All Hail the Oligarchy!, (Part 1), 7-26-2010

 A fellow detainee has the New York Times coming in and has been sharing. I lost touch with CC – two years sobriety gone now – who said the world was getting crazier. I wonder if her comment was only personal or more widespread.

I have been noticing the rich are having a field day. A headline from the July 4, 2010, New York Times reads:

Wall St. Hiring In Anticipation of a Recovery

Next to that headline was this one:

Bank Bailout is potent Issue for Fall Races

The Times' Sunday Business section noted state action replacing federal enforcement of securities fraud under “Bypassing a Roadblock.”

So what have we got? Friction between those that have the money and those that who pay the taxes. That's what I see.

The next day's headline reinforced this view:

Divining a Candidate's Return on Her $1 Million Investment

Wherein the New York Times investigates Meg Whitman's primary campaign.

More interesting stuff on the Times' editorial page. Ross Douthat wrote about the solvent defaulting on their mortgages (“The Class War We Need”): 

This policy is typical of the way the federal government does busines. In case after case, Washington's web of subsidies and tax breaks effectively takes money from the middle class and hands it out to speculators and have-mores... We give tax breaks to immensley profitable corporations that don't need the money and boondoggles that wouldnn't exist without governemnt favoritism.

Paul Krugman nudged the issue on July 16, 2010 (“Redo that Voodoo”) without mentioning the word oligarchy. 

Why should this scare you? On paper, solving America's long run fiscal problems is eminently doable; stronger cost control for the Medicare plus a moiderate rise in taxes would get us most of the way there. And the preception that the deficit is manageable has helped keep the U.S. borrowing costs low.

But if the politiicans who insist that the way to reduce deficits is to cut taxes, not raise them, start winning elections again, how much faith can anyone have that we'll do what needs to be done? Yes, we can have a fiscal crisi. But if we do, it won't be because we've spent too much trying to create jobs and help th eunemployed. It will be because investors have looked at our politics and concluded with justification that we've turned into a banana republic. (part 1), 

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[I have 4 and a half pages to go, and thought it might be best to break here. Especially as I think little has changed in 12 years. What stopped any progress were the Republicans. They stymied Obama, then gave Trump his tax cuts, and now they want to cut Biden's spending. As I see it, the Koch brothers and their ilk benefitted from stopping this progress. Whether the country will survive their backing hide-bound nut jobs, not the least being Trump, seems an open question. We may yet descend into being a banana republic. It has been a close call these past six years. Another item, did not the Republicans create the material which their faux populists used to create an insurrection on January 6, 2020? The faux populism that has led the working class away from the Democrats? Continued in All Hail the Oligarchy!, (Part 2), 7-26-2010 sch 2/14/23 .]