When Congress is Bought Off By Wall Street,

nobody should expect any real reforms to occur:

Congress isn’t doing a thing about Wall Street because it’s in the pocket of Wall Street. Dodd’s outburst at the Street is like the alcoholic who screams at a bartender “how dare you give me another drink when all I’ve done is pleaded with you for one!”

Dodd is right about one thing. The American people are frustrated, and the failure of Congress to pass real financial reform is insulting. But in trying to place responsibility for this appalling failure on Wall Street, Dodd insults us even more.

Wall Street Bailout

Naturally the WSWS is critical of the Democrats, but I am not optimistic they will act in the best interests of Americans.

Christopher Dodd getes skewered in this piece.

Since Obama isn't a Democrat, it's small wonder he wants to bail out Wall Street and defer spending.

If you are going to be a Republican, join their party, Barack:

As late as the weekend, in an interview with John Harwood of CNBC, Obama had rejected suggestions that the magnitude of the Treasury expenditure for purchasing mortgage-backed securities would put any new social spending off the agenda. He claimed that he would proceed with a proposal to expand health insurance as well as additional funding for education, the environment and child care.

But by Tuesday the Democrat had abandoned even this position, promising only to retain a series of tax cuts in the first budget of an Obama administration—which will inevitably accrue more to upper-income families—while making no such pledge for social spending.

The FBI has gotten into the act.

The worst thing we could do is sanction this bailout, but I don't trust either political party as far as I can throw them. They refuse to reverse the concentration of wealth to the very top, which is at the root of all of our economic problems:

The mortgage crisis is NOT the cause of this problem. It is merely a symptom of a far deeper problem caused by adhering to conservative political and supply side economic philosophies that have been followed here and abroad before and that have ALWAYS failed similarly to the way they are failing now. These political and economic philosophies always, ALWAYS, concentrate wealth into a progressively decreasing number of hands, eventually reaching a point where those who not possess those hands grow in numbers and decline in wealth to the point where the normal functioning of markets is no longer possible. To put it zoologically, the big fish eventually eat all the smaller fish until there is nothing left for them to eat. Then they spend a brief time eating each other before the entire ecosystem collapses. We have now reached the end of the time where they can survive by devouring each other and so we are left with some pretty stark choices for the future of our little pond. We've been dumping fish-food pellets, made from the little fish (read "working taxpayers") when they were plentiful, into the pond for the past year or so, calling them "bailouts." The Bush administration is now preparing to empty the entire contents of the last container of fish food into the pond to feed the remaining big fish for a little while.

But this doesn't solve the problem. The fish-food pellets will last only a very brief time, and because they float a lot of them will be eaten by the great birds and hungry insects (read China, Abu Dhabi, and Kuwait) before they ever enter our little pond's ecosystem. The rest will quickly be eaten by the remaining big fish, and when the pellets are gone, there will be no more to stave off starvation, stagnancy and a fetid rot that will consume the pond itself.

See, the problem is the concentration of wealth in America, a problem we faced once before at the end of the Roaring Twenties. This bailout not only does nothing to address this underlying problem, it actually makes it worse, as We the (Little) People will have less for many, many years to come paying for this largess, while those who were already too fat will be made even fatter.

Our problem cannot be fixed with any immediate infusion of cash to big bankers, no matter how large that infusion might be. The problem can only be fixed by correcting the underlying causes -- the inequalities in our distribution of our wealth among rich and poor that has increased so rapidly over the past quarter-century thanks to following supply-side theory, which is ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS WRONG.

The Great Depression should have proved beyond all doubt laissez faire economics is a miserable failure. A society needs a mixed economy in order to prosper. Giving a tiny number of people all of the money is just ruinous for everybody.

Friedmanism should go the way of the Edsel. It doesn't work.

Campaign Stupidity

Chris Dodd has a political death wish.

Clinton, though, is apparently not being vetted by a campaign that's never been truly vetted by the media.

Governor Sebelius apparently is, even though she adds absolutely nothing to the ticket.
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Jesse Ventura is going to make a decision on Monday whether or not to fuck up the Minnesota Senate race between incumbent Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken.

link
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Campaign Notes.

Senator Leahy wants the Democrats to lose in the fall.

He and others calling for Clinton's head are really afraid of alienating the African American vote here. It really is fear driving these attempts by Democratic officials to kick Clinton out of the race. They don't care if they lose the GE by losing all 50 states and numerous races downticket; they don't want to make waves with the AA base.

The Common Ills blog goes after Leahy with both barrels. Leahy deserves every bit of condemnation.

Yes, Wright is fatal to Obama. Obama is toast, and whether Obama's ego makes him think he can overcome this, or whether he feels he is so far in over his head and so many people are pinning their hopes on him he feels he cannot back out are possible explanations as to why he isn't out of the race.
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Chris Dodd has also made a fool out of himself trying to force Clinton out.
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Not so fast, says Al Gore, who is one of the few who is making sense.

Hillary Clinton HAS to stay in the race to prevent an Obama nomination or the party is screwed to smithereens in the fall.
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Campaign Notes.

Chris Dodd does a stupid thing and endorses Obama for president.

The Democrats have a death wish this year. They do NOT want to win.
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Now it's time to tar Clinton as an "insider" and praise Obama as an "outsider."
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