Matt’s book “Spanking the Monkey” is about the 2004 Democratic primaries and then the election. He says that “the ideological vision that mainstream Democratic politics has offered America since Clinton has been the super-cool high school, the party of the popular kids.” A “Democratic insider is wise-cracking cool”. “For all the talk about the Democrats being the party of inclusion, it really doesn’t feel that way from the inside.”

This is from the chapter where he goes undercover as a Bush supporter and volunteers in a Bush election office in Orlando, Florida. It’s a lot different than you think that experience might be, but does have its kooks too.

I had a similar experience as a delegate to the 2004 Dem convention. There was a lot of “cool kids”. If it weren’t for talking to Molly Ivins or listening to Tom Haydn, Dolores Huerta and Gloria Stenheim, I might have gone completely insane as I attended soirees like “Oil and Gas Salutes Max Baucus” and “Agriculture Salutes Tom Harkin”,(that one had a whole room of Ben and Jerry’s Ice cream. People seemed to be rolling in chocolate chips and whipped cream. But that was probably my imagination.)

Wanna bet he say this is necessary? http://www.publicampaign.org/

OOps, that’s “Spanking the Donkey”.

Well it’s not a physical addiction; they don’t need a twelve step program. But they do need a change of heart about a lot of things. There are simply a lot of issues where progressives are just dead wrong. They are subject to the manipulations and propaganda of the elites a lot and they need to learn how to fight back against that sort of thing.

Some people seem naturally immune (”cynics”) but I don’t see why skepticism isn’t something that can’t be learned.

Progressives need to learn how to think.

OK, but by staying with the donkey, we are actually just “Spanking the Monkey.”

I love me some Dylan Ratigan. He is pushing the Donkey and Elephant show and keeping this bankers casino story alive. God knows almost everyone else wants it to go away.

Would love to listen to your show tomorrow!!

LOL – You are correct.

Thanks Diane, I’ll try to listen tomorrow, but expect to be playing with my Grandkids. Thanks for this and the very good diary.

I am now addicted to Dylan even though he is really a business guy through and through. And conservative in many ways. But I love how he hates corruption and I love too his doggedness on the banksters’ crimes. I love his loathing of Geithner who I think looks like the Gollum in “Lord of the Rings”. Geithner has felt the power of the ring and you can seem him changing into half man, half beast before our eyes.

Dylan doesn’t let much crap past him, but I think he missed the boat a bit with Tom Schaller. I think it’s easier for him to smell bull crap on Wall Street and he’s less familiar with some of the political Democratic baloney. But he’s catching on fast. A star is born.

Does anybody have questions to ask Matt?

I got home and watched Bill Moyers Journal with Jamie Galbraith. Jamie is very intense. I have read his book “Predator State” which more than any book describes what is happening to us now. His father’s book, “The Great Crash” I have also read and so has Matt Taibbi. We are all coming together in some strange cocktail because Taibbi will be on our radio show tomorrow.
Cosmic.

Twelve steps isn’t that about the lingth of the old Gang planks, maybe those twelve steps should be off the end of one of those.

Hey don’t say I need 12 Step, I didn’t vote for Obama until it was the final election, which was fine, I could have gone Green. Why not? California was going to go 100% Obama anyway.

I’m at a point where if the truth isn’t told I’m not listening anymore.

I will sneak in to listen to the show and I will call up maybe. Thanks Montana…

Yes, I did’nt like him at all earlier in the year. Then suddenly he just got religion and took off running. Now I really look forward to his show in the morning.

I’d like to ask Matt if he is like Toto, but with a different outcome. He pulls back the curtain and lo and behold we see little Timmy Geithner working the controls.But instead of that “Aha” moment, Toto gets shooed away while some woman looking like Christina Romer pulls the curtain closed again. Toto opens it again and we’ve got Timmy, Christina, and Larry (Moe, Curly, and Larry) strangling each other and fighting for the controls. The curtain gets pulled shut again.

How many times does Toto have to expose the wizards before they walk the plank? Or will Toto get sent to the pound?

Recommended!

Tell Matt I want to know when he became an “ideologial purist” for wanting health care reform. Was it a moment of blinding white light on the road to Damascus, or was it incremental?

Oh, and please report back on the interview! Inquiring minds, etc. etc.

What’s going on here is “Battered Progressive Syndrome,” where progressives and liberals keep getting beat up but think they can salvage the relationship or are afraid of how tough it will be to start again, and return to their abusers.

Nobody without a political base can act as a superhero to come rescue us. We are going to have to take ownership of our own political agency and autonomy and start acting like citizens in a participatory democracy.

Public financing is key, we have it here in San Francisco and run competitive campaigns against our own DLC clique and beat them more than half of the time. I do not see national expansion and do see a potential national injunction against voter owned elections should the Citizens United case roll the worst way.

Yes, the Citizens United case will put the nail in the coffin for national election reform. If that happens, maybe we should boycott the general elections and declare them void.

Can we do anything ahead of time to change Roberts and Alito on this case?

I copied your question, Jane, and will ask Matt. Got to jump in my car and make the one hour journey to Bozeman for the show with, of course, a quick trip to Costco for 24 rolls of Charmin.

Can we do anything ahead of time to change Roberts and Alito on this case?

Nothing that is not a capital crime.

Sorry I missed the broadcast, is there a podcast somewhere or something?

PS Love Bozeman

Do you ever go to Bridger Bowl? Red Lodge? Big Sky?

love the way this diary reads, mm, good going!

matt taibbi is awesome, awesome, awesome. Loved his health care article and his goldman bubbles one. and the one where he vomits in the religious cult. CLASSIC!!!!

Lets was going to promote Warren for Prez and what post for Taibbi? I am forgetting. Press Sec?

I think there are a million addictions, proverbial ones and ones they call them process addictions, besides the other addictions to substances, whatever. Codependcy, sex, work, power and control, money, gambling, adrenalin, etc. And there is so much wisdom found with this kind of exploration of them. The idea of not enabling. Of intervention. Of hitting bottom. Of needing (for example the BANKS, grrrrr) to surrender they are out of control and unmanageble and if they don’t do a step one, then they are going to simply act out again.

And I think the best advice I ever heard about dealing with an active addict, is the secret is not winning with them, or trying to win, it is about NOT PLAYING THE GAME. Detaching from their crazymaking.

Can I wait until tomorrow to sign up for a 12 step program.
Because, It’s Halloween.
It only happens once a year.
I want to know what Matt is costumed as tonight.

well, obama could pull an fdr and increase the size of the court, he might then assign a super head of the court that has more authority then roberts

but obama is no fdr, the man is actually trying to solve the economic problems created by corporatists by hiring those same people who created the problem

it’s not likely he will ever adopt the policies that saved us from that depression or the policies that might insure we get our rights back and personhood rescinded from the corporateers

Time again to take a look at the penning of the Constitution through the clear eyes of Howard Zinn.

It was when Matt descended from the mountain and found the people worshipping a golden calf. And he’s been shattering tablets carved in stone ever since.

Are you in costume?

I’m sorry, but I frankly don’t agree with stripping corporate “personhood” away – I see that as solving one problem but creating a whole raft of others (chief among them returning to corporations absolute immunity from both civil and criminal liability).

2600 trick or treaters at 1600.

FLOTUS as Cat Woman.

no, she’s in the buff, baking cookies and has an inexplicable desire to inform every stranger of these scrumptious morsels of her narcissistic exhibitionist state of being.

Well, I still Look scarey.
We’ve got spider webs and purple grape lights on the porch and my son is in full costume and we’re out there greeting together.
How ’bout you?

would you please elaborate on the pitfalls of unpersonhooding unpersons? (Your inside the parentheses statement is baffling.)

I think it’s clear by now what we got by defeating the Manchurian Candidate/Caribou Barbie ticket last November.

Not TR, not FDR, not Truman, not Kennedy.

Obama’s looking like a more rhetorically eloquent and physically agile Gerald Ford, the original President Make No Mistake before he was defeated by the peanut farmer from Plains, GA.

So much for sweeping crimes against the Constitution under the carpet while worshipping at the altar of bipartisanship.

corporations are not people and taking something from them they never had in the first place but was awarded by a clerk is definately going to solve problems

I can’t see it doing anything less then more good then harm, so we clearly disagree

Okay – for example, let’s say you have a Ford Taurus. And that Taurus catches fire due to a defect in the electrical system that Ford knew about and did not correct prior to selling it.

If you took away Ford’s “personhood”, you couldn’t sue them for damages because of that fire. Under the law, you can only sue “persons” (or the State) in a court of law. The corporation would argue that unless you could identify the specific person who is responsible for that defect, you can’t recover because the corporation is now outside the jurisdiction of the court.

Making do without corporate personhood was doable when most businesses were small operations. But when you start talking about corporations with thousands of employees…

Fuck bipartisanship !
The Dems could be ramming through anything they damn well pleased , and they should be ,I sure as hell don’t remember the Repubs using this kind of restraint when they were in power

If you took away Ford’s “personhood”, you couldn’t sue them for damages because of that fire.

of course you can, you can also find the people who made the decision liable, you could also find the people who made the decision criminally culpable

you make an argument that happens to argue against your own point, your argument is patently incorrect and it in fact demonstrates why corporations are not people and must be declared non persons…so that people can go to jail for their corporate depravity

the fact that you take away the rights of an entity does not award it or it’s players imunity, in any sense of the word

I’ve liked Oregon’s approach to campaign finance since I first learned about it.

Campaigns have some amount of public financing that is determined by individual donors. Each Oregon taxpayer is entitled to a tax credit for contributions to Oregon political campaigns (both for office and for initiatives). The credit is fairly low – $100 and possibly limited to only those taxpayers eligible to vote in Oregon.

How it works:
Joe the TriMet bus driver donates $50 to a light rail financing initiative and $ 50 to a candidate of his choice. When Joe files his taxes he indicates these donations and receives a $100 credit against his state income tax liability.

Joe directed where the money went, not some state election official. All Oregon taxpayers contribute some small proportion of their taxes towards Joe and all the other contributors donations.

Problems: $100 annually is small compared to annual donation limits. Donor has to have the $100 to begin with or they are not empowered.

As a starting point it has much to recommend it. Some form of instant refund might be feasible for the no money problem (or perhaps tax with holding could be directed to political campaigns with the taxpayer deciding who to release the account to before an election).

Raising the annual limit has some tension with fiscal policy, how much are all taxpayers willing to pay each year to support campaigns? Would a “use it or lose it” mind set bring more grass roots direction?

And if David Axelrod & Rahm Emmanuel think that the Bush/Cheney national nightmare is over just because they say so, they have two rude wake up calls on the horizon; next year’s mid-term election & the 2012 presidential race.

They think that hoarding 75% of corporate political campaign contributions will keep them in office so that government of AIG, by Goldman Sachs & for CIGNA will not perish from the earth.

Under the law, you can only sue “persons” (or the State) in a court of law.

Stressing IANAL… If this were the case, the easy answer to Republicanish dreams of tort reform would be immediately resolved by… Removing the ‘personhood’ status of corporations.

Not coincidentally, it would also strip the corporations of their ‘free speech rights’ as bestowed by The Supremes (ghastly sums of money injected into the political sphere), thereby killing their money-influence chain with politicians.

You can amend laws to remedy loopholes, for Pete’s sake!

Bipartisanship is a transparently lame excuse for politicians to do the bidding of the moneyed interests that keep them in power.

Money & Power are equal opportunity corruptors of what was once known as the common good.

P.S. No Lincoln, either.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

And then you could only collect from those people’s individual property or punish those individual people in criminal court. Ford wouldn’t care because you couldn’t touch their corporate profits.

and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Maybe so, but it sure appears to have perished from these United States.

Why then Tort reform, – what’s the big deal the Repubs make of that?

It’s been Shocked Doctrined.

The great thing about Taibbi is that he makes much of the fraud and corruption of Wall Street accessible to a wide audience and he does it in a funny, angry, and witty way. It is a devastating combination. Wall Street depends on its mystic of arcaneness and opacity to continue its looting. They aren’t smart but they are devious and well connected, and Taibbi strips away that veneer with an effective mix of exposition and well chosen profanity.

Because tort reform would put trial lawyers out of business and protect corporations from liability (or at least capping what they would have to pay out in punitive damages) by making it harder for injured plaintiffs to win at trial.

It has been months now. But the first time, the tired but inevitable comparisons of Obama with FDR were made, I pointed out that he is much more Herbert Hoover than anyone else.

Perhaps we can declare that gays can simply designate the gender that will serve them in their pursuit of happiness. If Corps. can be Persons, then certainly, say, gay women can be male, and vice versa, no?

IANAL either but I believe that the rules were changed some years ago to make it harder to file class action lawsuits. As it is, corporations have much deeper pockets than the individuals likely to sue them. So the cost of screwing people over or producing defective or dangerous products for many corporations is just factored in as a cost of doing business. Tort suits usually do not force them to change their behavior.

Absolutely, – I remember you making that point, and it was spot on.

And change the cost benefit analysis corporations use to flout regulation and break the law.

See Erin Brockovich
The Insider
and Michael Clayton

Hoover for how he’s responding to the financial crisis, but Ford for how he’s written off any accountability for crimes against the Constitution and humanity.

Perhaps we can declare that gays can simply designate the gender that will serve them in their pursuit of happiness. If Corps. can be Persons, then certainly, say, gay women can be male, and vice versa, no?

Uh, if I have to choose between both of us being gay men and one of us changing genders so that we can get married, It think we’ll both stay guys and just partnered.

Marriage is a means, not an ends, and the whole point of queer liberation is so that you can be yourself with no compromise, no excuse, not so that we can emulate suburban heterosexuals.

Insert requisite grumbling here about well meaning heteros who are falling over themselves, all but rioting, for our right to assimilate. Gavin Newsom and Bill Clinton have been setting our agenda for decades and fucking it up. Next time, try following lesbians and gays and transgenders on our priorities, thanks!

Corporations are authoritarian artifices, persons are human beings, we need to be breaking down that linkage not strengthening it.

This might make the basturds change their tune, and open up some restitution for families of those killed by BP’s cost benefit calculation in Texas.

But it’s no class action suit, that’s for sure.

I said nothing about changing gender!

Live and let live.

In San Francisco, we have another model for public financing for Mayor and Board of Supervisors races. No mayoral candidate qualified during the 2007 cycle, the first for Mayor. But we’ve had Supervisorial public financing since 2002. We also have IRV, so no runoff, and a $500 contribution limit. For now.

Here’s how it works: A candidate for Mayor/Supervisor needs to raise ($25,000/$5,000) in (250/75) donations from San Francisco residents to qualify for a 2:1 matching grant ($50,000/$10,000). For the next ($50,000/$10,000), the City matches 4:1. For all contributions above that, the City matches 1:1 until the campaigns hit the voluntary spending limit of ($1,375,000/$140,000) for (425,000/80,000) constituents. In the event that any candidate breaks the spending cap or if independent expenditures go to benefit a candidate, then opposing candidates participating in the PF program are can seek a 1:1 match until the PF fund runs out.

Progressive Democrats, Greens and independents have fared very well electorally in coalition upon return to district elections with public financing. When we run smart folks with connections to the community we win much more often than not even though we’re almost always outspent by Gavin Newsom’s downtown corporate cronies.

Let’s just say that Nancy Pelosi are not amused.

I said nothing about changing gender!

Designating a gender is not changing one, okay.

Live and let live.

Why do politics if that is yer attitude?

For all the caterwauling over health care, how many lesbians, gays and transgenders in those states which might opt out are living without housing and job protections, getting evicted, fired, not hired, not rented, not sold a home, because the Democrat Party and the polite homosexual Veal Pen have been focused on gays in the military and same sex marriage instead of common sense civil rights protections that enjoy super majority support.

How do you stop Mr. Prop 13 from screwing California anymore?

I voted for Nader.
You appear to be personally vested in the LGBT issues. I, am vested in matters of autism. I am certain you will do the right thing on my end, and you can be assured I will on yours.

With regards to ‘ i won’t fuck with you, if you don’t fuck with me’ – what’s your problem? Did you get out of bed on the wrong side? Require me to exclusively pursue your agenda? Is the only ‘politics’ gender politics?

Ease up marcos.

There are many who suggest that we call a constitutional convention to rework California’s governmental structure. Many of them are corporate lobbyist and control freak types. We could easily end up with the first neoliberal, crypto fascist constitution.

Prop 13, 218 and the like all came into being as the white majority was losing its monopoly on power to poorer folks and people of color, the so-called Reagan Revolution which just expired in a stinking decayed pile before us. So they decided that nobody else would get to live in “The Golden State” and proceeded to do everything they could to pull up the drawbridge. They did this by passing initiatives which imposed supermajority requirements on all future comers. I might be mistaken, but I do not believe that any of these initiatives which impose 2/3 on voters and the legislatures passed by 2/3. I believe that the amendment which lowered the 2/3 threshold to 55% for school bond measures passed with > 55% but don’t recall precisely. It was close to 55.

Here’s my fix.

The California Majority Rule Democracy Act would do the following:

1. Prohibit any future ballot measure from imposing a greater threshold on decision making than it received at the ballot.

2. Mandate that the legislature submit all existing provisions in the constitution and statute law which impose thresholds greater than 50%+1, not the entire measure, to the voters for ratification.

This would preserve the property tax assessment increases but would nix the 2/3 requirement for taxes and for a budget. That would remove a good chunk of the blockage. The only problem is that the constitutional provision needs to be elevated to the point where it supercedes any future constitutional amendments, and that would require a constitutional revision and 2/3 in both houses. The dems are close in both, and they can generally pick off a moderate Republican or two.

If they failed, they’d pen the GOP as opposing majority rule and democracy, which is always fun to watch.

This does not address the populist move to split the property tax rolls so that residential is protected from abuses but corporate property is assessed on a mark to market basis. But the Democrats have been dithering on that forever. One of our local Dems is making moves to change that, but it will be very difficult.

I voted for Nader.

I voted for Ralph in 1996 and 2000, but not in 2004 or 2008 even though I was acquainted to various degrees with his last two running mates.

You appear to be personally vested in the LGBT issues. I, am vested in matters of autism. I am certain you will do the right thing on my end, and you can be assured I will on yours.

I grew up in the 1970s, had to live in Texas for part of that, and know what its like to grow up gay in a very hostile environment. Now that I’ve reached my late 40s, which is essentially gay male senior citizenship, we still have no federal civil rights protections to speak of, and much of it has been due to self inflicted wounds and piss poor strategery, the rest due to our folks allowing hets to call our shots for us, all of it very poorly.

This is low hanging fruit that we should have been able to pick long ago and it means that I get to be a second class citizen whenever I visit a red state. I don’t like being a second class citizen. Being reminded of it makes me upset. I am down with folks choosing their own gender, but lesbians and gays are just fine with our genders. The whole point of being gay is that we are both the same gender, the same sex. I bristle when told that we should consider redefining gender in order to fit into an institution more identified with heteros than queers.

I was actually soliciting your opinion on Jerry Brown. Thanks, tho.

With regards to property taxes. How would it work for those who, buying property, made some tight but workable budgeting, only to all of the sudden be faced with some major property tax increase ? Forced to choose between health or food, or home?

Are there plans to resolve that?

That sounds like it could work to empower small donors. Are there limits on the size of donations used to qualify for matching funding?

For example:

Candidate A gets 10 donations of $2,400 and 240 donations of $1.00 to qualify for $50,000 match,

Candidate B gets 500 contributions of $50 to get the same match… B clearly has more grassroots support, both get the same financing.

It seems clear that B would have more volunteers though, so the grassroots advantage would go the right direction.

What I like about the Oregon system is it takes bureaucracy out of directing contributions. Individual voters direct where public finance dollars go, that seems to me to be much more democratic.

I know I promoted this scheme for Indiana in 1998, my archives for my 1994 campaign are unfortunately on a 400 MB SCSI drive in an old Sparcstation that’s not online at present.

I have no clue what you are talking about and you clearly didn’t read my response

I didn’t say “you can just sue the individuals” I said you would suen both the corporation and the individual, both are culpable

ford would be sued as well as those who made the depraved decisions, thush preventing depravity (obviously) and all would get punsidhed for said depravity

you are flying under the false assumption that “if they aren’t peaple they can’t be sued”

as I said at the top of this post, I have no idea what you are tlaking about, of COURSE they can be sued even if they are not people.

the corporation would be attached to any lawsuit whence depravity is concerned

we make the rules of who and what can be sued, there is no “since they aren’t people they can’t be sued”

and simply to play devils advocate, even we wanted to use that as some kind of excuse not to sue the corporation the argument would still fail;

if I don’t put up railing even though the law says I have to, someone has an accident, the insurance company could deny my claim and the person would simply attach my house as the asset

this is simple stuff even in the case you are making, (a case which does not doesn’t make any sense even at the face of it)

That sounds like it could work to empower small donors. Are there limits on the size of donations used to qualify for matching funding?

Good question, and one I forgot to add. A qualifying contribution is between $10 and $100. After you’ve qualified, a candidate may accept the remainder up to the $500 limit. The goal is to demonstrate a broad, but not necessarily deep, base of support to qualify.

I was actually soliciting your opinion on Jerry Brown. Thanks, tho.

Brown was only useful in that he kept Newsom out of California’s misery.

With regards to property taxes. How would it work for those who, buying property, made some tight but workable budgeting, only to all of the sudden be faced with some major property tax increase ? Forced to choose between health or food, or home?

There is no free lunch?

Of the dollar, for the dollar, and by the dollar

Okay, people, time to get in a 12 step program. We have been enabling these corporate Democrats in their addiction to money for way too long.

there is also an analogy there with the stages of grief.

the Democratic Party that so many followers still have on a pedestal – FDR is often cited – died a long time ago.

Denial, anger, bargaining (lots of bargaining), and now depression, are often seen in the threads at FDL.

c’mon folks, time to move on to acceptance – the adorable Donkey of FDR is now a corporate psycho-vampire Donkey, and it needs to be fought, not wheedled with.

the Democratic Party that so many followers still have on a pedestal – FDR is often cited – died a long time ago.

Labor too, the 8 hour day and 40 hour work week are 80 years old and threadbare from lack of upkeep.

Denial, anger, bargaining (lots of bargaining), and now depression, are often seen in the threads at FDL.

This goes in cycles. Progressives curse the Democrats but always fold on cue when told that they will spoil for a Republican. Grief generally proceeds apace towards resolution and acceptance. What we’re seeing here is an ongoing abusive relationship where people who know better lose their nerve and come back for more punishment.

2004 and 2008 ?

I wasn’t going to promote Matt for anything. We need him just where he is as fearless critic of all political bullshit and analyst of how America is doing. That’s an invaluable role and few can play it as well as Matt.

Obama’s problem is not that he can’t approach Lincoln in eloquence. It is that he can’t approach him in conviction, courage, and character.

2004 and 2008 ?

Nader’s shelf life expired in 2000. Unable to capture the advantage against the Democrats, he was framed out of political relevance for having spoiled for Bush. Whether or not he did spoil, the Democrats successfully convinced their base that he did, and now we are all paying the price, except for Nader and Gonzalez, that is, as both of them left the Green Party they’d dropped and broken like a cat trying to pretend she didn’t knock your beer over and left average folks holding the political bag.

It is not easy to build a party, takes thousands of people and lots of volunteer work, but it sure is easy to break one, can be done by an opportunistic celebrity in no time.

I voted Democrat in 2008 for the first time since 1992, since I live in CA it makes no real difference for whom I vote for president. Radical white guilt made me vote for the first black president, knowing that every night in Texas, thousands are going to bed crying knowing that a Black Family is living in the White House. I was expecting main line liberal, but this shit is worse than Clinton, much worse.

bingo. i really dig this model of democratic voters as co-dependant enablers, cause it works. fear of losing the the really shitty, but safe, known, status quo for the dangerous unknown is what feeds it.

That qualification makes the SF public financing scheme a lot better.

“I was expecting main line liberal, but this shit is worse than Clinton, much worse.”

Oh, I don’t know, (what’s a main line liberal?)- Clinton was incredibly disastrous for the Democratic Party. In fact, he killed it with the DLC, – it became a true Corporatist party, distinguishing itself from the right by lip-served reliance on wedge issues. In retrospect, considering the VP choices by the subsequent Dem. candidates, I am amazed at the lack of healthy scepticism of the Democratic voters; Lieberman, Edwards, and almost Bayh ?! – give us a fucking break! The Dems should turn their backs on their ‘leadership’ and indeed draft Elizabeth Warren (good suggestion Matt) in 2012 with Kucinich for VP (I would have voted for Dennis but dispaired when he insisted on not even considering to leave the Democratic Party. He appears to be less certain now.

An endless string of ‘present’ votes in the Illinois Senate didn’t pass the smell test for me. I vote on issues and Nader’s platform remains one with which I find comfort. I vote my comfort with issues and find political triangulation to be a dishonest and ultimately self abusive activity.

conviction, courage, characters – nice traits but are they really applicable to Lincoln? I’m not sure that all Historians would necessarily agree. Still, where Obama is concerned, it’s not really about those qualities per se. He is convinced that he’s been tasked by corporations to help them with a historically unprecedented transfer of wealth, he’s proceeding along these lines with some courage, and as for character – anyone cares to guess?

In short, he hears his masters voice and responds in a Pavlovian fashion, what more would one require of one’s cocksucker?

although I answered above I have even more for you to think about which will disabuse you from the notion that you couldn’t sue a corporation simply because they are not people;

using that argument, then obviously if you couldn’t sue a corporation then a corporation couldn’t sue you

which means you wouldn’t have to pay your bills since you couldn’t be sued if you didn’t.

obviously a corporation will GLADLY accept the liability of accepting law suits if it meant they would also be allowed to mount law suits

the bottom line spotts, a corporation is not a house, it’s not a car, nor is it a person

it’s a creation we allow and we allow it only if they acquiesce rules that will apply

those rules include the acknowledgment that they will be sued when they cause harm and damage, act irresponsibly, etc

FDR couldn’t pack the Court.IIRC his own party didn’t like that idea.

My point exactly.

I couldn’t describe Taibbi’s impact better than this, Hugh. With simplicity and real audacity, he pulls back the curtain and exposes the cunning little creatures scurrying around. When I was transferred from the NYC office to the Hollywood office of the Talent Agency I worked at, a famous actor told me not to be fooled by the seeming stupid entertainment execs. He said, “They aren’t as intellectually smart as you are, but they are very very cunning.” “Street smarts”. So Taibbi uses his own street smarts to out cunning them. I bet 10 years in Moscow probably helped him figure all this out. I have the podcast up at my website now. Take a listen. montana maven

Wow, what a lot of great comments. Dave and I celebrated having Matt on our show by going out to dinner and rehashing the show. So I didn’t see all these comments until after I got done posting the podcast on my website this morning. Libby Lib is right about addicts and co-dependents. You have to remove yourself from the game. By concentrating on election reforms like Instant Runoff Voting and public financing like Oregon, Arizona, and Maine are doing, we have a slim chance of restoring democracy. But as somebody else noted, The Shock Doctrine is well under way.

Matt did say that many more FBI investigations of Wall Street were coming down the pike, so I think his emphasis on the heists there is correct. We should lobby for more FBI agents. 1000 of them were taken off white collar crime after 9/11. Let’s put more people to work by hiring lots of investigators.

Love the stages of grief analogy. Yes, there seems to be a lot of bargaining going on on many sites. Some of the youngsters call it working on the process or playing the game. And the perennial “let’s get more Democrats elected” that keeps the bargain going. I have friends that are very depressed about Obama, so they are concentrating all their energy on 2010. That’s not healthy. We have to live and deal in the NOW. The FDR donkey died back in the late 1970s when Carter bought into the mini-Shock Doctrine flim flam of deregulation. In 1979, it was the Democrats, not the Republicans who got rid of caps on interest rates. Usury began in earnest. Wages stayed stuck. Unions were busted. We started importing more than exporting. And meanwhile the rich got super rich. And the Democrats who were always the party of the less fashionable working class got all hoity toity and wanted to wear fine suits and play golf like the Republicans.

Yes, the Democrats became Eisenhower Republicans a long time ago.

thanks montanamaven, just listened to your interview via podcast (you are great!). especially like how matt described the healthcare negotiation process as between the dems and industry — we had no role what so ever. that is the best explanation i’ve heard to describe the events as they have unfolded.