*
People with more expertise and better analytical skills than me have gotten to the heart of the AIGFP Bonus Baby Affair, as I understand it, much more directly than I was able to. So this will be my last word on the AIGFP bonuses, at least for this week.
My concern about a retroactive targeted tax on the unethical bonuses, such as the one passed in the House today, would be its constitutionality. According to this authority, a Harvard law professor named Laurence Tribe, a tax of this sort could be crafted to comply with the Constitution. However, the first and only commenter on the Atlantic article in which Tribe is quoted suggests some chilling hypotheticals that could emerge from such a legal precedent, causing me to rethink my position on the Bonus Baby tax.
So here's an alternative approach I'd like to see, which differs somewhat from my previous suggestion. I'd like to hear President Obama say something along the lines of "OK, ya know, fuck it --- keep your bonuses. You're gonna need every cent of them when we turn the Justice Department, the SEC, and the FBI loose on your asses to fine out exactly what you've been up to for the past 10 years. And Geithner, Summers: clean out your desks by close of business tomorrow and return your keys to the four huge Secret Service brothers who will escort you to the parking lot."
Nothing will change until RICO Act investigations are initiated and the institutions of our Reaganomics-based phony economy are dismantled with extreme prejudice, brick by brick. At the moment, the count on Obama appears to be 0-2, and he's already fouled off a few. I really hope he's just presenting the illusion of impotence to fake us all out, just for dramatic effect before he pounds one out of the park.
Update before I'm done writing: OK, statements like this "Geithner is doing an outstanding job" shit from Obama on Jay Leno tonight are making me nervous. Fouled another one off; count remains at 0-2....
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
this is, in fact, a massive failure of journalism. That profession is more broken than finance. There are reasons for what Geithner and Dodd and Obama are doing and not doing, saying and not saying, that are clearly important enough to them that they suffer the media mugging rather than admit what it is at this point. Real journalists would find out what those reasons were and report them (or not). Real journalists wouldn't throw about their ignorant opinions and "report" on the ignorant opinions of others 100% of the time. Alas, that's all that happens any more. Reporting requires investigation and apparently no one is bothering to do that today.
ReplyDeleteAnon: I agree, but it extends to much more than "this." The independence of the news media has broken down in front of our eyes over about 30 years. News has always been a business, it's only over the past coupla decades that it's been the underage mistress of global corporations. Concentration of ownership is a huge part of the problem, but there are many others.
ReplyDeleteThere still is some professional journalism being published, but it feels like a special event to me when I stumble across it. Sy Hersch produces it. Greg Palast is a brilliant investigator but he marginalizes his own work by trying to pose as a latter-day Hunter Thompson. TPM has a small squad of real investigative reporters and subject-matter experts; Josh Marshall's blog is just the editorial page of the operation.
If you want some journalism, in the form of news analysis, that will chill your blood, take a look at "9/11 Contradictions" by David Ray Griffin. The book is meticulously documented with public-domain journalism reports, eyewitness reports by first responders, testimony by forensic scientists, government documents, and transcripts of government hearings related to September 11. It paints no conspiracy theories but only points to dozens of critical contradictions and unexplained changes in the government's official account of the September 11 attacks. I'm pretty sure the author has never been on the talk show circuit or the Sunday gab shows, or even featured in a single NPR interview. In the U.S., writers like Griffin are treated like fringe characters, which is about the only way vested interests can treat a real investigative journalist who is on the trail of something huge. No need to shoot them in the head, like they do in Russia, if you can get a few celebrity establishment pundits to label them as "conspiracy nuts." Mr. and Mrs. America take the cue to laugh knowingly and draw imaginary circles by the sides of their heads with index fingers extended.