1 Boring Old Man

Blowing Up In Their Faces

There are many among the center-left blog community that are severely disappointed at the news that the leadership of both parties endorsed the bailout plan late this afternoon. I understand the frustration, and think it is warranted given that the problem was dumped upon the Democratic congressional leadership by an administration and House GOP caucus that was seeking a political advantage from this "crisis". Having said that, let me throw several things in:

• People far smarter than me on finance and economics felt that something needed to be done this week to unclog the credit markets.
• Second, the McCain/House GOP gambit blew up in both their faces over the weekend. The package that Weepy John Boehner just endorsed at the Capitol bears no resemblance to what the House Republicans threw on the table last Thursday night to sidetrack the talks. McCain and Boehner got nothing out of the deal: there are no regulatory or capital gains tax mortatoriums in the final package. It’s an total smackdown of McCain’s claim that he added leadership here, because he has no fingerprints on this deal and yet the House GOP leadership has now signed on.
• Third, all the House GOP and McCain accomplished was to make it easier for congressional Democrats to insist that Wall Street will be collared after five years by Congress to pay up if the taxpayers are out any money. The final package is far better than what Paulson originally proposed, and yet the House GOP and McCain ended up soiling themselves without being part of the solution.

From my perspective, the thing that has been called Neo-Conservatism arose in the bowels of The American Enterprise Institute. This powerful right wing lobbyist organization was founded in 1943 by Lewis H. Brown specifically to represent the interests of business and industry in government. Lewis H. Brown was the C.E.O. of the Johns Manville-Company, the major supplier of asbestos. He shepherded keeping the health risks of asbestos hidden for 40 years, resulting in countless deaths from Mesothelioma. The point is that A.E.I. was founded to counter government regulation of business and F.D.R.’s New Deal. It’s not a conservative ideological center as it claims, it’s a well financed, massively pro-industry/business force that has had its way with us during the Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II years. These have been years of rampant government spending, calculated corruption, and out of control concentrations of wealth and power. There’s nothing Conservative about that. They demonize us as Liberals meaning the Franklin Roosevelt Democrats that saved the country from them the  last time [in the 1930’s].