken to the cleaners by Ryan-substitute John Kasich 47-39%. (Bernie beats Trump 52-38, beats Cruz 50-39% and is locked in a virtual tie with Kasich, 45-44%, Kasich ahead by a point.) Quinnipiac also found that Trump and Clinton top the "no way" list as 54% of American voters say they "would definitely not" vote for Trump, with 43% saying no to Clinton, 33% nixing Cruz.

"Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton may have the overall leads among primary voters, but there is not a lot of love in the room as a big percentage of Americans say of the front- runners they could take 'em or leave 'em," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. "Though short on delegates and short on time, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Gov. John Kasich can hang their hats on the fact that if folks went to the polls today, they'd fare better than the other candidates."

"Scared." That's the one word 117 American voters use to describe how they feel about the possibility of Trump as president, in an open-ended question. Another 46 voters say "disaster," with 45 voters each for "frightened" and "terrified." Another 42 voters say "horrified." The first positive word, "good," is seventh on the list, from 36 voters.

"Disaster" is the word 68 voters use to describe their feelings about Clinton as president. It goes back and forth after that: 51 voters say "good;" 49 voters say "scared;" 43 voters say "disappointed" and 41 voters say "hopeful."

Trump, Clinton and Cruz each get negative favorability ratings:

• 33 - 61 percent for Trump;
• 39 - 56 percent for Clinton;
• 32 - 47 percent for Cruz. Kasich gets a positive 43 - 20 percent favorability score, with Sanders at 50 - 37 percent.

But few people doing the analyzing note that young voters, who swarmed to the polls for Obama, are not Hillary fans and will be unlikely to fall for her desperate lesser-of-two evils approach. Maybe that's why she was so eager to get the Rolling Stone endorsement. People in their 70s think of the Rolling Stone as speaking for "the kids"-- because it did... when people in their 70s were kids. The owner of Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner, is a Clinton crony who is 70 himself. The owner of a private jet, his estimated net worth is $700 million. Wenner writes big checks to the Democratic Establishment and its candidates-- $25,000 to Rahm's DCCC, $20,000 to Schumer's DSCC; $25,000 more to the DSCC, $25,000 more to the DCCC; $21,000 to the DNC... His contribution record is completely, boringly establishment. The endorsement from his magazine, written by himself, is the endorsement of a 70 year old, almost-billionaire for the craven sold-out establishment candidate of his party.

Something tells me millennials who read Rolling Stone are more interested in what Matt Taibbi has to say about the presidential election than in what Wenner has to say. "The media response to the Sanders campaign," Taibbi wrote, presumably including his own magazine's, "has been alternately predictable, condescending, confused and condescending again." That pretty much describes how Wenner handled Bernie in his Hillary endorsement yesterday. "The tone of most of the coverage," Taibbi continued, "shows reporters deigning to treat his campaign like it's real, like he has a chance. John Cassidy of the New Yorker, for instance, swore he wouldn't be patronizing about the Sanders run. 'Indeed, I welcomed Sanders to the race!' Cassidy wrote recently. But Cassidy's hokey 'Welcome to the 2016 Race, Bernie Sanders!' piece from last spring had a small catch. It basically said that Sanders was welcome because he would be a boon to the real candidate, Hillary Clinton. '[Sanders] can't win the primary,' Cassidy wrote. 'And he will occupy the space to the left of Clinton, thus denying it to more plausible candidates, such as Martin O'Malley.' (!) Noting that Sanders held positions that were 'eminently defensible, if unrealistic,' Cassidy nonetheless said he was glad Sanders was running, because he would 'provide a voice to those Democrats who agree with him that the U.S. political system has been bought, lock, stock, and barrel.' This passage he wrote just after arguing that Sanders cannot win and was only useful insofar as he would help the bought-off candidate win. So what Cassidy really meant is that the Sanders campaign was allowing people who are justifiably pissed about our corrupted system to blow off steam, before they ultimately surrender to give their support to the system candidate. And he welcomed that! But he wasn't being condescending or anything."

Probably not something Wenner enjoyed reading in his own magazine about his own candidate.

Sanders is just the latest in a long line of candidates-- Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul, to name a few-- whom my media colleagues decided in advance were not electable, and covered accordingly, with a sneer.

When we reporters are introduced to a politician, the first thing we ask ourselves is if he or she is acceptable to the political establishment. We don't admit that we ask this as a prerequisite, but we do.

Anyone who's survived without felony conviction a few terms as a senator, governor or congressperson, has an expensive enough haircut, and has never once said anything interesting will likely be judged a potentially "serious" candidate.

If you're wondering why no Mozarts or Einsteins ever end up running for president in America, but an endless succession of blockheads like Rick Perry are sold to us on the cover of Time magazine as contenders, it's because of this absurd prerequisite.

Bloomberg released this national poll this morning

Bernie Sanders bluntly fails the Rick Perry test. In fact he pretty much defines what it means to fail that test. It isn't just that he doesn't kiss babies or comb his hair or "deftly evade answers." He's also unapologetically described himself as a socialist, which makes him a giant bespectacled block of Kryptonite for Beltway donors and mainstream journalists alike.

If questioned, most reporters would justify this by noting that an effective president must be able to bridge the gap between powerful interests and populist concerns. So it makes some sense to interrogate candidates accordingly, to make sure they're acceptable to both sides.

The flaw in this reasoning is that it assumes that Wall Street and Silicon Valley and Big Pharma and the rest need the help of us reporters to weed out the undesirables.

They don't, of course. Big money already has a stranglehold on the process of government. It outright owns most of the members of Congress, and its lobbyists write much of our important legislation. With Citizens United, buying elections is now more or less legal. Big money even owns most of the media companies that employ those pundits who are all telling us now to worry about how "realistic" Sanders isn't.

Everybody knows this. In fact, this numbing reality of how completely corrupted the modern American political process is bends the brains of those whose job it is to cover it. What happens over time is that you lose hope, and you begin to view everything through the prism of the corruption to which you're so accustomed.

...Successful politicians today on both sides of the aisle are sprawling celebrity franchises. They seem always to be making piles of money and hobnobbing with Beautiful People when they're finished moving the status quo in some incremental direction, which some hack somewhere will always be willing to call change.

Whether it's the Clintons with their foundations or Al Gore with his movies and his carbon-trading interests or the Bush/Cheney axis of hereditary politics and energy commerce, we expect the politicians who make it to the big time to cash in somewhere along the line because, hey, this is America. Donald Trump, if elected, would find a way to turn being the president into a moneymaking operation.

Sanders is a clear outlier in a generation that has forgotten what it means to be a public servant. The Times remarks upon his "grumpy demeanor." But Bernie is grumpy because he's thinking about vets who need surgeries, guest workers who've had their wages ripped off, kids without access to dentists or some other godforsaken problem that most of us normal people can care about for maybe a few minutes on a good day, but Bernie worries about more or less all the time.

I first met Bernie Sanders ten years ago, and I don't believe there's anything else he really thinks about. There's no other endgame for him. He's not looking for a book deal or a membership in a Martha's Vineyard golf club or a cameo in a Guy Ritchie movie. This election isn't a game to him; it's not the awesomely repulsive dark joke it is to me and many others.

And the only reason this attention-averse, sometimes socially uncomfortable person is subjecting himself to this asinine process is because he genuinely believes the system is not beyond repair.

Not all of us can say that. But that doesn't make us right, and him "unrealistic." More than any other politician in recent memory, Bernie Sanders is focused on reality. It's the rest of us who are lost.

No more "Daily Show with Jon Stewart"? Guess I'll have to get my debate coverage from "The Borowitz Report"

Plus: I advance my latest theory as to why all
these Republicans are "running for president"



"[Jon] Stewart leaves behind a legacy of having raised the bar for political discourse — to jostle folks as they laugh at political folly, to remind people of the real-world consequences embedded in those punchlines, to demand that, amidst all late-night shucking-and-jiving, people in power should be held accountable for the state of our nation."

-- Rolling Stone's Matthew Love, in "How Jon Stewart
Changed the Way We Talk About Politics on TV"

by Ken

The deck on the above-referenced Matthew Love Rolling Stone piece is: "The Daily Show host leaves behind a legacy of small-screen satire that screamed truth to power." I like that.

I really meant at least to set the DVR to record Jon's last Daily Show last night, but I forgot. I expect I can still catch a repeat, or see it via On Demand, but the truth is, I haven't watched the show regularly, or maybe even it all, in ages. I've just got too much politics bombarding me from all directions which I can't escape. I can't, as a matter of free will, take on more.

That said, I can't say enough about the job Jon has done all these years, dating back to the darkest years of the Bush Regime, and I can't say enough how much he'll be missed -- even by those of us who haven't actually been watching all that time. Because everyone always knew he was there, standing ready to offer his take on developments, almost always cutting through the you-know-what to reach a layer of sense. And even those of us who weren't actually watching would read the quotes or see the clips.

The most obvious consolation is the number of Daily Show alumni who have infiltrated the media, where spaces have actually been created for some of them, as Comedy Central did for Stephen Colbert and HBO has done for John Oliver. Even I'll be watching, at least at the start, to see what CBS's Late Show with Stephen Colbert turns out to be, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver continues to live up to the promise of what I called "maybe the best promo I've ever seen for anything." (Probably we should also include Comedy Central's Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore.)

Luckily, Howie was plugged into the first 2016 GOP presidential debate, so I don't have to feel guilty about taking my customary pass. The idea of sitting down, as an act of free will, to watch those people congregate in any space other than the group-session room of an appropriate mental-health facility fills me with what is known clinically as the heebie-jeebies. And just to be clear, no amount of guilt would prompt me to tune into such a broadcast. I can't offhand imagine what might, short of paying me or holding a gun to my head.

Luckily too, there are other sources to provide coverage of a kind appropriate to an event of this sort. Like these scoops from The Borowitz Report.

CLEVELAND (The Borowitz Report)—The billionaire Donald Trump shocked the American people Thursday night by proving to be considerably more heinous than they had previously thought, an instant poll taken after the debate shows.

According to the poll, viewers who went into tonight’s debate thinking that Trump was one of the most horrible people that they had ever seen were still totally unprepared for the depths of awfulness he displayed during the televised contest.

When presented with the descriptors “loathsome,” “appalling,” and “monstrous,” viewers who witnessed Trump’s interaction with Fox News’s Megyn Kelly said that none of those words did justice to how odious Trump was.

Partially as a result of his debate performance, the poll shows, Trump is now the first choice of seventy per cent of Republican voters.

CLEVELAND ( The Borowitz Report) -- Based on his performance in Thursday night's debate, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has emerged as a leading candidate to manage an Enterprise Rent-A-Car branch, Enterprise has confirmed.

Tracy Klugian, a human-resources director for the rental-car giant, said that he did not know what to expect before the debate, but after watching Walker in action he felt confident that the Wisconsinite had “what it takes to succeed at Enterprise.”

“He didn’t get too many moments in the spotlight, but, just from what I saw, I would feel comfortable putting him behind one of our rental counters,” he said.

He indicated that the company would be contacting Walker in the days ahead to discuss a possible future with Enterprise.

“Just to be clear, no promises will be made,” he said. “Best-case scenario, Scott works hard and becomes the manager of one of our branches. For starters, we’d like to train him to be an assistant manager and see how he does with that.”

Enterprise’s faith in Walker appears to be echoed by a new poll, which shows that thirty-one per cent of voters believe he is qualified to assistant-manage a rental-car branch.

MY LATEST THEORY AS TO WHY ALL OF THESE
GOP-ERS ARE (WINK) "RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT"

The Presidential Candidates' Hospitality Suite at
the 2016 GOP National Convention in Cleveland?

As you know, I've been losing sleep over the question why all these people who have no chance of winning, or perhaps even being noticed, are choosing to join the GOP presidential fray. I've finally come up with a theory, and while I haven't yet gone to the length of rigging up fake videos to support it, I'm going to stick with it until I either think up a better one or get tired of this one.

My current theory is that the perk that's driving all these people to join the fray is that during the GOP nominating convention in Cleveland, there will be a maximum-secret hospitality suite specially set up for drinks, drugs, and sex, where only former GOP presidential candidates and their designated guests will be eligible to while away the hours, including -- perhaps especially -- during peak podium, er, activities. This means that they'll be able to carouse in maximum secret, the way right-wingers always prefer to do their drinking and drugging and sexing.

#

Who Were The Craziest Republicans In 2013-- Lots Of Texans, Of Course, Thought None In The Top 10

Garden variety GOP racist Ted Cruz couldn't even make it into the Top 10

December-- time for Rolling Stone to make lists of the 50 greatest albums, 50 coolest videos and 50 greatest drummers, right. Sure… and the 50 dumbest things right-wingers said in 2013. Tim Dickinson put the list together, although there are weeks left for some of these crackpots to say even dumber stuff. Some of the DWT faves on his list:

At number 50, the Republican who conspired with the domestic terrorists who blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building, Steve Stockman (R-TX), a supposedly-recovered drug addict: "The best thing about the Earth is if you poke holes in it oil and gas come out." Of course, Stockman was hardly the only Republicano from Tejas who made the list. Oily Joe Barton also had drilling on his mind when he testified at a committee hearing that "The Great Flood is an example of climate change. And that certainly wasn't because mankind overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy." And then there was Stockman's closest, and funniest, neighbor Louie Gohmert who-- as he often does- -had racism on his little tiny mind: "We know Al Qaeda has camps on the Mexican border. We have people that are trained to act Hispanic when they are radical Islamists." And Stockman also came in with the 35th dumbest comment of the year attacking President Obama's push for gun control after the massacre at Newtown: "He's even using children. It reminds me of Saddam Hussein when he used kids." Not too be outdone, neighbor Louie G comes in with the 28th stupidest thing anyone said thus year (this one on his opposition to marriage equality): "When you say it's not a man and a woman anymore, then why not have three men and one woman, or four women and one man, or why not somebody has a love for an animal?" Pete Sessions came in at #16 giving his sage advice to his colleagues on the solitary purpose of the GOP's House majority and not knowing someone would rat him out to the press: "Everything we do in this body should be about messaging to win back the Senate. That's it." One better was the state's junior senator Ted Cruz: "We need 100 more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate." And, obviously it wasn't just the Texas congressmen who made asses of themselves. Speaking to a crowd in Louisiana, Texas Governor Rick Perry-- probably still on drugs, said "There are many other states that embrace those conservative values, the approach that we've taken over the years. I'm in one today, in Florida."

And now for the Top 10:

• 10- "We're not preaching austerity."- Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, whose budget would slash $4.6 trillion in federal spending

• 9- "For every one who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert."- Iowa Rep. Steve King on immigration and why he opposes the DREAM Act

• 8- "We're not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is."- Indiana Rep. Marlin Stutzman on the aims of the GOP's government shutdown

• 7- "We've done our work."- House Speaker John Boehner defending the track record of the least productive Congress in modern history

• 6- "I don't think there's any Bush baggage at all."- 2016 contender Jeb Bush on the political consequences of the family name

• 5- "Society itself is at risk and cannot continue."- Michigan Rep. Tim Walberg on the apocalyptic consequences of the Supreme Court's gay marriage decisions

• 4- "I think, personally, it would bring stability to the world markets."- Florida Rep. Ted Yoho on the hidden upside of forcing America into default

• 3- "My father had a ranch. We used to hire 50 to 60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes."- Alaska Rep. Don Young, doing his turn to aid the GOP's Hispanic outreach

• 2- "The middle class. Since when in America do we have classes? That's Marxism talk."- Former presidential contender Rick Santorum

And the dumbest comment by any Republican in 2013, the likely GOP nominee to run against Harry Reid next time…

• 1- "Yeah, I would." – Nevada assemblyman Jim Wheeler, when asked if he would vote to reinstate slavery if his constituents wanted it

Ever wonder how they're doing with that re-branding project they started the year off with? Republicans and minority outreach… always something amazing to behold and savor.

Willard Inc. may be his father's biological offspring, but politically speaking, he's no George Romney

Michigan Gov. George Romney and his son Retard Willard look out over the New York World's Fair grounds, May 18, 1964.

"Not only was George Romney, that loser, ironclad in his ideological commitments; his vision of how capitalism should work was in every particular the exact opposite of the one pushed by the vulture capitalist he sired."

-- Rick Perlstein, in his debut rollingstone.com column,
"What Mitt Romney Learned From His Dad"

by Ken

Oh boy, I've been meaning to get back all week to Rick Perlstein's inaugural rollingstone.com column, "What Mitt Romney Learned From His Dad," and since it was posted last Tuesday, I'm thinking we're only a day away from the arrival of another one.

Rick has a theory about sons-of-pols with political ambitions of their own, specifically sons of pols who suffer traumatic electoral defeats. He starts from this premise:

Here is a truism about the psychology of politicians: there is almost nothing so soul-definingly traumatic for them as losing an election. You believe yourself a great man, a figure of destiny. You love your job, or covet an even more important one -- and then suddenly one day it's gone, all because the public decides it doesn't love you any more. The trauma shapes future ideology: if you're a conservative, say, you might become more conservative. That was the case for two pioneers of the Democratic Party's long march to the right: Joseph Lieberman, who lost a bid for the U.S. House of Representatives, and Bill Clinton, who lost his reelection as Arkansas governor, both in 1980, a year of profound reckoning for Democrats who got blindsided by Ronald Reagan and his coattails.

But there is, Rick suggests, something worse, and that is being the son of such a traumatized pol. He has two such cases in mind, starting with --

a third pioneering Democratic corporate sellout, Evan Bayh, who managed the 1980 Senate reelection campaign in which his fighting liberal father Birch Bayh lost to baby Reaganite Dan Quayle. Thereafter, as governor and senator from Indiana between 1989 and 1997, the son hardly met a right-wing idea he couldn't embrace.

As far as I've been able to ascertain, the "lesson" learned in the Bayh family was exclusive to young Evan. Apparently Birch Bayh -- who was, as I've written, a political hero of mine -- has never made any such rightward move. And neither, I gather from what Rick tells us, did his other famously traumatized pol: Michigan Gov. George Romney, who came within a washed brain of riding a wave of almost unblemished popularity to the 1968 Republican presidential nomination. As you may know, George Romney had a bunch of sons, one of whom has long entertained delusions of presidential fitness.

I really don't want to preempt Rick's narrative, which as usual is laid out in rich, elegant, and ultimately eloquent detail. I just want to offer three blindingly stark contrasts he establishes with overwhelming eloquence between the Romney father and son.

1. THE "SHOCKINGLY AUTHENTIC"

GEORGE ROMNEY ON CIVIL RIGHTS

Rick writes about George Romney's "shocking authenticity."

[H]is courage in sticking to his positions without fear or favor was extraordinary. In January of 1964, for example, the second-year governor received a letter (downloadable here) from a member of the top Mormon governing body reminding him of the "teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith" that "the Lord had placed the curse upon the Negro." Drop your support for the 1964 civil rights bill, the elder warned, arguing that God might literally strike Romney dead for his apostasy: "I just don't think we can get around the Lord's position in relation to the Negro without punishment for our acts," the letter said. Romney only redoubled his commitment -- leading a march the next year down the center of Detroit in solidarity with Martin Luther King's martyrs for voting rights' in Selma, Alabama. In 1966, the Republican Party staked its electoral fortunes on opposing open housing for blacks. Romney begged them, unsuccessfully, not to. "This fellow really means it," an amazed Southern Republican said when Romney toured Dixie pushing civil rights in his presidential campaign; after America's worst riot broke out in Detroit under his watch, the governor said that America could respond with a crackdown on law and order – "but our system would become little better than a police state."

2. GEORGE VS. WILLARD ON

THE NATURE OF CAPITALISM

George Romney, a Republican governor who had of course been a fantastically successful corporate chief executive, had a "vision of how capitalism should work" that --

was in every particular the exact opposite of the one pushed by the vulture capitalist he sired. (If George Romney's AMC was around now, Mitt Romney's Bain Capital would probably be busy turning it into a carcass.) A critic once said he was "so dedicated to good works his entrance into politics is like sending a Salvation Army lass into the chorus at a burlesque house." As a CEO he would give back part of his salary and bonus to the company when he thought they were too high. He offered a pioneering profit-sharing plan to his employees. Most strikingly, asked about the idea that "rugged individualism" was the key to America's success, he snapped back, "It's nothing but a political banner to cover up greed." He was the poster child for the antiquated notion that corporations have multiple stakeholders: the workers that breathe them life, the communities in which they are situated, and the nation to whom they owe a patriotic obligation -- most definitely and emphatically not just stockholders, as Mitt and his defenders say.



In the video above, today's Romney insists there is no reason to question the distribution of wealth in America except for envy of the rich -- did his rich dad question the distribution of wealth in America out of envy for the rich? -- and that it was a subject only appropriate for discussion in "quiet rooms." (His dad didn't talk about it in quiet rooms; he talked about it at a Sunday worship service at the 1972 Republican convention, praying, "Help us to help those who need help.") Even if Mitt Romney is not the most right-wing candidate for the nomination, when he wins it, in a Republican Party becoming more extreme with every passing day, he may still be -- because the party won’t have it any other way -- the most right-wing nominee in the history of the country.

Rick draws a painful contrast between the signature "shocking authenticity" of George Romney and the palpable inauthenticity of Willard --

with, I think, an exception. Every time he opens his mouth on the subject of capitalism, he says what he sincerely believes, which happens to fit neatly with present-day Republican ideology: that rich people deserve every penny they have, and if people complain about anything rich people do, it's only because they're envious.

3. GEORGE ROMNEY ON THE LIES AMERICANS ARE
TOLD ABOUT OUR FOREIGN ENTANGLEMENTS

I've left for last the issue that cost George Romney not just his shot at the presidency but his political career: the Vietnam war, which he had supported through a visit to Vienam in 1965 but found himself beginning to question following a second trip in 1967. Asked in a TV interview about his apparent change of heart (Rick has the video posted with the column), he gave the answer that undid him: "When I came back from Vietnam in 1965, I just had the greatest brainwashing anybody can get when you go over to Vietnam." That, says Rick, is the line that everyone remembers.

But he continued with a devastating, prophetic, and one-thousand-percent-correct assessment: that staying in Vietnam would be a disaster. The public, and certainly the pundits, weren't ready to hear it. All they heard was the word "brainwashing" -- not in the colloquial sense in which Romney obviously intended it, but as something literal. Here was this weird dude accusing our generals and diplomats of Svengali-like mind control. The mockery was swift and furious. ("I would have thought a light rinse would do," William F. Buckley said -- hilarious! Only an idiot would criticize the Vietnam War!) Romney nose-dived sixteen points in the next Harris poll. As I wrote in my book Nixonland, on Vietnam a national brainwashing continued apace.

The gutter-brawling Richard Nixon didn't have to lift a finger to destroy Romney; the man had done it to himself. But as Rick underlines, amid all the mockery, Romney stuck to his guns (as it were), telling New Hampshire voters "that LBJ was 'spinning a web of delusion,' and that 'when you want to win the hearts and minds of people, you don't kill them and destroy their property. You don't use bombers and tanks and napalm to save them.'" And Nixon would proceed to get himself elected by: (a) conspiring to make sure that the Paris peace talks wouldn't produce, you know, peace, and (b) flat-out lying, saying that he had a "secret" plan to end the war -- so secret that he couldn't tell us what it was. In fact, when he became president, he didn't end the war, he escalated and widened it.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the "brainwashing" that Romney diagnosed would become a fixture of American political discourse, not just on the Right, but ultimately among self-serving pols almost across the increasingly narrow American political spectrum.

Rick has this shocking notion that understanding the past may actually enable us to see where we are and figure out where we may be heading. It is, in other words, the exact opposite of Newt Gingrich's perverted notion of "history," which consists of cherry-picking the past for bits and pieces that can be used to buttress your ideological prejudices and delusions. I can hardly wait to see what the next column brings.

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Will Obama Be Any Better Without Rahm Emanuel Hanging Around, Poisoning The Atmosphere?

I was never satisfied with anything less than an A when I was in school-- or any time since. And I was willing to work as hard as I could to achieve that. It's why I wound up at the top of my industry and why I was able to retire from business at a young age. And all my life I've wanted my country to have a government that could be graded A as well. JFK? Maybe but we never got to find out because he was murdered-- probably by people who were afraid he would be an A. And regardless of how Jimmy Carter grades himself... well, he probably was better than anyone since but, he never quite lived up to his potential. We've had a lot of very mediocre and very flawed presidents in my lifetime-- Nixon, Reagan, both horrid Bushes, Clinton... And Obama? His political record was clear that he was going to be... well, more symbolic than wonderful. His voting record in the Senate was a lot closer to senators like Blanche Lincoln, Max Baucus, Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman than it was like Dick Durbin's, Sheldon Whitehouse's or Bernie Sander's. And then his post-election appointments? Well, anyone harboring any hopes that we were going to get an A presidency had those hopes dashed when he replaced Howard Dean with Tim Kaine and gave the keys to the White House to Rahm Emanuel.

And today, in a preview of Ari Berman's new book, Herding Donkeys, Sam Stein, in fact, related a quote from the very same Howard Dean: "I'm not looking to pick another fight with Rahm Emanuel, but the contempt with which he held the progressive wing of the party was devastating and incredibly demoralizing. That's basically saying to your own people-- you got us here, now FU." And now, thank God, Rahm Emanuel is leaving the White House. Will it signal a better day for the Obama Administration? I don't know; it would be hard to believe. Will he ever be an A? I doubt it. Maybe a B? Maybe, but I doubt that too. But you know what? I can't think of one Republican since Eisenhower who wasn't a pure F and all of the current crop are substantially worse. Yep... lesser of two evils. Well, maybe not evil... oh, the GOP is evil, as evil as can be. Obama? I don't want to believe it and I'm willing to put my loud musings about it on hold until after November's midterms. I liked the president's Rolling Stone cover story today. You should read it. Here are a couple of excerpts:

When you came into office, you felt you would be able to work with the other side. When did you realize that the Republicans had abandoned any real effort to work with you and create bipartisan policy?

Well, I'll tell you that given the state of the economy during my transition, between my election and being sworn in, our working assumption was that everybody was going to want to pull together, because there was a sizable chance that we could have a financial meltdown and the entire country could plunge into a depression. So we had to work very rapidly to try to create a combination of measures that would stop the free-fall and cauterize the job loss.

The recovery package we shaped was put together on the theory that we shouldn't exclude any ideas on the basis of ideological predispositions, and so a third of the Recovery Act were tax cuts. Now, they happened to be the most progressive tax cuts in history, very much geared toward middle-class families. There was not only a fairness rationale to that, but also an economic rationale — those were the folks who were most likely to spend the money and, hence, prop up demand at a time when the economy was really freezing up.

I still remember going over to the Republican caucus to meet with them and present our ideas, and to solicit ideas from them before we presented the final package. And on the way over, the caucus essentially released a statement that said, "We're going to all vote 'No' as a caucus." And this was before we'd even had the conversation. At that point, we realized that we weren't going to get the kind of cooperation we'd anticipated. The strategy the Republicans were going to pursue was one of sitting on the sidelines, trying to gum up the works, based on the assumption that given the scope and size of the recovery, the economy probably wouldn't be very good, even in 2010, and that they were better off being able to assign the blame to us than work with us to try to solve the problem.

How do you feel about the fact that day after day, there's this really destructive attack on whatever you propose? Does that bother you? Has it shocked you?

I don't think it's a shock. I had served in the United States Senate; I had seen how the filibuster had become a routine tool to slow things down, as opposed to what it used to be, which was a selective tool-- although often a very destructive one, because it was typically targeted at civil rights and the aspirations of African-Americans who were trying to be freed up from Jim Crow. But I'd been in the Senate long enough to know that the machinery there was breaking down.

What I was surprised somewhat by, and disappointed by, although I've got to give some grudging admiration for just how effective it's been, was the degree to which [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell was able to keep his caucus together on a lot of issues. Eventually, we were able to wear them down, so that we were able to finally get really important laws passed, some of which haven't gotten a lot of attention-- the credit-card reform bill, or the anti-tobacco legislation, or preventing housing and mortgage fraud. We'd be able to pick off two or three Republicans who wanted to do the right thing.
But the delays, the cloture votes, the unprecedented obstruction that has taken place in the Senate took its toll. Even if you eventually got something done, it would take so long and it would be so contentious, that it sent a message to the public that "Gosh, Obama said he was going to come in and change Washington, and it's exactly the same, it's more contentious than ever." Everything just seems to drag on-- even what should be routine activities, like appointments, aren't happening. So it created an atmosphere in which a public that is already very skeptical of government, but was maybe feeling hopeful right after my election, felt deflated and sort of felt, "We're just seeing more of the same."

What do you think the Republican Party stands for today?

Well, on the economic front, their only agenda seems to be tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. If you ask their leadership what their agenda will be going into next year to bring about growth and improve the job numbers out there, what they will say is, "We just want these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which will cost us $700 billion and which we're not going to pay for."

Now what they'll also say is, "We're going to control spending." But of course, when you say you're going to borrow $700 billion to give an average $100,000-a-year tax break to people making a million dollars a year, or more, and you're not going to pay for it; when Mitch McConnell's overall tax package that he just announced recently was priced at about $4 trillion; when you, as a caucus, reject a bipartisan idea for a fiscal commission that originated from Judd Gregg, Republican budget chair, and Kent Conrad, Democratic budget chair, so that I had to end up putting the thing together administratively because we couldn't get any support-- you don't get a sense that they're actually serious on the deficit side.

What do you think of the Tea Party and the people behind it?

I think the Tea Party is an amalgam, a mixed bag of a lot of different strains in American politics that have been there for a long time. There are some strong and sincere libertarians who are in the Tea Party who generally don't believe in government intervention in the market or socially. There are some social conservatives in the Tea Party who are rejecting me the same way they rejected Bill Clinton, the same way they would reject any Democratic president as being too liberal or too progressive. There are strains in the Tea Party that are troubled by what they saw as a series of instances in which the middle-class and working-class people have been abused or hurt by special interests and Washington, but their anger is misdirected.

And then there are probably some aspects of the Tea Party that are a little darker, that have to do with anti-immigrant sentiment or are troubled by what I represent as the president. So I think it's hard to characterize the Tea Party as a whole, and I think it's still defining itself.

...You've passed more progressive legislation than any president since Lyndon Johnson. Yet your base does not seem nearly as fired up as the opposition, and you don't seem to be getting the credit for those legislative victories. There was talk that you were going to mobilize your grass-roots volunteers and use them to pressure Congress, but you decided for whatever reason not to involve the public directly and not to force a filibuster on issues like health care. What do you say to those people who have developed a sense of frustration-- your base-- who feel that you need to fight harder?

That's a bunch of different questions, so let me see if I can kind of knock them out one by one.
One of the healthy things about the Democratic Party is that it is diverse and opinionated. We have big arguments within the party because we got a big tent, and that tent grew during my election and in the midterm election previously. So making everybody happy within the Democratic Party is always going to be tough.

Some of it, also, has to do with-- and I joke about it-- that there's a turn of mind among Democrats and progressives where a lot of times we see the glass as half-empty. It's like, "Well, gosh, we've got this historic health care legislation that we've been trying to get for 100 years, but it didn't have every bell and whistle that we wanted right now, so let's focus on what we didn't get instead of what we got." That self-critical element of the progressive mind is probably a healthy thing, but it can also be debilitating.

When I talk to Democrats around the country, I tell them, "Guys, wake up here. We have accomplished an incredible amount in the most adverse circumstances imaginable." I came in and had to prevent a Great Depression, restore the financial system so that it functions, and manage two wars. In the midst of all that, I ended one of those wars, at least in terms of combat operations. We passed historic health care legislation, historic financial regulatory reform and a huge number of legislative victories that people don't even notice. We wrestled away billions of dollars of profit that were going to the banks and middlemen through the student-loan program, and now we have tens of billions of dollars that are going directly to students to help them pay for college. We expanded national service more than we ever have before.

The Recovery Act alone represented the largest investment in research and development in our history, the largest investment in infrastructure since Dwight Eisenhower, the largest investment in education-- and that was combined, by the way, with the kind of education reform that we hadn't seen in this country in 30 years-- and the largest investment in clean energy in our history.

You look at all this, and you say, "Folks, that's what you elected me to do." I keep in my pocket a checklist of the promises I made during the campaign, and here I am, halfway through my first term, and we've probably accomplished 70 percent of the things that we said we were going to do-- and by the way, I've got two years left to finish the rest of the list, at minimum. So I think that it is very important for Democrats to take pride in what we've accomplished.

All that has taken place against a backdrop in which, because of the financial crisis, we've seen an increase in poverty, and an increase in unemployment, and people's wages and incomes have stagnated. So it's not surprising that a lot of folks out there don't feel like these victories have had an impact. What is also true is our two biggest pieces of legislation, health care and financial regulatory reform, won't take effect right away, so ordinary folks won't see the impact of a lot of these things for another couple of years. It is very important for progressives to understand that just on the domestic side, we've accomplished a huge amount.

When you look at what we've been able to do internationally-- resetting our relations with Russia and potentially having a new START treaty by the end of the year, reinvigorating the Middle East peace talks, ending the combat mission in Iraq, promoting a G-20 structure that has drained away a lot of the sense of north versus south, east versus west, so that now the whole world looks to America for leadership, and changing world opinion in terms of how we operate on issues like human rights and torture around the world-- all those things have had an impact as well.

What is true, and this is part of what can frustrate folks, is that over the past 20 months, we made a series of decisions that were focused on governance, and sometimes there was a conflict between governance and politics. So there were some areas where we could have picked a fight with Republicans that might have gotten our base feeling good, but would have resulted in us not getting legislation done.
I could have had a knock-down, drag-out fight on the public option that might have energized you and the Huffington Post, and we would not have health care legislation now. I could have taken certain positions on aspects of the financial regulatory bill, where we got 90 percent of what we set out to get, and I could have held out for that last 10 percent, and we wouldn't have a bill. You've got to make a set of decisions in terms of "What are we trying to do here? Are we trying to just keep everybody ginned up for the next election, or at some point do you try to win elections because you're actually trying to govern?" I made a decision early on in my presidency that if I had an opportunity to do things that would make a difference for years to come, I'm going to go ahead and take it.

I just made the announcement about Elizabeth Warren setting up our Consumer Finance Protection Bureau out in the Rose Garden, right before you came in. Here's an agency that has the potential to save consumers billions of dollars over the next 20 to 30 years-- simple stuff like making sure that folks don't jack up your credit cards without you knowing about it, making sure that mortgage companies don't steer you to higher-rate mortgages because they're getting a kickback, making sure that payday loans aren't preying on poor people in ways that these folks don't understand. And you know what? That's what we say we stand for as progressives. If we can't take pleasure and satisfaction in concretely helping middle-class families and working-class families save money, get a college education, get health care-- if that's not what we're about, then we shouldn't be in the business of politics. Then we're no better than the other side, because all we're thinking about is whether or not we're in power.

Let me ask you about financial reform. Despite all the things like consumer protection that you did get accomplished, the regulation of Wall Street-- especially the closing down of all the derivatives trading that was really at the heart of the financial meltdown-- seems to have been eviscerated.

I've got to disagree with that. If you take a look at it, what we've essentially said is that the vast majority of derivatives are now going to be sold through a clearinghouse. And if you ask the experts what was the best way to make sure the derivative markets didn't bring down the economy again, it's transparency, so that everybody understands who the counterparties are, everybody understands what the deal is, what the risks are-- it's all aboveboard, it's all in the light of day.

People have legitimate concerns that if the rules drafted by all these various agencies in charge of implementing financial reform wind up with exceptions that are so big you can drive a truck through them, and suddenly you can have these specially tailored derivatives that are sold outside of the clearinghouse, then you could end up with an inadequate regulatory structure.

But if the rules are written properly-- and I have confidence that the people I appointed to these agencies intend to apply them properly -- it’s going to make a difference. Is it going to solve every potential problem in Wall Street in a multi-trillion-dollar, worldwide, capital market? Probably not. There could end up being new schemes, new loopholes that folks are going to try to exploit. The special interests are already ginning up to try to influence the rulemaking process in all these issues, so we have to remain vigilant. But to say that we did not significantly improve oversight of the derivatives market, it just isn’t true.

There's a lot more... worth reading. You don't have to read much into this demonstration of enthusiasm in Madison, Wisconsin today. Good speech too:

Almost Over-- And Then On With The Hard Part

A friend of mine told me that Esquire had endorsed Obama for president. I guess everyone has an opinion about politics. Everyone has an asshole too. I'll have to take her word for it that they endorsed Obama. I started looking for it online and got distracted by their best of and worst of lists of members of Congress. They really are such absolute uncomprehending idiots that I couldn't keep reading. Of the 10 "best" members of Congress, they managed to find two good ones-- Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)-- while naming some of the worst members of either house, like clueless neocon extremists Mike Pence (R-IN), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Ike Skelton (D-MO), Mike Simpson (R-ID), and Mark Pryor (D-AR). It appears that the only criterion they used is that none of their picks have been indicted for bribery.

They did somewhat better with the "worst of" list, topping it off with the a small man of "quavering sanctimony," Joe Lieberman, along with Michele Bachmann (R-MN)-- the reincarnation of Joseph McCarthy, who, they point out gives "the impression that if, in the name of 'traditional values,' Bachmann could rescind the vote for women, she would. Her vacant, wild eyes recall a doomsday prophet, or one of Charlie Manson's girls. Equal parts religious hack and party hack, she's got spunk and not much else."-- Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), John Cornyn (R-TX), William Jefferson (D-LA), Steve King (R-IA)-- toeing "the fine line between idiocy and bigotry"-- Joe Baca (D-CA), and Ted Stevens (R-AK). Their inclusion of Pete Stark (D-CA), one of Congress' smartest and most clear-eyed members should put Esquire into anyone's "worst of" magazine lists. 2laneIA at DailyKos had more patience-- not to mention eloquence-- than I did in going over the list, especially in regard to King.

While Esquire, like almost all of the superficial insider media-- not to mention superficial insider advocacy groups (think HRC and League of Conservation Voters)-- twists itself into pretzels to prove how nonpartisan and "seriously adult" it is-- putting its stamp of approval on extremist loons no better than a Hitler or Mussolini-- this year's "best of" magazine list would have to include Rolling Stone.

Matt Taibbi and Tim Dickinson have been doing the kind of job that one would wish a pathetic hack like Broder could even imagine. And this week, Rolling Stone exposes the real story about voter fraud being played out in the run-up to November. And that real story has nothing to do with ACORN, other than the McCain campaign's cynical attempt to use it to cover its own premeditated and scurrilous attempts to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters across the battleground states.

In state after state, Republican operatives-- the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics-- are wielding new federal legislation to systematically disenfranchise Democrats. If this year's race is as close as the past two elections, the GOP's nationwide campaign could be large enough to determine the presidency in November. "I don't think the Democrats get it," says John Boyd, a voting-rights attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for impeding access to the ballot. "All these new rules and games are turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states."

Suppressing the vote has long been a cornerstone of the GOP's electoral strategy. Shortly before the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Paul Weyrich — a principal architect of today's Republican Party — scolded evangelicals who believed in democracy. "Many of our Christians have what I call the 'goo goo' syndrome — good government," said Weyrich, who co-founded Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell. "They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. . . . As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

Today, Weyrich's vision has become a national reality. Since 2003, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, at least 2.7 million new voters have had their applications to register rejected. In addition, at least 1.6 million votes were never counted in the 2004 election-- and the commission's own data suggests that the real number could be twice as high. To purge registration rolls and discard ballots, partisan election officials used a wide range of pretexts, from "unreadability" to changes in a voter's signature. And this year, thanks to new provisions of the Help America Vote Act, the number of discounted votes could surge even higher.

Except for the actual communal exercise of ritual democracy and the Republican Party's last ditch, concerted efforts to thwart that, the election is as good as over. And about time; we're going to have to-- as a society-- deal with defending ourselves from those who have been running the show for the past decade or so-- and waging successful class warfare against the rest of us.

Financial workers at Wall Street's top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year - despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash, the Guardian has learned.

Staff at six banks including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are in line to pick up the payouts despite being the beneficiaries of a $700bn bail-out from the US government that has already prompted criticism. The government's cash has been poured in on the condition that excessive executive pay would be curbed.

Pay plans for bankers have been disclosed in recent corporate statements. Pressure on the US firms to review preparations for annual bonuses increased yesterday when Germany's Deutsche Bank said many of its leading traders would join Josef Ackermann, its chief executive, in waiving millions of euros in annual payouts.

The sums that continue to be spent by Wall Street firms on payroll, payoffs and, most controversially, bonuses appear to bear no relation to the losses incurred by investors in the banks. Shares in Citigroup and Goldman Sachs have declined by more than 45% since the start of the year. Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley have fallen by more than 60%. JP MorganChase fell 6.4% and Lehman Brothers has collapsed.