Stop Me Before I Vote Again

... outsourcing white-collar jobs to low-wage countries such as India has become a global fact of life - and America must learn to live with it.... Baucus said a majority of fellow Senate Democrats agreed with him, despite the party's longtime opposition to American companies moving jobs overseas.... "But the world is flat and we must work harder to better retrain our people."

"Bill Clinton pressed on [in pursuit of the NAFTA], growing more rather than less committed as the days passed. Abandoned by two of the three top Democratic leaders in the House, opposed by usually reliable Democrats in the trade unions and by some important leaders of minority groups and environmental organizations, he kept shoving more and more chips into the pot on an issue that few Americans really understood... It was the most important achievement of his Presidency... Mr. Clinton retreated early on Bosnia, on Haiti, on homosexuals in the military, on important elements of his economic plan; he seemed ready to compromise on all but the most basic provisions of his health-care reforms. Critics started asking whether he had a bottom line on anything. On the trade accord, he did, and that question won't be asked much for a while [after] the President's smashing success...free trade would not be quite so free as it might have been, but more walls came down this week than went up...at least Mr. Clinton has gained credibility, through his tenacity on the trade pact, that will help him in the months ahead. 'This is a great victory,' said Robert S. Strauss, the longtime Democratic power broker."

It amazes me how throwing an additional Opus Dei mama's boy onto the supreme bench gets accorded the attentions and hubbub of -- well, not the American Idol finalists, but at least a Wimbledon final, or the execution of a serial killer; but the Senate confirming the next fed chair -- a man who will arguably have the means within reach of his sole will to trigger world wide financial Armaggedon -- what's he get?

The pinky-up tea-cup treatment, that's what.

I guess it's just another grim testament to just how far the donkeys' 40-year shit-slide has taken them.

To my knowledge not a single brave or foolish spirit among the 45-odd Senate Democrats saw fit to even threaten to pull a Kerryesque fribbleous "Mr Smith" type chatter-stall, to protest the steamroller confirmation of Princeton's own Ben Bernanke.

"Diss Ben? Say what? Come on, man -- whats there to get hupped about?"

Well I'll simply start by saying 'twas not always so. There were days of yore when a dedicated bankers-boy rate-lifter and wage-cruncher like gentle Ben would have been bounced from pillar to post -- rhetorically of course -- by the senior Senator from the sovereign State of Stentoria.

Soon i'll post more on this freak of politics: the perpetual "all quiet on the Fed front," this preternatural outrage, this shameless sitzkrieg.

Dear Lord, where oh where, among all these long-eared butt-kissing, wall-street cell bitches are the righteous bellows of a people's tribune?

He notices that gentle Ben, our new Fed chair warmer, loves the word "transparency." To date that has translated in reality to just: "stating explicitly the numerical inflation rate... consistent with the goal of long-term price stability"

As Ralph points out that's common practice... in Europe. But Ralph takes the transparency ball himself and runs as far as he can with it. (Remember, he's a lawyer, not, like me, an attack trained political economist.) So how far does he get?

Well here: Let's "democratize Federal Reserve transparency." He gives some self-described "baby steps" towards that end -- a seven point program:

1. Regular open press conferences by the Chairman.
2. Adhere to the Budget Act which requires the submission of a formal annual budget subject to review by OMB and the Congress.
3. Require congressional appropriations for all Federal Reserve activities.
4. Allow the early release of Minutes of Federal Open Market Committee meetings .
5. Hold open meetings on all issues not involving monetary policy.
6. Require full audits by the Government Accountability Office (GAO)
7. Support legislation to prohibit commercial bank officials from serving on the boards of the 12 Federal Reserve District Banks.

Point 7 is splendid for obvious fox-in-henhouse reasons. Points one four and five are at best quixotic. Two and six would be great if the Fed was just spending money, not controlling the credit system and triggering recessions when wanted, neither of which costs anymore than falling asleep would. That leaves number three which I'll repeat:

3. Require congressional appropriations for all Federal Reserve activities.

Start with a generous tax cut upfront, of course. Then apply the tax. Do a rolling adjustment. This is one program with a long enough flight path to allow erring on the side of an overcut to begin with.

I'm referring of course to the Democratic members of the senate banking committee. Not a soul among 'em opposed either of the latest pair of hapless banker gumshoes Bush hopes to see join gentle Ben's Fed board.

Not much of a surprise -- they tossed nothing but cream puffs at Bernanke himself. If I'd been there I'd ask gentle Ben one question -- before storming out:

"Mister chairman, we know you love the idea of transparency. Well then, why this phoney to-do about posting an explicit inflation target -- core or otherwise? Why not put your intentions right out there so we all can see 'em? Go for the golden bell directly -- proclaim a flat-out wage-rate target. That's what it's really all about -- isn't it?"

Here's the donkey deadwood nine:

• Paul S. Sarbanes (D-MD)
• Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT)
• Tim Johnson (D-SD)
• Jack Reed (D-RI)
• Charles E. Schumer (D-NY)
• Evan Bayh (D-IN)
• Thomas R Carper (D-DE)
• Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
• Robert Menendez (D-NJ)

His oldest, Joe Jr. -- well we can X him out quick. He was a spoiled, headstrong bully, and a petrified father-cowed sleaze inside, who blew himself up trying to keep ahead of younger brother Jack.

Jack himself probably got almost everything he ever wanted out of life, and then made an even more timely exit than either Lenin or Elvis.

Not so, alas, brother Bobby -- America's first ever New Democrat. Nope, that's a guy we all needed to see more of. Maybe watching him mangle his way through the rest of the high 60's and early 70's, we might have learned faster and deeper what a swindle this whole tight-assed, open-minded, challenge-cup, neo-liberal meritocracy really is.

Maybe we would have killed it off long before we got ourselves into the likes of the Clinton menage.

But back to Ted. As the baby of the brood, Ted got to be more himself then any of the others -- and putting interrupted false promises aside, I think he's actually achieved at least as much, and certainly lost far far more.

So one shakes the knowing head some, upon reading the following in this morning's Globe:

US Senator Edward M. Kennedy plans to a unveil a sweeping economic proposal to improve US competitiveness and make globalization a force of prosperity for American workers.

'To help America embrace the competitive challenges we face we must invest in promising new technologies and high-growth industries that will lead to the jobs of the future.'

Did you ever see a picture of the right hand Rocky M put into Jersey Joe's jaw to gain the heavyweight title? "He'll never get back up from that one...."

Ted's taken more then his share of knockdowns, but this is really too punchy for words. He calls it the "Right Track Act," and it's a list of

measures that includes investing in high-technology industries, lifelong education for US workers, and....

...gives corporate tax breaks for investing in nanotechnology.

Kennedy: "America is in another period of challenge." Sadly note this upside-down gesture tacked on to keep up with the Schumers: "to ensure US workers compete on a level playing field," Ted wants presidential powers "to impose tariffs on the goods of countries that unfairly underprice their products through currency manipulations."

Oh, and there's also something about Fed money to head better high tech teachers toward bad schools.

Ted, Ted, Ted -- you need a crystal resting place... soon.

"I won't vote for anyone who won't endorse re-regulating energy prices."

Nothing more bespeaks the heinous degrdation of donkery than a quick contrast of donk reaction to energy price gouging in '74 vs. '05.

Here is Paul Craig Roberts, former Wall Street Journal voodoo hack, now anti-bushwhack libertarian enragé

"The brutal truth is that America's responsibility is extreme. We have destroyed a country and created political chaos for no reason whatsoever"

For the AFL-CIO the challenge is to break with the Democratic Party elite without splitting the party, as that could hand victory to Republicans, whose version of the box is even more extreme.

Now this is very odd talk indeed -- after the bit about "the challenge is to break with the Democratic Party elite" we get the old wheeze about the "even more extreme" Republicans.

What horrendous bull twitter. Speaking as an attack-trained economist, the coin's worth of difference here between Clintonia and Bushington, as far as labor is concerned, ain't even near worth George Wallace's 1968 Bretton Woods gold-standard dime.

Pretty wonderful, huh? Since that sad day in Weehawken that name has stood for everything brightly hideous, well-heeled, and smoothly crooked in our country. Now donk bond wizard "Princeton Bob" Rubin has it over the door of his meme shop.

Marvel of marvels -- truth in labeling, for once. If my stomach can stand it I will soon have more tales to tell about this house of horrors.

Watch a few donk phoneys split a lance over this one.

We can thank petro-dereg mania -- started by ole Jimmy Carter -- for the naked lunch hog oilers feast on today.

Here's my favorite case: Clinton I believe might have altered the course of the donk parade, if in early '93 he'd stumped for a bottom-up payroll tax cut. I believe not only would he have gotten it, but he might have re-labeled the donkery for a generation as the working stiffs party, and without triangulating a damn thing.

But as he's mentioned many times since, the very notion of a working family tax break was ruled out by Wall Street Bob Rubin -- from day one.

So we got instead... that's swell but don't tell, and Hillary's health folly. And so the '94 housecleaning was a lock.

When [Clinton] was running for office in 1992, he wasn't talking about "workers" ... he talked constantly about the "middle class" (whatever it is that is supposed to mean).

According to the made-over DLC crowd of which the Clintons are charter members, the working class is a shrinking constituency -- no longer, by far, the powerhouse mass that Truman tooted his blandishments at in '48, to such miraculous effect.

Nope, according to the brain trust that does the thinking for the likes of Rahm "Lex Luthor" Emanuel and cherry-cherry Kerry, appeal to the toiler class and its economic interests ... and you lose.

Par exemple -- read "The Trouble with Class Interest Populism" on the website of the Fromsphere planetoid the Progressive Policy Institute.

The upshot -- the Demo poor and working-class base of New Deal fame is now 25% of the population, and falling.

More to come on this subject.

Q: When is progress not progressive, and reform not part of a reformation?
A: When you're only streamlining the death machine.

Recall that device in Kafka's penal colony -- if you produce a microprocessor-controlled Mark II, is that progress? Or is it progress if you reform the post-torture procedures by applying quick-healing unguents to the scrimshaw?

To me, this is what publicly-funded citizen "skill" upgrading amounts to. Since they can't control the compensation, any increased skill supply only lowers the compensation for the skill. How this settles out will vary some from sector to sector, but a fair chunk will end up as increased corporate earnings -- and to complete the loop, we jobsters pay for this passthrough to the profiteers with our payroll taxes.

Here's a typical post.

It "updates" one stalled piece of the "new jobs rights movement." Seeing how 1/3 of the job force contends "sure... ya... a union 'round here would be... nice."

But there isn't one ... of course... nor likely to be one anytime soon, unless something big blows the present corporate skull-riggary sky high.

This bill becoming law -- at least by itself -- could hardly be something big, though at any rate it could add some due process facilitation.

And yet as minor a reform as it would be, the bill can't even get itself out of committee. There are plenty of reps in both parties unwilling to vote against "jobholder liberation," so bottled up it must remain till next November -- or Kingdom Come?

George is still alive, at least as much as he ever was, and recently penned an op-ed in the LA Times. George may be very big on acid, abortion and amnesty, but he's no friend of labor. Maybe labor always knew that.

George thinks "more" is not the answer for wage earners here in America -- times have changed. Globality and all that leads this ex-bomber pilot, ex come-home-America candidate to proclaim

I believe we should allow businesses to pay employees based on their skill level. I also believe we should supplement the wages of those who earn the least.

Another way to benefit workers financially is the earned income tax credit.

According to the ex-senator from Mount Rushmore, this approach

has the virtue of being supported by a progressive tax system.

Liberals must never abandon their core principles of justice and equality. But union leaders who still see American businesses as the enemy must update that vision.

And who are these these biz donk hacks that tried their damnedest to remove this blot on America's tax-free wealth zone?

• Max "Bronco" Baucus... of course
• The Nelson brothers, Ben and Bill
• The Belle Starr of the senate, blushless Blanche Lincoln

Our economic system is called neoliberalism or the Washington Consensus... which is really the latest iteration of predator capitalism but on a global scale. It is a bipartisan effort. Both parties are dedicated to this notion, developed after the end of the cold war, of the American elite’s domination the world.

Whether it is democrats through economic imperialism or republicans through military imperialism, both are expressions of American elites out of control to the complete detriment of the working class not just in the world but within our own borders.

NAFTA was the beginning and has been a template for much of what has followed. Bush I started it and Clinton finished it. It fundamentally changed the capital/labor equilibrium and 100 years of social and “labor” progress has been destroyed or is being destroyed.

It is free movement and protection for goods and money but no protection for workers or environment. No concern or benefit for ordinary people whatsoever, the people at the top benefit and everyone else pays.

Clinton sold out the democratic constituency. The people who lost were the unionized industrial sector and environmentalists. The party went down in the next ('94) election and has never recovered. The objectives of the Democratic Party are not working class but rather the class system that has developed with globalization. The democrats and republicans are working for the same people. Nothing proves that better than GWOT.

What I am trying to say is that a real “prog” who doesn’t think the dems are the root of the problem is a dem who has either secured a paycheck in the realm or has been put to sleep by the MSM. I suggest you ask for your pay in Euros and sleep lightly.

This is a great blog, welcome existential relief from metastasizing liberal delusions.

Regarding the topic before us:

Too many misleading simplifications on this vital subject to go unchecked here.

Neo-liberal globalization predates the fall of the Berlin Wall (although the demise of really existing socialism injected it with some serious juice, ideologically and otherwise) but it postdates 1944’s Bretton Woods conference (which, in fact, was the mere ratification of international institutional designs already cooked up behind the scenes by the US Treasury Department and Lord Keynes, with the latter playing a decidedly subordinate role, given British war debts to Wall Street). It basically arrives on the scene in the 1970’s, when Keynesian welfare statism in the OECD world and national developmentalist models in the Global South could no longer deliver the goods, and in this context of stagnant growth – paired with the demise of fixed exchange rates and the boom in unregulated offshore banking – financial accumulation gained ascendance over productive investment (even this is a hopeless vulgarization).

It is not exclusively a project to prolong US primacy (ruling classes everywhere, including places that don’t take orders from Washington DC, have latched on to it to greater or lesser degrees in order to buttress their own privileges), but it is also naive to claim that it doesn’t to some extent bear the US imperial imprint (e.g. IMF-World Bank demands for "transparent corporate governance" always seem to advantage business service firms and investment banks headquartered in lower Manhattan, for some inexplicable reason).

To be sure, the dominant wings and policy elites in both parties embrace it – perhaps the so-called “liberal internationalists” of the Democratic Party most vigorously, Robert Rubin being the purest exemplar – but there are dissident blocs in both parties as well, namely the nativist paleocons on the "right" and the AFL-CIO protectionists on the "left" – neither of whom are exactly savory bedfellows, unfortunately.

Two highly recommended sources of recent vintage on this question, both quite sophisticated yet eminently readable, are David Harvey's A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism and Neil Smith's The Endgame of Globalization.

Anyway, I’ll stop here before my pedantry becomes even more grating.

... Somewhere else on the blog, JS or MJS (one of the initial guys)caught my eye by saying we should insist that any democrat we might support sign a pledge of non-intervention. I quickly replied and called this a day-dream, since intervention is built into the imperial system, which is universal and bi-partisan.

Following on JR's placement of the discussion in the context of labor, why not, instead of asking our representatives to please sponsor a less violent foreign policy, demand that they launch programs to protect American jobs and develop new ones. For starters, reverse all the tax credits that encourage businesses to locate overseas, and provide credits for those that create jobs at home.

Has any democrat recently said anything like this? Not that I know of. Maybe we could trick John Edwards into moving in that direction!

Kevin Phillips observes that American politics oscillates between periods of go-for-broke individualism and free markets, and reactions against the excesses of untrammeled capitalism. Unfortunately, the former far outnumber the latter in our history, there being only two periods where free-wheeling business was reigned in, and social needs were met -- the New Deal, and the earlier so-called Progressive Era.

But maybe we are again at a point where the evils of free market capitalism are laid bare, and a movement can be built around jobs (and health) for the people, not profits for the rich. it would be fun to be part of such a movement, wouldnt it?

The kind of rhetorical chicanery that the Democrats are stooping to now in order to seem progressive on the issue of health in America has reached new heights in disingenuity. Here is an excerpt from the platform of U.S. Senate hopeful, Ben Cardin:

Ben Cardin believes that it is unacceptable and unconscionable that while America is home to the most advanced health care and medical research facilities in the world, more than 47 million Americans have no health insurance. And each year, the cost of health care continues to skyrocket, making it more difficult for employers to offer, and for families to afford, quality health care.

Astute observation, right? So far so good eh? His proposal for resolving this travesty:

[Ben Cardin] Believes we must fight to expand coverage by building on the current employer-based system of health care. By offering small businesses assistance in securing affordable coverage for their workers, we will make it easier for states to enroll eligible children and parents in the Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. This will also allow early retirees between ages 55 and 64 to enroll in Medicare at an affordable premium.

Health industry donations to the Cardin campaign? A whopping $225,800. His top contributor.

Anyway, if all that wasn't amusing enough, get a load of this:

Minority groups are disproportionately affected by cancer, stroke, heart disease, diabetes, and other debilitating diseases:

- [Therefore], we must intensify our research efforts to determine both the cause of racial and ethic disparities and how to narrow gaps in health status.

Geeez laweeez...what could be the cause of this disparity?

*sigh*

'My other piece of advice, Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, 'you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and - and in short you are for ever floored.'

Pelosi Promises Fiscal Restraint If Democrats Win

Minority Leader Says Democratic-Run House Would Target Deficit

By DAVID ROGERS and SARAH LUECK
July 13, 2006; Page A4

WASHINGTON -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi pledged that if Democrats succeed next year in rolling back President Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the money would be used to reduce the federal deficit -- not for new spending....

The California Democrat anticipates some resistance from within her party, but returned to the theme of fiscal prudence in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. When asked to outline the Democrats' agenda, she listed initiatives that she said wouldn't strain the government's coffers: cutting interest rates on student loans, raising the minimum wage and demanding higher royalties from oil companies.

"Not every single dollar" would go to the Treasury, she said, "but I hope that...we would use the rollback of the tax cuts" to address the deficit since "it is the biggest drain...on the next generation."

The party left needs to throw up a few wildly divisive draft planks, not cultural but of the tax variety. Like a net-worth tax on the one percenters, and a payroll tax cut on SSI.

Nothing new here, of course, but the notion is, let's smoke out the money-changers' party familiars, then let's attack the foreign aid budget -- no more arms tech for anybody. That oughta smoke out some stooges too.

Plank battles like these -- not gay marriage and abortion and gun control -- will get at the real wire-pulling fiends

On another popular topic: forget campaign reform. That's changing the frame, while it's the picture inside that's ugly.

As I mentioned with other words in a comment here -- want to stop big money or Zionic influence? Well -- if you promise to screw 'em they won't donate.

Of course this is an impossible dream, but the point is to force the fiends to answer the musical question, "why the fuck not?"

I suspect most of you have already seen Joe's corporate wiring diagram at Counterpunch. It's sure a smooth set of grooves he's in.

It reminds us how much the nutmeg nutter is not just the mad muppet of Zionia, but also about as near the top of the US chamber-of-horrors honor roll as a donk can get.

One year after labor groups vowed to punish 15 Democrats who joined Republicans in the U.S. Congress to approve a Central American free trade pact, most have easily won their party's nomination to run again....

... 11 of the CAFTA 15 have already won their party's nomination to face a Republican party candidate in the November congressional elections. In most of those party primary races, the CAFTA 15 candidates ran unopposed.

Two of the remaining primary races are in New York, where Rep. Gregory Meeks... is running unopposed and 24-year House veteran Rep. Edolphus Towns... faces two opponents on September 12.

The New York AFL-CIO voted this week not to endorse Meeks and Towns because of their CAFTA vote.

"It basically means we're sitting out the race," said Mario Cilento, communications director for the New York AFL-CIO. "Delegates to the convention felt strongly that a message had to be sent and not take labor support for granted."

... as Democrats hope to take over control of the House from Republicans and as an aspiring presidential class of 2008 becomes more assertive, the Hamilton Project, named after the founding father and onetime Treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton, is arguably [ former Clinton Treasury Secretary and financial Svengali Robert] Rubin's most overt political act since he stepped down from the Treasury in 1999....

Housed in the Brookings Institution, the initiative embraces a number of mainstream economic prescriptions - like the necessity of equitable international trade agreements, the virtues of a balanced budget, and making economic growth more broad-based....

But by addressing issues like the costs to the economy of excessive litigation and regulation, Mr. Rubin intends to make the project a laboratory for the type of pragmatic, ideology-free policies that appeal to the project's Wall Street advisers while also hoping to lure Democratic presidential candidates away from populist economic positions. And with Mr. Rubin and his successor and friend Lawrence H. Summers on board, it will also be a training ground for the next crop of financiers with ambitions to shape policy in a Democratic administration.

They include those who have done so, like Roger C. Altman, the chairman of Evercore and a former deputy Treasury secretary; those who aspire to do so, like Steven Rattner of Quadrangle, the private equity firm; and, perhaps most important, younger Wall Street executives just now flirting with the idea.

It is with this last group of executives, drawn largely from the booming world of hedge funds and private equity, that Mr. Rubin has loomed large as an Obi-Wan Kenobi figure.

In the 1980's he cultivated their early careers as arbitrage traders at Goldman Sachs, and he is now guiding them in the ways of securing influence in Washington.

Eric Mindich, who runs Eton Park, a $5 billion hedge fund, led Goldman's arbitrage desk at the age of 25, and in 1994, at 27, became Goldman's youngest partner ever.... He is also a contributor to Mr. Rubin's favorite senator, Kent Conrad, the Democrat from North Dakota.

Then there is Richard C. Perry, who left Goldman's arbitrage desk in 1988 to form Perry Partners, now an $11 billion hedge fund. And Thomas F. Steyer, the founder of Farallon Capital, a $16 billion hedge fund, who also worked under Mr. Rubin in the 1980's and was an adviser to Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004.

Sept. 6 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Senator Charles Schumer is "very serious'' about forcing a vote this month on legislation to place punitive duties on all Chinese imports, his spokesman said.

"We need to see real results on the currency. We need real signs of progress,'' the New York Democrat said today, according to spokesman Eric Schultz."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aZVqDxEMrb2c&refer=asia

Bull goose Democrats continue to think nativist pandering and know-nothing economics will help them, even when the Republicans have locked in that pitch and can offer the full crackpot monty.

Of what do I speak? This:

[puts on wonk cap]

The quick donk New Deal way out would be to treat our jobster homes like the first New Deal treated family farms:

"Friends, these homes are America's backbone -- they produce the nation's most sacred crops" -- i.e. all our corporate job hours, in their rich variety of tasks and rates of compensation. To help, (but still reward the dutiful and thrifty), we could nationalize all residential mortgages up to the the market value of each and every Amerikan house lot, and simultaneously issue a stream of lot equity credits usable against a national George tax on ground rent (i.e. on lot value).

Voila, no more private rack-rating, and of course no more borrowing against lot value, and no more lot price elvis-plate or tulip manias either,

Our clever, constantly revalued George tax will effectively render all lots of zero private value.

Hee hee hee, and I'll control it all through a bank of high-speed computers.

Head start: the Gub already owns a big chunk thru Fanny and Fred

So what's your problem, troops? Don't tell me you saw this somewhere else, cause you ain't. This is pure originality, fellow critters. I want my just accolades, or at least a few quibbles!

My personal rep, blazing progressive Barney Frank (shown above with caped coffin-sleeper Tom Lantos) seems to have turned into a bit of a wet hen in a recent piece in that dashing people's tribune, the American Prostate

Barney tries mad, mad, double-mad dancing on gentle Bobby Reich's head, because in an earlier issue of the same earnest mag, Bobby R bluntly claims the donks, if they regain control of the House this fall, will do exactly what Karl Rove and I say they'll do -- that is, follow their cheap showboat instincts, and grandstand -- as in raise a hullabaloo about Bushco illegality, profiteering, etc., etc. -- you know, just generally play gotcha with the elephant's behind.

This Bobby claims they'll do, instead of helping the beleaguered middle-income jobholdery, which, to sir Bobby, is the one and only true party mission.

Well needless to say, this touches off a string of Frank firecrackers. Some of these just spring from vanity -- how dare anyone presume to instruct the likes of a barnyard B Frank -- but other pops are clearly explosions of authentic kitchen fury. After all, Bobby stepped on a corn here, right? And Barn has to play it up, with all the righteous outrage he can push through that tiny, lipless, side-sloped Buddy Hackett mouth of his. To the contrary, Mister Robert Reich -- Barnz and his liberal donk friends have no intention whatsoever of going after Bushco:

I know of virtually no support for trying to impeach President Bush among House Democrats, because we understand that this would be entirely counterproductive to what we are trying to accomplish both politically and governmentally.

I confess to some personal irritation ... when I am told that ... I should in fact think about beginning to do things that I have been doing."

But here's the blink passage to me. Let me set it up first. Bobby in his piece has said, among his other don't-dos, don't waste time trying to expose "nefarious links" Bushco has to [cue sinister drum roll] Wall Street. Here's the barn hen's cluck on that one:

As for myself, I have consistently said that I want to show that liberal Democrats can be fully supportive of the legitimate functioning of financial intermediaries in a responsible capitalist system, while at the same time protecting the rights of consumers and helping address the problem of growing inequality.... I have never argued that this administration has "nefarious links to Wall Street," and in fact it would be very odd if an administration had no links to Wall Street in these areas."

One is tempted to clown it up, and suggest to Barney that his hand-crafted line may reach a level of ambiguity that is itself manifestly nefarious and paradoxically revealing.

If the tower brute can torture you, then the tower brute will torture you. It's no longer debatable; you may climb the comp pole, but you can't hide. It's here, it's real, it's immediate -- even more than climate change. We live in an era of accelerating job pay blight, and now it's spreading up the compensation pole like Dutch elm disease.

If the 80's was about the jovial de-nutting of the classic New Deal blue collar male, then the 00's are about putting it to Joe and Jane Mortarboard.

But let us rejoice in this prospect of shared immiseration -- today there is no longer any broad willing market for the new-Democratic DLC neoliberal snake oil. Recall its golden era claims: prosperity for the little guy is just a skill enhancement away, and if not one enhancement, then two or at most five. Prosperity for you and more to the point for your young-'uns is within the power of your own strivings to attain. "We all can not only have capital but be capitalists too! Yes, folks, with enough education and training, we all can be our own capitals, a corporation of one selling our services (with a very tidy return on investment) to the highest bidder. Come on! Join the rush to exploit yourselves!"

Well, the returns are in now, and it seems with all this offshoring of professional services, the "human" in "human capital" is starting to sound a lot like the "human" in "human sacrfice."

Here's a real case of don't that just beat all: great Oreo hope Deval Patrick running to be donk governor of the Commonwealth of Mass. (The candidate is shown above, with that great emblem of the Democratic Party, Mike Dukakis, getting ready to cook and eat an entire blue-collar family.)

Talk about a board room whore. Needless to say, however, the AFL-CIO is behind him all the way. But the Killer Coke folks have got the goods on Patrick. I quote:

An Open Letter to Massachusetts Labor Leaders
September 5, 2006

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Robert Haynes has accused me of parachut(ing) in from another state while likely violating campaign finance laws and mislead(ing) people into thinking (I) speak for organized labor.

All of these accusations stem from the fact that Mr. Haynes not only chooses to ignore gubernatorial candidate Deval Patricks blatantly anti-labor record, but resents anyone who tries to remind the voters about it.

Mr. Haynes should realize that a Big Business power broker like Mr. Patrick doesnt deserve any support from unions when running for office. Mr. Patrick has already collected nearly $800,000 in out-of-state contributions parachuted to him from many sources, including contributors who list notorious union-busting law firms like Jackson Lewis and Seyfarth Shaw as their affiliation. About $24,000 came from employees of the Boston law firm Ropes & Gray, which publicly acknowledges that it helps clients with employee discipline, implementation of reductions in force (and)union avoidance. (Incidentally, Mr. Patricks wife, Diane, is a partner in the Labor and Employment Department at Ropes & Gray.)

A closer look at Mr. Patricks past raises many more questions that both voters and labor representatives should be asking. As Texacos Vice President and General Counsel from 1999 to 2001, he was a principal architect of the Texaco-Chevron merger, which enriched a few oil executives but also resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs. When he wasnt helping impede competition and hastening the consolidation of the oil industry, he was Texacos point man on opposing the right of 30,000 poverty-stricken Ecuadorians to sue the company for causing massive damage to peoples health and their environment.

P.S. In line with Comrade Smith's anti-flag campaign, here's the logo from Patrick's Web site:

No ordinary leader indeed. Even for a Democrat, this guy is pretty damn ripe.

My report begins inside deepest academia, staring into a wizard's brew of statistical flapdoodle, full of confidence intervals and r-squares and all that, the work of a prolific Princeton poli sci cone-cap with the oddly folksy name of Larry Bartels. In its own very postivistical way, this paper makes a few very loud claims -- among which, one in particular caught my fancy: Bartels has struck a correlation that might imply a very very sinister Republican plot that fellow Princetonian prof Paul Krugman calls "very mysterious".

Seems there's a relationship between the performance of our national economy and the party in power come prez election time, and this relationship runs back to at least the Truman surprise of 48. And it's a very nasty bit of business too, as its consequences dramatically favor the electoral prospects of the repugs over the jack-assery. Bartels claims some intentional force or forces precisely gooses up any and all prez election year economies if the incumbent party in the White House is repuglickin', and snuffs out any growth if the incumbent party is the donkery. And this up or down swoop in the growth rate is worth a few possible key points up or down for the incumbent party in the vote totals. Bartels states a strong causal relationship "may well exist" between economic performance and voter party preference he even suggests an estimated "at the margin" value for this causal relationship, in the form so many extra vote points per point of higher economic growth rate.

Now I suspect what caught Father Smiff's attention in all this was another observation: in this very same paper Bartels shows that the donks are better at growth induction over all, and better by quite a bit for the little guy -- except in those accursed fourth years of Democratic White House terms, when the donkey suddenly, inexplicably, and inevitably founders. The go-go growth donks, after trotting so nicely for three years, always come up with glanders in the home stretch.

Brother Bartels skates past an important distinction here -- under the two New Dem regimes, Carter's one term and Clinton's first, the results were far less convincing. (Not until Clinton's second term, when he jammed through a huge tax cut for capital gains types (his donor class), I've always suspected he got, as a quid pro quo, Greenspan's braking the unemployment rate floor with three more years of loose credit. This loose credit kept the economy growing, unemployment rate dropping, wages rising, and the middle 60 compressing while also prospering, as they do in most rising economies.) What held for the old donkery of Harry through LBJ does not carry forward with any real demonstable signifigance to the New Dem, New South party era.

But this isn't really Bartels' main point. He's interested in the election-year trick.

Of course the really interesting question is the "how" of it, and this he doesn't address. It would be quite surprising, wouldn't it, if the dems were just not aware of the trick, or at least how to make it work for them too? After all they got Harvards and Stanfords and MIT types on their bench too. So probably it isn't ignorance -- maybe they just can't implement like the repugs can.

I will hazard this: if the pattern is there and is causal, there's one outfit that could surely pull this off: my own favorite White Whale, the Federal Reserve Bank, that independent bastion of the great American scroogery. They could do it, and do it every time.

(CNSNews.com) - Americans will hear a lot about "donut holes" in the days ahead, but it has nothing to do with the nation's obesity "epidemic."

Democrats and some liberal interest groups are furious that the government's new prescription-drug entitlement program forces some senior and disabled citizens to pay the full tab for their own prescription drugs -- beyond a certain dollar amount. They argue that the cost of prescription drugs is still too high."

Story link: http://tinyurl.com/rgxnl

Here's the House vote, with just enough Democrats to make sure it passed, when it could have been defeated.

http://clerk.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.asp?year=2003&rollnumber=669

And the Senate vote, with -- yes! -- once again enough Democratic votes to tip the scales.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=108&session=1&vote=00459

This pattern repeats itself over and over. Greedy corporate welfare queens roll out the big perception management guns, get a few shills on board -- AARP, in this case -- and the Democrats provide just enough votes to make sure the very worst things happen. Afterwards, the Democrats who cost everyone so much time, energy and money are welcomed back into the fold, just like nothing happened. Then a bunch of hopefuls run against something that was preventable in the first place.

What makes this particular issue so awful is the predatory use of our elderly brothers and sisters and the clear prior knowledge that this was a terrible thing to do. Several states were forced to delcare emergencies to cover the havoc created by this legislation.

"About 20 states, including California, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania and all of New England, have announced that they will help low-income people by paying drug claims that should have been paid by the federal Medicare program.

"The new federal program is too complicated for many people to understand, and the implementation of the new program by the federal government has been awful," said Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, a Republican. On Saturday, he signed an emergency executive order making the state a "payer of last resort" for the out-of-pocket drug costs."

Story link: http://tinyurl.com/mtlpm

With a good degree of success, Larry attempts to unlock the paradox we progs found so prevalent, looking back over the voting behaviour of America's most jobbled palefaces -- i.e. their persistent tendency to prefer candidates of the party of rich man tax cuts, and their patently false promises of abundance for all, over the long-eared supposed party of the common man.

Now of course we hear the line that the fools were voting their values, not their pocketbooks -- as if they bought the costless placedo snake-oil at top dollar, just so long as the Bible said to "follow such men."

But Larry sez "Just wait a second here." Larry's discovered another possibility, dearer to the hearts of Benthamites and liberators and free-traders everywhere, namely: "self interest." Only it's unenlightened self-interest -- the great abiding fear of J S Mill and Gladstone.

Seems if you review the mind-set surveys around the time of the two big tax cuts in '01 and '03, as Larry sez, you'll find in there Homer buying the notion of cutting Mr Burns' taxes, cause Homer figured "there's a little something in it for myself" -- even if, as he seems to know,, it's a very little.

And here's the farce of it: a full 180, taking in all the major knock-ons and other secondary effects like spending cuts, deficit increases, even higher taxes someday -- it all turns the paltry up-front bird-in-the-hand jobblers' share of the tax cut into a long-run net loss, for maybe the whole bottom 80% of American households.

Now as we all recall, this was not the first jobblers' blanket-toss by the Repubs. They'd been at it for 30-plus years at this point. Just how nasty had it gotten, even before, yes before, the '01-'03 bush plutotax cuts?

I like this comparison. Larry points out: In the late Clinton 90's, the top 13 thousand households had pretty close to the same total income as the bottom 20 million households. Don't think Homer didn't kinda know this, dislike it and wish it were otherwise. And yet, instead of a massive rectification of this re configuremen