The Stray Birds: “Birds of the Borderland”
Romney’s Animal House
Mitt Romney’s surreal disconnection from reality–a disconnectedness he shares with the rest of the .o1%–continues to offer surprises. (Those missing income tax returns would no doubt offer a lot more. ) First he bragged that he put his dog on the roof of the car on a family vacation. That’s weird and stupid, even if you aren’t rich. Imagine the trauma his children might have suffered if the dog had gone flying off the car, tumbling down the freeway to its death. It’s a near sadistic risk for a father to take.
It resonates, too, with the image of Mitt the Vulture capitalist, pursuing profit by, among other things, stripping companies and sending the jobs overseas. (“All the G.O.P.’s Gekkos” by Paul Krugman, nicely summarizes the nature of the sort of sadism-tinged (“let them fail“) capitalism Romney practiced and would bring to the White House.) The newest entry in the Romney menagerie is his Olympic horse, which is better fed and taken care of than most families. That’s the income divide in a nutshell.
It’s helpful for educators and parents– as a gauge of Romney out-of-touchiness– to compare the cost of this single horse–Rafalca–to the average student loan debt, which is $25,250 . Romney may not be able to deduct the cost of his horse yet, but his tax returns suggest that he spent $77,000 on it last year. It’s very difficult to imagine that a man who spends 3 times the average student loan debt on his horse racing hobby would be all that concerned that the debt load has grown too large and college too expensive.
The Sky Really is Falling
What happens when Chicken Little is right? I think that might be the issue of the coming decade as the banking industry, here and around the world, long described as deeply corrupt, begins dropping bits of our blue heaven on our heads. It’s being called “the largest consumer (or market) fraud in history.” Usually you have to take the hyperbole with some salt, but this really is the biggest market and consumer fraud in history. Madoff”s 30 (or 50) billion is nothing compared to these guys.
The financial sector first brought down the U.S. economy, and then Europe (Iceland led the way, oddly) and in doing so they gave the right-wing an invaluable tool (the so-called debt or deficit crisis) to try to reverse a century of political progress in everything from health care to education to police forces. Only a few of the financial criminals have been prosecuted and the few punishments that were doled out were paid by institutions and not people. The people left with their pockets full.
Now, things seem to be shifting, or so we can hope, as the next shoe drops and more evidence emerges of the sheer, breathtaking scale of the corruption (“U.S. Is Building Criminal Cases in Rate-Fixing“). Globalization and deregulation really made crime pay. The London interbank offered rate scandal (aka LIBOR) is, according to reports, only the tip of the iceberg. Here’s the interesting thing : is this a problem finally big enough to spur anti-capitalist debate in time for the election? Papa Mitt hopes not.
Donna the Buffalo – Me and Depression