Robinson’s article is a standard ploy of blaming the population for the crimes of the powerful, blaiming victims rather than the perpetrators.  This is done by pseudo-prgressives to help get progressives to suppurt conservative policies and as a form of damage control for rich theives like Madoff.

But what is perhaps most astonishing about the Bushite counter revolution is that the stealing is done more or less in plain sight.  Power is no longer restricted by the laws.  The SEC received detailed complaints about Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, which was widely known on Wall Street, and they simply didn’t enforce the law.

I was at one time bemused by the US piling hundred dollars bills on 263 pallets and sending the billions off to Iraq without any receipts as to how the money was spent.  Congressman Waxman verified this in a congressional hearing and nothing whatever was done about it.

Clearly I was naive.  That was nothing.  Now HUNDREDS of billiions of dollars are being looted from the public treasury and given to bankers and corporations agaisnt the law, and nothing is being done.  Consequently there must be more Madoffs in Wall Street which, if caught, would be restricted to teir pentouses as well.

Is Obama going to clean up the neolibs?  They are the people who sent him to the White House.

“free money” is what is referred to as tax payers $; it is so excessive that our corrupt to the core Gov doesn’t even know what to do with it anymore so they have bribed heads of other countries to do what they have gotten successfully away with for years: “no such thing as a free lunch” huh? The dictatorship running this country disguised as “a force for good” made up on fabricated lies, stating “they need to protect us” when the TRUTH of the matter is quite simply that the people of this nation esp the women & children need protecting from THEM. THEIR interests is NOT the interests of the people nor the land, water & air: THEY have illegally kept trillions of $ & more money than God has to be exact, for THEMSELVES: skillfully pointing the finger at everyone but themselves. What about the billions & trillions of $ owed to the Indians you kept? What of the money for the VETS: including disability, etc, which our Gov gave freely to illegals: including brand new cars/trucks/NO interest loans like $3,000 for dental work while denying them to the citizens of THIS NATION who have PAID FOR IT endlessly & will continue to be abused, misused, strapped with Fed Id’s & sent to Haliburton’s concentration camps to be “removed”? UNLESS folks STOP this “theatrical” charade & say NO MORE! & toss these corrupt to the core jackals out the door!

WE CONTINUE TO ALLOW THIS TO CONTINUE…..WE ARE ALL SHEEPLE!!!!!!!

prole,

I echo Folktruther’s sentiments.  I really enjoy reading your comments.  They are the most lucid of everyone’s I read on this blog.

Prole, if you are female, would you marry me?  You have captured my heart.  If, on the other hand, you are male, just keep writing. 

Hopefully in paragraphs.  Skip a line everyone once in a while, it will make your stuff easier to read.

Let’s not rush to judgement. Obviously there are many worthy unworthy candidates for ‘Swindler of the Year’. Certainly, snake-oil Obama has to rank near the top of the list.  And you can take your pick from among the ranks of his shady retinue from Tony Rezko to Robert Rubin. And then of course there’s the bailout deceitful duo of Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank.  And who can forget that other Illinois smelly rose, Gov. Rod what’s-his-name. (Illinois must surely be the swindle state of the year, again.)  But when all is said and done, one cunning candidate for this distinction probably stands out above all the others in this nation of swindlers. Perhaps it’s unehical, even for a confirmed swindler, to nominate himself, so I would like to do the honors and nominate for the ignoble title of Swindler of the Year, the unequalled dissembler, Eugene Robinson. Perhaps, Mr.Robinson could accept the august award on behalf of the entire Washington Post editorial staff. And the first runner-up has to be none other than that veteran spin-meister, E.J.Dionne. “In a sense” they’re “all Bernie Madoff.” They’ve been running their editorials “in accordance with his accounting principles for a generation” — and more; and “now we face a most unpleasant” reading of unending Obama hyperbole for the next four years of partisan swindling. “For anyone taking stock of 2008” outside of the corporate media it’s anything but inevitable that “Barack Obama is the inevitable choice as Person of the Year”. In fact, the whole Person of the Year selection business has always been a propaganda ploy concocted by the establishment to ratify the status quo. Person of the Year is simply the most effective servant of corporate power. As for Madoff, he can really be seen as something of an anti-hero since he was defrauding other capitalist pigs like himself. Many of his greedy client/victims were fellow Jews, who, like Madoff were major contributors to zionist causes, so Israel’s private fund raising took a big hit. So there is at least that silver lining in this cloud then. ‘The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away’ - even to his “chosen people”. Funny how such a large proportion of these Wall St. crooks from Milken to Madoff are from the Children of Israel. Much like messianic Obama’s economic (and foreign policy) team. But perhaps it’s not politically correct to state the obvious. “After the bursting of the Internet bubble and the housing bubble” it’s probably time to burst the Obamessiah bubble, too. Eugene Robinson and the corporate media may have swindled us again this year in their own way, just like Madoff and the Wall St. shylocks did in their’s, but even with the help of a political swindler like Obama, the corporate imperialist eiltes can’t enjoy a “free lunch” at the world’s expense forever.

Why has it got to be just one number 1 swindler of the year? Stupid lists and polls are actually devised to short of cover up some of the worse/biggest or play down any of those not number 1. So, I clump several and there are, I am sure, deserving of the clump number 1 swindler of the year. As a matter of fact why just for the year? Hell, according to how long madoff was operating he won 10 years in a row.
But, I would clump these as number 1:
-izrael - they should be there permanantly
-the elite
-military/industrial/congressional/lobbist complex
-mainstream media owner most likely rupert murdoch
on top
-united states of corporations
-wall street
-marketing
-madoff
-the executive, legislative and judicial branches(I know, overlaps, but what the hell, it is well earned)

I would be sure I have missed some but all of those above covers a lot of territory. And I don’t believe in setting up degrees using lists, as bad as things are and will continue for quite a while it should be groups not lists and that group of swindlers should have quite a lot of descriptives used for their reasons for being ‘clumped together’.

spot on….
we admire the madoffs of the world.
they are our heroes, until they get caught.
then they must get tarred and feathered to distract us from the reality that all paper investments are fraudulent.It is all a con game, organized crime that has been legitimized.

It’s worth mentioning, on the subject of Ponzi Schemes, that Social Security is basically set up on the Ponzi model. Those first in, like Ida M. Fuller, “contributed” very little (she actually paid in about $25), but made out like bandits (Fuller collected about $25,000). Those last in (our children) will pay through the nose, but will collect nowhere near what they pay in. We can play and tinker with the system by doing nasty things like raising the retirement age to the point where most payees will be safely dead (say, 70 or 75), but otherwise, the whole rotten system is just a Ponzi Scheme, with the single exceptional fact that no one can, by law, opt out. The money you pay in is not “invested” anywhere, except in Treasuries, which is a debt instrument dependent on yet more taxes. There is no “fund” that is invested anywhere to show “returns.” What you pay in today goes right to today’s retirees, less overhead expenses.

Bernie Madoff was a piker, compared to the US government.

Gee whiz, the US has always been rife with economic plunderers.  From the robber barons to Madoff——the only question is——who will be next and as sure as the sun will rise there will be a next one.  And what’s more interesting it doesn’t matter whether the economic philosophy is capitalism, communism or something in between the over-riding philosophy is greed and that’s because greed is survival and survival is an inherent human trait that can never be dispelled.  Remember in a Ponzi scheme, those first in first out make a lot of money.  So there are quite a few people who are pleased with Madoff and other Ponzi professionals.

This is the usual crap by pseudo-progressive truthers like Robinson, Dionne and Boyarsky that we are ALL responsible for swindles by Madoff and the ruling class. It is a form of damage control by the power structure to get progressive rank and file to blame the population for the political crimes of the powerful.  Madoff was protected, and is still being protected, by his colleague swindlers who have put him under House Arrest in one of his penthouses, and he and his colleagues are being subtly defended by Robinson.

Progressives are being sold out by their own truthers and their own leaders.  People are encouraged to identify the crimes of power with the crimes of all people.  The basic moral that the power structure wants people to arrive at as a form of damage control is not that power is corrupt, but that ALL people are corrupt.  Madoff didn’t commit this crime, we all did.

This is bullshit, and it is effective, even among more sophisticated progressives, largely because it has been incorporated as a presupposition in traditional religion down through the centuries. 

We have to make a fundamental distinction between people and power, an genealization of the power of the capitalist class ves the working class.  Otherwise pseudo-progressives like Robinson will sucker us again in cleaning up after the power structure steals from us.

Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman Bernanke continue their knee-jerk solutions to the banking insolvency crisis by shoveling taxpayer money at too-big-to-fail bankrupt banks in order to prop up a fundamentally unstable-unsound financial system. Banks use the many trillions in taxpayer bailout money to double down on derivatives like credit default swaps (CDS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDO) rather then lending to businesses. Paulson/Bernanke are condemning the US to a major economic catastrophe when the current daisy-chained, excessively linked worldwide financial system eventually fails. There isn’t enough economically-based capital in the world to save the global financial system as it is currently constructed. It is much better for the financial sector to take the financial shock rather than the real economy; this is the correct order of things in a capitalistic system and its major strength.

Speak for yourself you silly man.

This is an excellent perspective by Eugene Robinson. I think he has captured well the mentality of a boom economy, in which people really do think their little GI bill home—purchased originally in the 1950’s for $10,000—is worth a cool million bucks today. Somehow.

He doesn’t point out the worst culprit in this whole mess: the fundamental dishonesty of the Federal Reserve System. As Ron Paul has pointed out repeatedly over the years, the central government uses the central banking system to finance its insane world empire and foreign wars by deliberately destroying the value of the dollar.

Those who suffer the worst are literally widows and orphans, who live on fixed incomes that continually lose purchasing power.

Unfortunately, the Left does not object to this inherently dishonest system. While the Left occasionally stumbles onto the concept that running a worldwide empire is bankrupting us, they want to keep the central banking money machine going so they can finance their own pet projects.

Both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, are destroying this country by destroying our money.

Finally after nearly 3 decades of ‘Trickle Down’ it has been shown to be the Scam it has ALWAYS been.
There i snot way an economy of 300 million can be ‘fed’ on a Trickle! It makes no sense that resources should be hoarded at the top, starving out the middle and bottom layers..layers which Hold their gold plated asses Up to begin with!
When you dig the foundations of employement, income and savings out from under these Two larger classes the Top Drops.DUH!!!
Greenspan is a lying sack of shit and should be prosecuted for Economic treason! What economic template could he have been operating off…Feudalism! what economic Stradegy sparked the American Revolution??? where does it say that our Free market Economy was designed for Brick & Mortar? This was intended to be the Open market for Citizens, Not just Logos (family crests).
I was just starting College when Reagan took office…My studies were Not Economics, but sociology. And I understood immeidately what ‘Trickle Down’ represented- It was innately a socio-economic term…It denoted Status and level of Access. Fundementally an UNAmerican doctrine.
As Klein points out, ‘Shocks’can create an opportunity.A Revolution without firing a shot.
Not only are we seeing a rejection of ‘Trickle Down’, we have begun to see the end of the social climbing through material possessions, The Self Righteousness of religion, and unwarranted Military might.
What will we gain from this ‘Shock’? A sense of community, social engagement, compassion, empathy, and a good dose of Humility.
The various turns of events was not the bursting of a bubble, but a Zit.It’s been festering for decades.Now that it has been relieved, lests get out whatever remains and begin disinfecting it- namely prosecuting those who caused it.

Oh for goodness sake, how could I leave Paulson out?

Gonna start drinking now so I have an excuse.

Compared to Bush/Cheney/Bernanke…

(The software seems to have blown off the title of my previous post so dutifully i add it here. A progressive new year to all.)

Madoff was a piker!