Powered By Blogger

Wednesday 31 July 2013

Hello Boys! I'm Back!

In the iconic words of Randy Quaid's Russell Casse in Independence Day, I have returned. Its nice to be with you once again.

And no, I was not abducted by aliens, and I wasn't locked away in prison - thankfully, too, since both are so often associated with anal probing.  Anyway, I'm glad to be back, and I've much to say.

And there is so much to say because so much has (sadly) remained the same, and so much has worsened. My last post of over a year ago was about the Mittster, Mitt Romney. Barack won that little tussle, of course, but we aren't so much the better for it, are we?  But before we get on to the current sad state of affairs, let us close out the commentary on Mitt.

One of my favorite commentators is Rolling Stone Magazine's Matt Taibbi, who has written much on the banksters and felons of Wall Street - thus making Mitt Romney a central character in his ongoing narrative.  Of the many excellent such pieces, one of my favorites is "Greed and Debt" in which Taibbi describes the strategies that made Mitt rich, while simultaneously impoverishing millions of workers and ultimately killing scores of companies.
"Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a "turnaround specialist", a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm.  But what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune; by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back.  This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Ronmey is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time.  In the past few decades, in fact, Mitt Romney has piles more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth."
Read more on this story here. And read some of the many companion pieces in Rolling Stone here, and here, and here, and here.

For my return to the blog, I'm hammering away on Mitt Romney as a unrepentant representative of the monied class and a "make nothing, take everything, screw everyone ethos", as Taibbi so aptly phrased it.

And so upon my return, I'm repeating the central theme of Corporate Complaint Constraint - that Corporations (of the type embodied by Romney and Wall Street) have become the most dominant economic and political force the world has known; their actions bring ever greater threat to our survival. That such a man as Mitt Romney could run for president - twice! - and escape any significant public scrutiny for his actions demonstrates just how completely the main stream press has been co-opted.

By David.

----------

Your musical accompaniment for the day: 6 String Theory, Lee Ritenour, on the Concord Music Group label. Enjoy!