Oh, Rod!
You are an idiot. A narcissistic megalomaniac who refers to your beloved comb as “the football,” as in the Elvis-wannabe’s equivalent to the “nuclear football” that each president must keep with him at all times in case he is forced to go ballistic.
Rod, it would seem, went ballistic whenever his comb—“the football”—was not within reach.
Rod has some “issues.”
Today, though, David Johnston of the NY Times finally asked whether or not Rod’s foolish pay-for-play chatter is really much different than the sort of pay-for-play that secures big donors ambassadorships, and has done for decades. Is Rod guilty of anything more than being stupid about the form of legalized bribery we call the campaign finance system?
Also, Johnston brings up another issue—did St. Patrick Fitzgerald blow an eventual conviction by jumping the gun and cuffing Rodvis before he actually got some pay for some play?
Robert Bennett of that ubiquitous left-right song and dance team, the Fabulous Bennett Boys, was already finding loopholes for a Rodvis defense. But he was also pointing at the stinking truth that all the zeal and outrage is missing…that this pay-for-play is just the way business is done. Period.
Look no further than the thorough profile of Senator Chuck Schumer in Sunday’s NY Times. Yikes! He is Senator Chuck Wagon for the financial industry.
And that’s the core of it, huh?
Why are so many in Congress millionaires? Lawyers? Industry hacks?
We are coming out of eight years of Team Bush, a team that was the ultimate and logically evolution of pay-for-play. Halliburton was near bankruptcy in the year or so prior to Cheney taking the Veep slot. Then its stock went through the roof as is gobbled up one cost-plus contract after another.
Go back. To Clinton, who was loved by Wall Street and had an economic team who pushed to end the legal boundary between banking and financial services. The sort of deregulation that the stage for the current crisis. The sort of deregulation that Senator Chuck Wagon was quietly ushering down the hall of Congress.
Look at most of the elected officials of note and you will find a web of contributions and favors.
As Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said when I interviewed him for my film:
Corporations don’t want the same things for America as Americans want; they–corporations don’t want democracy. They don’t want free markets. They want profits. And the best way to get profits too often is to use our campaign finance system which is just a system of legalized bribery to get their hooks into a public official and then use that public official to dismantle the marketplace to give them a competitive edge or monopoly control and then privatize the commons, to steal our treasury–our air, our water, our you know–our Public Trust.
So, if Rod does eventually get off on a technicality. If we do have all this rage and disgust linked to him and his stupid use of blatant language. If he does recede into the disgrace of being little more than a bad Elvis impersonator…will he take with him the real disgust and outrage that we should be focusing on the legalized bribery that takes place every day in DC?
Is Rod just a sacrificial lamb the wolves are offering us so we forget about them feeding on the rest of the flock?
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Or maybe he’s the bright and clear example of what’s wrong with it, so that Schumer and all the rest won’t be able to hide so easily? In an economy where hardly any of the rest of us are sitting on a gold mine, we might be ready to tell this lot (repub or dem), “ you!”
It’s weird how people in these positions don’t “get it,” though. Back when I was a union rep, we’d just gotten the union on the property, and the union wanted to take us reps out for a nice, expensive dinner. I said “no thanks” because for heaven’s sake, our dues went to this organization. Here we were, flight attendants making 9 to 15K a year, with I think it was $15 dues (it’s been almost 20 years now…), so I was going to eat my co-workers dues? All the other damn reps did go to the dinner. Damn them. It hurt morale, too. It was as if the reps had become another type of management.
The politicians are no different, I guess. People don’t make the connection that they are ripping off the people who sent them to office. I try to be mindful even now of the more poorly paid co-workers, and try not to be piggy.
Your reflections, JP, put me in mind of the fellow who has just been cited for bilking his pals out of billions of dollars in a pyramid scheme. The thought that comes to me is: How different was this pyramid scheme guy from all the other good-solid-Wall-Street-broker-types who ran a pyramid scheme by bundling unpayable mortgages? So far from running these multitudinous players out of the game, we have diligently pledged the money of ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren–so these schemers can keep on playing. One’s first impulse is to call them stupid–but then who is left holding the bag?
“Is Rod just a sacrificial lamb the wolves are offering us so we forget about them feeding on the rest of the flock?”
Absolutely. What’s worse, they are telling us daily that they are eating the rest of the flock and we are powerless to do anything about it short of violent revolution. Every slug we elect is already part of what appears to be an organized crime family, witness the Democratic leadership protecting the Republican murderers and thieves.
I suppose I should have noted too that violent revolution is not an option as they have all the guns, not only U.S. military guns, but now corporate guns for hire or truly, Murder, Inc.