228-205

Wall Street gets its ears boxed

©Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Politics/boxingday.htm
09/29/08

There was a moment after the House vote today to defeat the bailout plan 228-205 that one of the editors at My Town described as “the eerie silence immediately following a massive multi-car crash while bodies fly in slow motion through the air and the fuel tanks border upon a violent explosion.”

It was singularly apt, and we’re enjoying – if that’s the word for it – a similar pause right now, between the calamitous closing of the Dow, and the advent of fresh carnage on the Asian financial markets. They’re opening now, and to nobody’s surprise, they’re opening down between 3 and 5 percent. It’ll get worse.

I wasn’t particularly surprised by the vote. Back on the 22nd, I wrote, “The public is deeply skeptical of this bailout to begin with. These provisions translate into public fury. While most people agree that Congress must take decisive action, nobody I’ve spoken to likes this particular bill.” It got off to a bad start, with the section 8 language displaying the administration’s willingness to parlay a national crisis into a power grab and money-making opportunity. Few people trust the administration.

Then there were the free market ideologues. They maintain their unshakeable faith that the markets will sort themselves out in a fair and responsible manner, so long as nobody tries to regulate them. It’s hard to believe there’s many of those left, but the Ayn Randroids are just secular fundamentalists, devoted to unreasoning faith in an ideology, as resolute as a hide bound Baptist confronted with Yuri Gargarin’s chortle that there is no heaven visible from orbit.

Paul Krugman, in one of his most remarkable quotes today, summed it up perfectly. “So what we now have is non-functional government in the face of a major crisis, because Congress includes a quorum of crazies and nobody trusts the White House an inch. As a friend said last night, we’ve become a banana republic with nukes.”

Yup. Welcome to free market America. Pakistan on steroids.

Some of the Republicans were whining that the vote was lost because Nancy Pelosi gave a partisan speech immediately beforehand blaming Republicans for the mess the country was in. While her timing truly sucked, and I bet she wishes she had kept her damned mouth shut, I would love to grab any Republican who really did vote for that reason, and ask him, “You suffered a few moments of petty annoyance from the Speaker, and for that you voted to scupper your own country? What kind of ignorant jackass are you?”

One reason I wouldn’t is because I’m a long way from convinced that the bailout plan would have done anything more than left us facing a major depression with $700 billion less in our pockets.

Leadership failed on all sides. Nobody trusted Bush. McCain made an utter ass of himself with that “bipartisan meeting” where he refused to take control of his own meeting and wrangling tore apart the first deal agreed to. And Pelosi didn’t know when to shut up. But they might just have done us all a favor. Not that they see it that way now, of course...

One of the more interesting facts was the breakdown of the vote. Both parties broke ranks with their own leadership, Republicans more so than Democrats, but the real telling point was when you compared the votes of Congressmen in “safe” districts (where they lead by 10 points or more) or planning to retire this term against those facing a distinct challenge for reelection. Among the safe district congressmen, the vote was for the bill, 199-198. Twenty nine congressmen facing a tough reelection voted against it, and only six brave souls voted for it. Not too bright, perhaps, but brave.

America has always had a strong populist streak, and corporate efforts to wrest control of the popular culture and replace it with Hollywood spectaculars and music that pushed nihilism and despair rather than anger and rebellion succeeded only in making it invisible. Like paganism in Britain, it could be driven underground, but not eradicated. Don’t believe corporations haven’t tried to sanitize and blanderize American tastes? Try to find Steve Earle on Clear Channel, or ask NBC why they never cover labor issues in their news. This is a country where it is illegal to sing “Happy Birthday” because some fucking corporation bought up the rights to the song. People have noticed, and they resent that.

Americans have a deep resentment of Wall Street, and saw the bailout as rewarding a bunch of thieving fat cats for taking the time and trouble to steal the American people blind. They didn’t see the depression that would follow a crash, or maybe they did, but, like me, just saw it as a situation where they would take the money and things would STILL fall apart for the rest of us.

A lot of people correctly see the “free market” as an impediment to quality of life rather than an asset. While most believe that capitalism is absolutely essential to a wealthy and peaceful society, most realize that completely unregulated capitalism results in a vast concentration of wealth, resulting in a rule by plutocracy and a game that is rigged to keep them servile and scared. They realize that it’s the free market that has resulted in such a terrible medical system in this country, and that it is the free market, with its constant siphoning of national resources and endless turf wars, that has cost America it’s position of supremacy in the world. Most people who have encountered the limitations imposed on us by corporate control of the laws, the media, and the services provided understand that a privatized bureaucracy is even more expensive and stifling than a government one. Telecoms have turf battles, with the result that American access to the internet is inferior to that of the rest of the developed world. Profit margins and lack of accountability for HMOs and insurance companies results in a medical system that costs half again what Canadians pay per capital, and provides care only for the luckiest 80%. They see the effect of corporate control shipping their jobs overseas and relentlessly pushing their wages downward in an effort to compete with the slave economies of Asia.

Then they see McCain extolling globalization, even as the global economic infrastructure crashes, taking us with it, and of course they feel resentful and angry. What rational person wouldn’t be?

Americans had grown lax in surveillance against the rise of an aristocracy. The Great Depression had shattered their power, and the rise of Communism had put them on their best behavior after the economy recovered. Quite a few Americans really do believe that if they give away their wealth and power to the already wealthy and powerful, they will be taken care of.

But America has always had a touch of Thomas Jefferson, who believed that the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants. They’ve kept the soul of Huey Long, and believe that every man is a king. The American heritage is that of Samuel Clemens and Will Rogers and H. L. Mencken, bowing to no rich man and kowtowing to no aristocrat.

I’ve often wondered if Americans had forgotten that.

Today’s vote suggests that they have not.