David Sirota: The new "Let them eat cake!"

[marmar]

from salon.com:




In the midst of this prole-crushing economic emergency engineered by wealthy speculators and their political puppets, we now find ourselves watching those same modern-day Marie Antoinettes at once celebrating their station and begging for sympathy as if they were the real casualties of the decade-long economic slowdown they created.

There was, for instance, Lebron James' parade of free-agent narcissism in the shadow of an economically destroyed Cleveland -- and then there was one of the architects of that economic apocalypse, Cavaliers owner and Quicken Loans CEO Dan Gilbert, pretending that the move of a single basketball player to Miami was the root of Cleveland's problems, and not the subprime bomb Gilbert himself had dropped on the city.

There was historian Doris Kearns Goodwin suggesting those politicians who followed Wall Street and voted for the bank bailouts exemplified the same heroism as those who fought for the passage of the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s. .............(more)

The complete piece and slide show are at: http://www.salon.com/news/david_sirota/2011/07/13/great_recession_elitism_slideshow

[girl gone mad]

1. Doris Kearns Goodwin said that?

If so, I've just lost a lot of respect for her.

[Roselma]

3. That's how Sirota presented it. How it came up in

the interview is something else: http://youtu.be/ndPH9Nhpp_c Sirota is a great guy, but I think he's as guilty as the rest of us of hearing what he wants based upon his own interpretations of events.

[indurancevile]

7. I think she's basically saying exactly what sirota says. She thinks the bailout was great,

but thinks the politicos screwed up by calling it a "bailout" instead of a necessary economic measure.

and she says politicians were influenced by their constituents (who didn't want a bailout). in comparison with the politicians during the civil rights movement, who "did the right thing" & ignored their constituents. which by implication she is saying was the correct line on the bailout: to ignore constituents & vote for the bailout.

[sabrina 1]

9. Too bad she thinks it was the right thing to do. To reward the

most corrupt, treasonous architects of this disaster will probably be viewed in the future as one od the worst decisions ever made. The banks should have been taken over, the perpetrators arrested, the money they stole retrieved and the country should have kicked out all politicians who enabled this to happen, then reinstate laws strictly regulating Wall St.

I am sorry she supported this disastrous policy which is never going to end, the greedy will keep coming back for and the people will keep bailing them out until someone says 'enough'. I though she was smarter than this.

[TheKentuckian]

5. Surely she didn't espouse such a stupid viewpoint. Have to dig in when I have time.

[chill_wind]

2. K & R. Slide show is one for eternal memory.

eom.

[chill_wind]

4. kick

[Bake]

6. They've forgotten that Marie lost her head ...

They'd do well to remember ...

Bake

[Aerows]

8. How the money is spent

Defense vendor payments for August are 31.7 billion. Medicare payments are 28.6 billion. That's just vendor payments. Active duty pay for August is 2.9 billion, and VA programs are 2.9 billion.

Active duty pay and VA programs are small, compared to what we are doling out to military contractors. That's more than we spend on Medicare!

Why in the HELL are we discussing slashing benefits for everyone under the sun, and doing nothing about the privatized portion of the defense budget which costs more than 10 times per month what it costs to pay our soldiers?

What is wrong with us as a nation?

I got that information from here: http://about.bgov.com/2011/07/12/august-invoices-show-u-s-treasury%E2%80%99s-limited-choices/

Oh - and my favorite. 42 billion is "unclassified" which means the treasury doesn't know how in the hell that's being spent. It includes defense funding and other funding. How much would you be willing to bet that the lion's share of that is also defense funding with no accountability.

[Octafish]

10. Great slide show. The rich really are moving on up.

Meanwhile, America continues its downward spiral.

Number 7: The Lament of the Persecuted Wall Streeter

The $700 billion TARP bailout and the ongoing multitrillion-dollar Federal Reserve bailouts of Wall Street were, in themselves, epic acts of Let Them Eat Cake-ism, especially since they've come at the very moment politicians are citing budget deficits as reason to cut people off food stamps and unemployment benefits. But in the spirit of Marie Antoinette's aphorism, it's important to find the one moment that sums up that unprecedented pillaging of the federal treasury.

There have been many individual instances of shocking elitism that somehow portray the rich as oppressed. Until last year, my personal favorite was the one where a top Wall Street fundraiser for President Obama complained that "the investment community feels very put-upon" and that bankers "feel there is no reason why they shouldn't earn $1 million to $200 million a year, and they don't want to be held responsible for the global financial meltdown" that they created.

CONTINUED...

http://www.salon.com/news/david_sirota/2011/07/13/great_recession_elitism_slideshow/slideshow.html

XXX OOO XXX

[dana_b]

11. that slideshow

shows some of the true faces of hypocrisy, cruelty and evil.