When I first heard about the AIG bonuses – I think it was last Saturday – I felt sure there’d be hell to pay, but this is way beyond what I expected. Now that we’ve all been treated to six straight days of red-faced rage, I have to say – this is just fucking surreal. It’s not surprising that people are pissed off, but to see politicians, pundits, and news correspondents gnashing their teeth and shaking their fists at the sky is kind of hilarious. What – they’ve never heard of out-sized executive compensation before? Of top-level managers walking away from failed enterprises with a big bundle of cash? Where have they been for the past 25 years? It’s only been happening my entire adult life, practically. Oh sure, I know – AIG took public funds. But plenty of companies with obscenely over-compensated management teams suck off the public feeding tube. Just look at our defense contractors, for chrissake, or Agri-business, fed fat with subsidy. AIG is a dramatic example of something that’s been common practice for a long time, made possible by the very people who are screaming the loudest.

It’s a pretty hollow pantomime, I’m sure, for most people. We’ve all been watching this feeding frenzy for decades now as our own incomes have stagnated or declined. These hubris-driven bonuses are just a parting shot – a little flourish on the longest and most profound looting of our nation’s treasure in its 233-year history. Since the start of the 1980s, business has called the shots and the wealthy have further enriched themselves at the expense of working people and the poor. What was good for Wall Street was good for the country, and it didn’t matter how convoluted and abstruse their methods became – if they moved the needle in the right direction, it was all good. We’ve just been subjected to a systematic fraud that’s measurable in the tens of trillions of dollars, and far from excoriating the beneficiaries, our political leadership and mainstream press have largely facilitated and celebrated their excess.

Sure, AIG cut themselves checks. But they also passed something like $13 billion to Goldman Sachs to cover outstanding contracts. I heard a G.S. spokesperson say that they would not have been substantially affected by the loss of AIG, but that they took the payout to protect the interests – get this – of the American people, who had bailed Goldman out and were, therefore, shareholders of the extremely well-connected investment bank. (Insert laugh track here.) When you view this in the broader context not only of massive bonuses (more than a billion to executives of bailed-out Citibank) and ongoing payouts via the Federal Reserve, but of the stuff that doesn’t get talked about at all, like the missing $50 billion or more in Iraq reconstruction funds (remember the pallets of cash?) and the other assorted wild commitments of public funds initiated by the previous administration, AIG is small potatoes. It also provides a good opportunity for the thieves to yell “thief”, if only for a few days.

We’ve got a massive problem here, folks – one that’s causing upwards of 650,000 people to lose their jobs every month. We didn’t get here overnight. If we’re unprepared, it’s because the sluggards who run this country – Republicans and Democrats – have been asleep at the switch for too long. Wake up time.

luv u,

jp

I’ve been hearing the bleatings of ex-Bush administration officials and other assorted “conservatives” (i.e. statist reactionaries) on the airwaves lamely attempting to reframe the history of the past eight years, now that it is safely past (and fading from the collective memory). You got your Ari Fleischers, your Frank Gaffneys… a whole rogue’s gallery of familiar mugs, bandaging up what is without question the most sorry record in recent presidential history. This would be amazing if we lived in a sane world – as it is, it’s just kind of laughable. Obama (which is to say, we) should be grateful that Bush rid the world of Saddam Hussein. W.t.f. – grateful for what? Saddam wasn’t even a credible threat to Iraqi Kurdistan, let alone the United States. Is the world a better place without him? Not really. Not that Saddam made it any better, but simply because of the fact that it hasn’t gotten any better since his passing. So even by the standards of the classic post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy, this claim doesn’t work. Too many liberals fall into the trap of voicing pavlovian agreement that we are better off without that tin pot Iraqi dictator. I say, demonstrate how, exactly.

Don’t say we’re safer, because we’re not. We’ve destroyed Iraq as a functioning nation, killed about a million of its people, and driven millions more into exile. Aside from the untold (by the mainstream media) misery that has meant for Iraqis, that is a formula for disaster for the rest of us. Now we can expect payback from an entire generation of Iraqis and, more generally, people in the Muslim world who sympathize with their plight. We’ve killed their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, cousins, etc. … and we will certainly hear from them again. So… are Iraqis better off? Decidedly not, after the experience of the last six years – far more deadly and destructive than Saddam’s worst pogroms (many of which were carried out with our support, it bears remembering).

What about the “Bush kept us safe after 9/11” argument? Well… setting aside the fact that the time to keep us safe would have been before the most devastating terror attack on U.S. soil ever, not after, this defense is pretty thin, too. More Americans have died since 9/11 than on that dreadful day, thanks to Bush’s elective wars, so I guess it depends on just who Ari Fleischer means when he says “us”. This claim is mostly based on the specious assumption that the Bush team stopped terrorist attacks, but if they had uncovered any actual operational terror attempts, they certainly would have broadcast their success over and over again, judging by the extent to which they bloviated over those kids from Buffalo who went to Afghanistan, or Jose Padilla who thought about maybe building a bomb, or those guys who fantasized about blowing up the Sears tower. It’s a little hard to swallow that the Bush boys would have kept the lid on actual open-and-shut terror cases they’d foiled when they made so much hay over these lame examples. And, of course, there are many objective measures that place the threat of terror attacks at a much higher level than before the invasion of Iraq.

And the bit about fifty-odd straight months of growth followed by an unprecedented financial meltdown? Well… Madoff could make that claim. Maybe Bush should get 150 years in prison, eh?

luv u,

jp