Wow, this is pretty remarkable.
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Wow, this is pretty remarkable.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Comments are closed.
Stopped the clip at 00:38. Cannot stand people shouting at each other. This is why I don’t have a television. Rant on, A-holes.
Too quick on the trigger Jim, it does get good.
As they say, “If you aren’t angry, you aren’t paying attention.” Frankly, I find folks who talk in measured, monotone voices about the virtues of War, big finance, democrats v. republicans, etc., much scarier and bigger A-holes.
que henry kissinger,aaaaand rolling ..
Oh, I completely agree with this. There are certain things that you shouldn’t be detached about. When I hear talking heads recommend gutting social programs and then someone makes a joke and the whole panel laughs – it freaks me out. To hear someone express some emotion about it is, to me, so much better than the uncaring, detached conversations that really are the norm. Every once in a while Paul Krugman will remind people that what is being recommended is cruel, but usually there’s absolutely no recognition of the real human suffering that is going to result from these austerity programs.
I feel we should have more of what Keynes said about the harsh terms imposed on Germany after WWI:
I cannot leave this subject as though its just treatment wholly depended either on our own pledges or on economic facts. The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of millions of human beings, and of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorrent and detestable,–abhorrent and detestable, even if it were possible, even if it enriched ourselves, even if it did not sow the decay of the whole civilised life of Europe.
What is happening is abhorrent and detestable and it’s good to have someone acknowledge it. More people should acknowledge it more often.
Yes, Yves, please comment further on Ratigan’s idea of “extraction”.
Keith Olbermann has several prime-time spots to fill over at Current TV. I expect we’ll see Ratigan employed there shortly.
Man, how I love this website!
Jim, say more, will you?
Are you saying that if a person has something important to say, and has so much energy behind it they get loud, you tune them out without trying to understand where they’re going?
Are you saying that you can only hear truths or opinions quietly packaged?
I don’t have cable and see only clips as they appear in the Internet. I too hate shoutfesting and babble. But Ratigan is really on a roll here, and once I got past his tone (which also irritated me), he had some substantive things to say. Surprisingly so.
I’m honestly curious, Jim. If he’d said this things quietly, say in Bernanke tones, would you have listened to him in this instance? Could you have listened to his strong/loud words if the two politico ladies stopped trying to outshout him? What medium should carry this message?
A common type of liberal. Etiquette and civility are before everything else.
sadly evil/stupidity often wins because good/the rational wants to play by the Queensbury rules in a knife fight.
Best analogy ever – that really nails it.
While I certainly agree with what Mr. Ratigan is saying I cannot tolerate what passes for discussion these days, two or more people talking loudly over one another, making their ‘talking points’ (usually utter bs but in this case, true) w/o listening to anyone else. That’s bullying, pure and simple & I will have none of it.
Dude!
You’ve missed something real good.
Sad!
Dumb move, Jim.
This is a more complete clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_ej552cI2E
Jim, I totally agree with you, and I almost turned this off. It would have been a mistake. There’s exceptions to all rules! His anger wasn’t rudeness.
Wondered if you would post this. His bit with Ritholtz was also pretty sweet. Both of the commentators were like “Well until there’s rioting in the streets, the politicians won’t do anything. And if they don’t do anything civil war is a real possibility.” I think that’s the first time a major news program openly discussed the probability of imminent class war. It’s all pretty nuts. I remember going through high school trying to convince people of the class system and the probable depression rising out of financialization (I was a weird kid) and people would laugh. 5 years later and class suddenly makes sense.
/Thank you/, Dylan.
OK, you want to primary Obama – here’s your guy. Yves, he said exactly what I have been saying. It is not Jamie, Lloyd, or even Kenny Boy who are to blame for the financial mess – it is the system, the theory (simply put, government is bad, business is good) that is the root. And the connection between that root and politics, that is money in politics – is creating an environment in which attacking the system results in one being “fired”. On another blog my signature line reads: For-profit banking is a menace and should be eradicated. Dylan gets it. BTW – I don’t know where his numbers come from. I know the astounding figures of Fed loans and purchases of junk are in the $20T range, but Dylan said $60T.
One more point Dylan touched. The parting out of the U.S. for profit. At one time I was slightly shamed by the fact that the U.S. went all over the world gathering raw materials, brought them back to the U.S., added value and sold them back. It seemed so exploitative. This has totally turned around. Today, the U.S. is the global consumer, not a producer. We sell more raw wood than we import and we are not even close on finished goods. This all happened because labor and environmental regulations are less costly abroad. Profit-makers want us to “compete”. What complete nonsense. I do not wish to compete with Malaysian women, couped up in brothels by night, working for nickels each day. I do not wish to compete with nations that allow their waters and air to be fouled and for diseases we thought we had conquered to decimate their peoples. No thanks. I am not afraid to use the word protection. We need to protect our high wage jobs, to deconstruct the incentives companies have to offshore. Its fundamental. If we wish to have a stable, prosperous nation, we must protect high wage jobs. Without them, and with the neo-liberal wisdom of Wall Street, the financial system will always tend toward a Ponzi scheme.
Mr. Ratigan has the problem exactly right, but unfortunately his idea that the President can change it is wrong.
Ratigan is suffering from our near universal delusion that some strongman (or woman) can come along and right what is wrong with the system, and do it for the good of the people. This is precisely what led to the rise of national socialism. Obama is no Hitler, nor Stalin ( http://on.fb.me/lEaLrI ), but this yearning for a Superman who will sweep away Congress and restore truth, justice and the American way can certainly lead to one.
If we look around the world at the places where some good and popular change has actually happened, Tunisia, Egypt, Greece (where popular revolt held the German bankers in check – same in Spain) and now even Israel, we see movements that specifically REJECTED the strong, charismatic leader.
If catastrophe is to be avoided, or at least mitigated, it will be us, we the people, who must do the dirty work ourselves.
http://bit.ly/pe5Znp
Didn’t sound like Dylan was defending the president. He was benchmarking the current president to his ideal, and found the sitting president coming up short.
Sorry, should have read your whole post.
You should talk to Attempter. He doesn’t feel like we need elites or leaders. I think it’s a lovely wish.
But successful mass movements crystallize around charismatic leaders. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Adolf Hitler both said what a lot of their constituents were thinking. As distasteful as it seems prima facie, we need someone who speaks forcefully for our cause. Because — how many leaderless movements have successfully moved the arc of history?
Yes, we need elites and organizations. But we also need We the People, at least in our current society. If we had an formal aristocracy or monarchy, it would be different, but practically speaking change can’t happen with elites without the people because of our history.
The problem is, of course, that We the People are just as bad as the elites.
But Dylan Ratigan ignored the fact that it isn’t just Congress that has been bought. The President has as well, so his appeal to the President to Do the Right Thing is about as realistic as asking Congressmen to do it.
And it’s fascinating what happened in Egypt. Their leaderless movement did depose an entrenched dictator, I have to give you that. But whether or not it sweeps away the dictatorial system has yet to be seen. It’s something that will be studied for decades.
Stephen, a president CAN be truthful and call it as it is, it’s completely up to him….so you are wrong about this…but you are completely right that we must lead ourselves, I agree 100%.
do you really believe that the President can be truthful and tell it like it is? That it’s completely up to him or her?
I’m reminded of an old saying as told by Andre Codrescu: “He who speaks the truth must keep his horse saddled.”
Hi Stephen,
agreed, the way out of this is the leaderless path. The ‘leader’ has to be a vision of a new way disseminated by the new infrastructure the Internet, regardless of how unprecedented that is, regardless of how unlikely it seems. Everything is unprecedented in its final details, change is the only constant, history does not repeat (it rhymes), and you can’t solve the problems of the broken paradigm within the existing paradigm. The enormity of the current challenge does not alter the truth of this.
A key characteristic of the current, broken paradigm is hierarchy, or ‘elitism,’ and the ‘follow the leader’ mentallity that expects some shining Mummy or Daddy to appear and clean up our mess. Hierarchies are extractive by design, as is usury/interest, and force growth. They are therefore unsustainable. We must transition to steady state growth, and the implications of this are profound. Any solution that seeks to maintain those extractive and extorting dynamics (interest and hierarchy) will fail. Hence, there are no easy solutions within the current ruleset, there is no silver bullet. We face the hardest challenge humanity has faced thus far. We have to learn a new way here if we want to sustain civilization.
This is the guy that should run as an Independent.
no he should start smashing things and stop paying his debts. maybe burn some stuff – like some computers and stuff in bank of new york mellon.
i think he had his faced ripped off in the short squeeze this afternoon. like any good american citizen did.
I hate to think of having to resort to violence and destruction to send a powerful message. An organized,, collective movement would be so much better.
How to get “their” attention? Cut off their money. No more mortgage payments. No more taxes. No more credit card payments. No more car payments till we pass a bill that kills all public funding to campaigns.
How to do it? I have no idea.
Is it possible you meant “until we get a bill that kills all PRIVATE funding of campaigns?”
“Leader of the Free World”? LOL. Please.
Still – they’re quite right. If corporate money in politics isn’t made illegal – and I mean properly illegal, with prison for CEOs (like it used to be in the 1800s)… if that doesn’t happen, the US is finished.
DEBT and USURY: THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL.
“The greatest slavery of all is Not the one that is behind us but the slavery which is ahead of us”.
He’s right about Congress. Too bad he’s been sold a bill of (Pete Peterson) goods on what debt is in a fiat currency.
An amazing rant! He didn’t actually use the word looting or kleptocracy, which are loaded terms. He kept saying we were getting extracted. Thought that was a good meme.
His only terrible suggestion was to have Obama get up and admit the game and bring about a new era of civil service, etc, etc, Obama is totally a creature of the rigged money game Ratigan is ranting about. He’s not going to do it. We have to stop expecting our leaders to save us little people from an institution they are deeply embedded in, and benefit from. That’s not logical.
If more newcasters spoke the truth the way Ratigan did, instead of playing along with the game… that would wake up more people.
I think his intent was to underscore the color of Mr. O’s stripes, not that Dylan or any other casual observer of politics really believes Mr. O will change the color of his stripes.
But anyway, I couldn’t help think Dylan must play sax, jazz flute, or maybe some kind of woodwind instrument.
That is what I was thinking the entire time. I love this, but I kept waiting for him to point out that Obama would never do this because he has to raise $1 billion for his re-election from the very corporations that would be most screwed by his speech, but he never did.
Valissa said:
“If more newcasters spoke the truth the way Ratigan did, instead of playing along with the game… that would wake up more people.”
Our Congress critter legislated that away and now the newscasters say what they are paid to say.
It is time to laugh folks. Lashing out is not the answer. Laugh in their face!
They don’t care if we laugh. They have all the money.
In fact, I think they think that’s just fine. Just keep having rallies led by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert that are designed to have everyone bring it down a notch and just laugh. It’s not funny. It’s a tragedy. And it’s time to do something.
this guy is one cool cat
political Shock blab, meaningless!
If not Ron Paul, then who?
I watched it in real time – it was GREAT. Not enough of this ever appears on the teevee. Barry is also one of my favorites. I’m afraid they’re right – until most of the working/middle class is at the bottom, and furious, there will be no reform. Few of the people I work with “get” it, and all my middle class conservative friends/relatives still mouth the Fox Noise memes – ” Fannie and Freddie did it” “Lower taxes” and “too much regulation”. And all three branches are bought and paid for. Stuff didn’t happen for Teddy Roosevelt and FDR until things were bad enough for a large majority of the population that it couldn’t be ignored or swept under the carpet.
Right on !! Americans are so enfeebled and sheeples as were Germans in in the 1930’s who were not allowed to speak ill of authority, it requires the stature of a FDR and Teddy Roosevelt.
Bravo Dylan Ratigan ! None of this monotone media message that we know what to do and how to do it and America will be whole again. LOL! All I can observe is that the president is powerless in view of the Wall St connection and the checks and balances structure of the republican system. However this does not recognize the failure of the president to relinquish his predisposition for collaboration. It is time for him to act!
I tend to agree.
If not now, when…though we are in the early stages of the event…Europe is not down, blah, blah, blah.
I disagree with the commenter that was worried about a dictatorship….not on my watch just like no one is going to hijack a plane I am on without me trying to stop them. And the counter is to ask if the current path is sustainable…GAG
Wonder how many more folks in Washington need to start telling MSNBC execs they dont appreciate Dylan’s tone for him to be offered a more lucrative position from which he can be controlled better, while still generating them ratings.
Yeah, like that guy with the “Young Turks” show that MSNBC cancelled when he was “too hard” on his beltway guests. Ratigan will be dealt with shortly, you’ll see.
As long as we have a bought supreme court that gave us Citizens United, there’s not a damn thing we can do about taking money out of politics. But we can look forward to seeing the gambling house on Wall Street go up in a blaze of fire, and watching the gamblers run out of it like smoked-out rats from a burning ship:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCkRH-CTvCE&feature=fvwrel
We could amend the constitution to make it clear that corporations are not “people” protected by the constitution – that they do not have free speech rights, etc.
We could amend the constitution to include restrictions on campaign financing as well.
It’s not the easiest thing, but it’s definitely not impossible (see prohibition).
And Citizens United was 5-4 – so, one more justice and that balance is flipped
Although really, the constitutional amendment making clear corporations are not people protected under the constitution would be ideal – because treating corporations as people does way more damage than just Citizens United.
That was exactly what Obama has never done.
I trust his anger more than a lot of people’s composure.
If no one else more obvious will run, I would support Dylan Ratigan for president.
Extracted….good word for it.
Richard Nixon resigned 37 years ago today.
If you want to make your day please review the five minute report John Oliver did on The Daily Show last night called “The Forecloser”. Earlier it was the second video down the list. Look for the title. The story is about a couple who paid cash for their house but received a foreclosure notice from BofA. The only lawyer who would take the case had been a lawyer for 8 months. I won’t spoil the plot but I can guarantee you will cheer the result. A great feel good story.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
Jim
Direct link: Daily Show — The Forecloser
It’s great to hear the rant, but he has to really lay it out–HOW are we being extracted, and WHY are we being extracted? The average Joe doesn’t understand the .25% interest rate scam as it works between the banks and the Fed. If he hasn’t already, he and others have to lay out the fact that these huge banks are getting money for nothing while actually CHARGING PEOPLE FOR MAKING DEPOSITS! All the while that the Fed plays the free money game they are pumping Wall Street to pretend there is actually recovery. Most Americnas are oblivious to this.
About a year ago I explained to my boss about the MERS and how these banks don’t even know where the actually mortages are on account of MBS’ and CDOs. Just the other day he tells me he’s talk to people and he kind of gets it–kind of. Until the ground starts to collapse u nder peoples feet they don’t ever notice who it is digging the earth out from under them.
BTW, thank Naked Capitalism, Zerohedge, Washington Blog, and dozens of other independent blogs and websites for being there to inform we who know–without them—and the internet–how would most us be so aware of all of this?
Can anyone tell what is talking about? He wants us to “acknowledge that the United States of America is being extracted — it’s being extracted by banking, it’s being extracted by trade, and it’s being extracted by taxation.”
Seriously – what, if anything, does that mean?
If you do not understand the issues, the very clear and pressing issues, that he is discussing, then you need to inform yourself. One thing you can say for Ratigan is that he has an acute an understanding of the issues as anyone out there.
Ever see the results of strip mining?
That’s pretty much what he means by “extracted”.
He’s saying that the WEALTH of America is being extracted by the corporate/political oligarchy.
I know the mountaintops are being sliced off and the wealth is being extracted, but I think there’s something else that’s being extracted: the guts of our “democracy.” And I think Ratigan is incensed about that, too.
I am a stickler on being clear about where that wealth is going and it is the X hundred global inherited rich folks and families. They are pulling the strings and we must laugh them out of control….permanently
It means taxpayer money and wealth is being used to enrich the few.
The Fed .25% reserve payment is one way… and one of the big reasons that large banks had zero negative trading days in Q1 2010.
Another example is the Obama health care plan. Designed in part to gurantee health insurance and drug profits while requiring all americans to pay more. No public ‘option’ gurentees private profit on the people’s expense.
Finially, americans are being extracted artificially in the manipulation of commodities. Oil. Coffee. Wheat. Energy. All of these have been openly manipulated in the past few years.
P.S. Who thinks the stock market is still open and fair? Every trade I do, I know I’m getting scammed either price hiding (dark pools) or computerized front running.
All thunder, no substance. If Dylan had a brain, he would have called in Phil Gramm to be hauled into the street, beaten to a near pulp, then hauled back into Congress to reinstate Glass-Steagall.
Yeah, we could have Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin on stretchers beside Gramm, peeing through a hose into jugs. We have to eleminate the “extractors, the private bank cartel. Get to the root of the problem. Sorta like Yves chirped “oooh, there’s no good way to have a protest on Wall Street; it’s too much like a narrow canyon.” Bull crap.
Why just Phil Gramm and not his wife too? They are a tag-team you know. Match made in hell as it were.
I admire your Jacobin gusto, but have you ever been to Wall Street? I live in New York and have zero to do with finance, but everytime I’m around Wall Street it’s crawling with body-armored para-military goons from the NYPD carrying fully automatic weapons.
You go protest and let us all know how it turns out.
I’m guessing at the very least you’ll end up with an arrest and a broken jaw. Worst case you’ll disappear into some Gitmo-like black facility reserved for domestic terrorists and anyone suspected of making trouble for our lords on Wall Street.
I wouldn’t dare attempt a protest on Wall Street without an army of lawyers from the ACLU and a film crew from MSNBC. Even then I’m pretty sure you would still end up in jail with a mountain of charges against you.
It could happen but, it would take balls, planning and the thick hide of individuals who have nothing to lose or who are ready to sacrifice their comfortable existence for the greater good.
Matt Taibbi went to Goldman Sachs in a gorilla suit and ate his lunch on the floor of their lobby. Does that count? I think it does.
http://exiledonline.com/old-exile/vault/feature/feature90.html
Matt Taibbi did do that, on a date before 9/11/2001.
It’s nice to see someone identify one of our many problems, but I fear Dylan is being too optimistic about the possibility of a solution. In eighteenth century England some miscreants were made to run a pillory as a penalty for their difficulties.
I’m guessing MSNBC is about to pull a Cenk on him now…
Don’t you love Dylan’s eyes when he is pissed? Wow. I think he just redeemed himself in my angry eyes.
Ratigan overlooks the fact that reforms, including campaign finance reforms, have to be legislated. Legislated. Legislated.
There’s no other constitutional way to make that stuff happen. The two Roosevelts didn’t just wave magic wands; there was a Pure Food & Drug Act, a Social Security Act, etc.. Acts of Congress. And it wasn’t always easy for either President to get what they wanted out of Congress.
Now if what Ratigan really wants is a dictatorship, OK. I’ve just about reached the point where I could accept one myself, or if not an outright dictatorship then something resembling the early French Fifth Republic under DeGaulle.
But we need to be honest about this sort of thing, otherwise we’ll just continue drifting towards the corrupt dictatorial oligarchy which would be the main alternative to enlightened despotism.
im krebsgang
It takes leadership and public pressure.
I think that public pressure is building, don’t you?
Its time to laugh the global inherited rich out of control.
That is the Catch 22. There have been plenty of campaign finance rule bills worked on and passed by Congress. Ethics bills too.
And this is what we have as a result.
Don’t know a way around that one. The Checks and Balances thingy they told us about in 11th grade doesn’t address that to my knowledge.
A good deal has to happen through legislation – right now both parties are beholden to business – we have to organize
I think we should take Rattigan’s rant as our version of Santelli’s rant (only real, of course). We should start our own Tea Party. I think we should call it the Tea Party just to confuse them – I’m thinking some of those people who are fighting for billionaires to have low taxes could be easily tricked.
Aaahhhhh! At last. I’ve been yelling at my best friend about this for the last ten years, to which he simply rolls his eyes and orders another Scotch. I can sit here and complain, and theorize, and argue, and watch my accounts and tap out comments on my keyboard without fear of offending more than a few hundred (thousand?) people I shall never meet, or of having any other effect, either. But dis guy says it right out loud on MSNBC. Thank goodness. Now we’ve heard it, and we all know that we all heard it. If you didn’t hear it, watch it again until you do hear it. ‘Cause this is the first step.
How about Elliot Spitzer for President and Ratigan as VP.
I have to admit, I’ve been tamping down Mad as Hell moments since 2008. Having Obama continue to do almost exactly what Bush was doing with Wall St (give them trillions, no one goes to jail) has just made my MAH moments worse.
If spitzer were to first sit down and learn MMT(which would take 1-2 hours after reading Mosler’s book) he would be the best person in this entire country to be president, PERIOD.
Poor Dylan. I know he means well and I agree with everything he said except that Dylan doesn’t seem to understand that the White House and the President regardless of Democratic or Republican Party affiliation is “bought” also and that President Obama may actually sincerely support supply side economics and cuts to government spending and social programs.
I think he realizes that. He was just making clear where the responsibility lies. If anyone is to do anything, then given a bought congress, it will only be the President who can. If, as you say, he’s bought also, or is just a banker’s man at heart, well, that’s as it may be. But President Licoln did keep the country together, President Theodore Roosevelt did regulate the trusts, President Franklin Roosevelt didn’t listen to Melon and did close the banks, President Truman did integrate the armed farces and drop the bomb, President Johnson did get the Civil Rights Act through, and reached for the Great Society. In none of these cases was Congress an initiator–it took a President to stand there and say, “Look, we have to do such and such.” I’m certainly not trying to make heros out of these guys, because they all failed miserably in many ways. The point is that when a change in direction is needed, the President is the one in a position to make that change. If he won’t make it, then so much the worse for the rest of us, nonetheless he is the man on the spot. Posterity is cold comfort, but sometimes that’s all there is. Make it plain.
At 9:02 he mentions the Brady bonds, as some sort of great solution for the debt crisis in Latin America. Hey, the Brady plan was the Trojan horse that harbored the Washington Consensus in its entrails. Small detail.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dib2-HBsF08
Get mad, turn off the TV and throw it in the trash. That’s always the first step to ‘recovery’.
Ratigan is wrong, completely wrong, of course, so are the two ‘Mini-Beales’ the ladies yelling and gesticulating at each other.
The real problem is at the end of America’s driveways, the choices made since 1948 are becoming completely and implacably realized, brought to the inevitable outcome. That outcome is bankruptcy of the entire Western world. There is nothing anyone can do about it, in the conventional sense. The trillions in debt could disappear tomorrow and the world would still be bankrupt. We’ve run out of cheap oil, the last cheap oil was extracted in 2001 and it’s never coming back. Every penny we Americans have spent along with all those spent by all of our imitators since the end of World War Two has been either to waste irreplaceable capital or construct a system entirely and utterly dependent for return on crude oil that costs less than $20 US dollars per barrel.
We run on empty, the Howard Beales of the world must conserve energy. We can do so voluntarily and gain some grip on our lives/futures. Or conservation will be imposed upon the human race by events.
If that sounds as terrifying as it seems you are not terrified enough. We humans eat petroleum and the water we drink is also petroleum. We conserve or die.
Dilligan belongs in the Tea Party! This is the issue that started the Tea Party back in December of 2007! (Sorry Libs…its not about the black fella)
The fact is that unless we end the fed, debt-based currency controlled by a private banking monolpoly in a fractional reserve system we will be doomed to economic slavery and worse yet… pay the cost of our own enslavement.
Money is NOT made from debt people…
Dilligan is probably going to get fired soon.
Why don’t you call for regulation by some tough dudes or some antitrust enforcement instead of this dribble about our fiat monetary system? It’s one thing to say that the former can never happen, but you’re not even trying…and anyway I would argue that the former, with a unified left in support of it, is much more feasible than any of the useless blather you’re typing up.
I find it amusing that dylan thinks Obama will turn on the bankers… WTH?
He re-hired Bernanke… hired Timmy Geithner, and Larry Summers and now even has Daly as his Chief of Staff… The whole Obama administration is LOADED with agents of finance capital!!!
Obama is bought and paid for by bankers!
Don’t forget, he also has to shine their shoes.
Too bad Dylan is too vague and doesn’t get more direct. He’s gotten a little more liberal over these last few years(probably from reading the deficit dove types on huffpost a lot) but until he embraces the left completely and calls it as it truly is(much like Yves does…ie understands MMT)
oops forgot to finish…until he embraces the left completely there isn’t any uneducated person out there that can really benefit from anything he’s saying, and hence he’s as useful as the person speaking before or after him.
Yves,
I respect his sincerity but I can’t embrace his tone or his analysis of Obama. Maybe given the mendacity of the Repugs and their media mouthpieces, Ratigan’s fever pitch is called for but I just hate shouters. We’ve definitely reached the Paddy Chayevsky/”Network” moment; I just can’t be happy we’ve been driven to this point.
As for his analysis and his belief that Obama should be attacking the corrupt campaign system in this country, I can only shake my head in wonder. Obama was the first presidential candidate who declined public funding since the post-Watergate finance reforms were passed. He sold his soul to the Wall Street/neo-liberal coterie that Robert Rubin et al organized for him back in 2008 and it’s been evident in everything he’s failed to do wrt financial reform, health care, etc. Obama can’t be part of the solution because he’s part of the problem.
Yves, if I thought your campaign for a primary challenge could make a difference I’d be with you. Sadly, I think at best it’s tilting at windmills and at worst will elect a Repug to the White House. Even sadder, I’m not sure that would make much of a difference.
Sorry to be so negative. Given the times we live in, I can’t be any more hopeful.
Phichibe.
Benjamin Franklin writing to Bishop Shipley March 17, 1783, (in prophetic mode?) was much more eloquent.
America will, with God’s blessing, become a great and happy country ; and England, if she has at length gained wisdom, will have gained something more valuable, and more essential to her prosperity, than all she has lost ; and will still be a great and respectable nation. Her great disease at present, is the number and enormous salaries and emoluments of office. Avarice and ambition are strong passions, and separately act with great force on the human mind; but when both are united and may be gratified in the same object, their violence is almost irresistible, and they hurry men headlong into factions and contentions destructive of all good government. As long therefore as these great emoluments subsist, your parliament will be a stormy sea, and your public councils confounded by private interests. But it requires much public spirit and virtue to abolish them; more perhaps than can now be found in a nation so long corrupted.
B. FRANKLIN.
Then again at the Constitutional Convention: Sept 17, 1787
In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.
“Which is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Amen brother.
“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953
Outstanding! How long until MSNBC fires him?
“Money in politics is the root of all political evil.” Jimmy Williams
How on earth can money be taken out of politics? While we believe we need money (and I believe that is a cultural issue, not a universally fundamental one) money and politics will be fused, as will all others aspects of society, with money. If you need money to survive, money has to go where there are people and organizations wanting to survive, thrive and do stuff. The question then is this: how should we design money to minimize its corrupting influence? A corollary of this is of course Perpetual Growth, another is taxation, another is labour itself, and then democracy too. Guaranteed income should be up there in the discussion, and who can forget energy.
About 100 years ago oil had an EROEI of 100. It’s now at around 15 and falling. Without that easy fuel, efficiency of buildings, transportation, cities, industry, etc., should be a primary concern. Soil fertility is also and obviously vital, as are clean water and air. These are the issues. We must discuss how to evolve a system that enables us to deal with them wisely and humanely in as environmentally friendly a manner as possible. The current system–including the mainstream media, finance, money creation, politics, education, academia, etc.–is currently arranged to do the exact opposite. It is cancerously self-destructive and must be treated as such.
How can money be taken out of politics? Well, is every representative democracy with a market-oriented economy in as big a mess as the US with respect to this issue? I think not, and like our health care wreck it’s high time to get our heads out of the sand and take a good look around.
Here are some ideas: campaign spending permitted in a brief window before election day; mandatory voting; voting held on weekend day.
I would also remind you that large amounts of money are spent by campaigns on TV ads. Every action that takes place in our economy does so subject nominally to the rule of law. We, in theory, can elect people who will write laws that for example would require TV to provide time for campaign ads at no charge. To retain their margins, TV businesses would have to increase revenues elsewhere. I think that would be a worthwhile trade. Organizations with vast amounts of money and wish to influence the political process would likely prefer to preserve the current system.
Law is corrupted by money too. There are thousands and thousands of laws in the US. The state’s ‘freedom’ or ability or willingness to apply them depends on money, GDP ‘growth’ and other factors. Pieces of paper with words on them are not going to cut the mustard, they never really have. So how do we get money out of the law?
Perhaps the US is in a worse state corruption-wise than others, but the nation-state is history anyway. I try to think globally, of humans as one species embedded in interconnecting ecosystems, and how best to arrange society so as to take this simple truth adequately into account. The current system–money, law, politics, media, education–is arranged to destroy the interconnecting ecosystems on which it relies, however unintentionally. The evidence that this is so is almost everywhere you look, except in the MSM. (How do we get the money out of the media?)
Far deeper change than what you suggest is needed.
2011= The Year of the Revolutions?
That was a pretty good rant. Dylan hit my biggest gripes: FIRE parasites, tax system parasites, phoney free trade, dysfunctional health care industry, and American representative democracy as a gaggle of whores.
Anyone who thinks WW2, civil war, Sputnik analogies are over the top needs to take a good look around.
I didn’t hear Ratigan call for a Superman or a dictatorship or express his opinion that Obama was not beholden to his big campaign contributors. I heard him excoriate Obama for failing to use his bully pulpit (a weapon that Congress does not have) to inform Americans about the real problems and rally them around real solutions while at the same time realizing that BO would not do this (hence the anger). An informed public is the biggest weapon that a country can have to effect positive change. A leader can inform and rally support without being a strongman, Superman or a dictator.
http://multimediapolitics.net/2011/04/19/the-power-of-the-bully-pulpit/
Shouting never bothers me. Lies and excuses do.
How to take money out of politics? First, inform the public of the problem and rally them (this takes leader(s)). Second, pressure Congress to pass legislation to do what Sundog suggests and hope it doesn’t get shot down by the Supremes. And if it does get shot down, don’t give up the fight. Third, place limits on campaign contributions (again, current batch of Supremes will throw this out). Argue that freedom of speech means that no one person should possess a bigger bullhorn than any other and that freedom of speech also means equal access to make that speech. If bigger money = bigger access and a louder bullhorn, then there’s a problem. Even “uneducated” people can get this and if public pressure is strong enough, I believe that even the Supremes can be influenced by it.
We do live in a globally connected world but change must come, bit by bit, on a local basis. There is currently no mechanism to effect global change so we can get to work on a local/nation state level or we can just keep posting about how nothing can happen unless there are global changes.
Well said and to the point.
We need for this to be our Santelli moment (except real). We need to organize a movement. We shouldn’t let this opportunity slip away.
Good.
Rich pay all the income taxes luckie duckies
2008 Returns
140 Million returns
Total AIG=8400 Billion—- Paid $1031B in Taxes–12.24% tax rate
1% got 20% of income—-paid 38% of taxes–24% tax rate
5% got 35% of income—-paid 59% of taxes–21% tax rate
10% got 45% of Income—paid 70% of taxes-19% tax rate
25% got 67% of Income—paid 87% of taxes-16% tax rate
50% got 87% of income—paid 97% of taxes-14% tax rate
70M got 13% of income—-paid 3% of taxes—3% tax rate
http://taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html
WHERE ARE DEMOCRATIC SPOKESPERSONS? MUTE?
BERNIE SANDERS YELLING IN A VACUUM
EDUCATE THEM PLEASE. Olduglymeanhonest mad at Inequality in America
cswinney2@triad.rr.com
Dylan Ratigan expressed exactly what many of us are feeling. I wish he would lead a demonstration on Washington to get the public involved. Not like John Stewart (who I like, by the way) who’s rally was basically entertainment and nothing else.
Nice talk but the president is a puppet who doesn’t care about the country.
Yves!
Please comment, explain, elaborate on Ratigan’s Ranty
on “Extraction”. Help us have a deeper under-
standing of America cannibalized by corporations
with the help of Congress.
Is it me or did that D-Party Obama apologist particularly set him off?
I do think it’s the case that the president has a unique opportunity to betray the corporate and Wall Street money in order to do what’s in the best interests of the country as a whole, in that they can put together their own administration, rally whatever support there is in Congress, and present a united front to the public.
It is also true that at the time Obama took office there were fully respectable, outspoken alternative voices to the Rubinite crew that Obama chose to be on his economic team.
This wouldn’t have been America’s missing social revolution, but it would have been more in line with the middle American votes Obama professes to want to obtain with his OWN dopey, misbegotten “bipartisanship.”
Ratigan surely knows there was a base for “change” because he himself was already ranting about the Street fraud, and government collusion with it, as the market was tanking in 2008.
You knew right there his days at CNBC were numbered. He left and it wasn’t the end of HIS life, but Obama–according to Obama and his fellow bots–has absolutely no choices.
This is crap. It was theoretically and practically possible, he just chose not to.
It’s also true that Obama and his house thugs, like Rahm Emmanuel, flogged people in Congress in the direction he wanted them to go when it suited him to do so. So, the “blame it all on Congress” excuse doesn’t wash for me either.
Now we’re in another spiraling out of control mess and Obama is going to own this one too, just like he owns the last one through his own failure to act, even though he didn’t “create” it.
That’s the power of the Presidency. We all know it exists or we wouldn’t all be trying to influence it or buy it, or save Obama from himself by writing him endless excuses.
Incidently, we forwarded that link to the WH. Anyone else?
Uh-oh, Dylan will soon be shown the same door as Keith Olbermann and Cenk Uygur. Though it’s probably too soon, I notice he’s not on the air today, probably just getting a checkup.
Dylan lays it out plainly and comes pretty close to nailing Obama’s obvious duplicity, leaving viewers to reach the final self-evident realization on their own: that the man is pivotal to the charade.
Obama is bought too! Why would this guy think otherwise?
Govt will not solve problems caused by govt.
Public unions are special interest groups too, you idiot.
Yes, but they’re a special interest for the working/middle class. Without organization, the bottom 99% is screwed. We need an organized interest group. We has the unions, we need something new.
WOW! Thanks for posting Yves! I hope this goes viral and becomes far bigger than Jim Cramer’s epic 2007 rant on CNBC during the early days of the credit crisis / run on the shadow banking system. DR is one of the few people with a platform on mainstream US TV news that’s willing to talk boldly about the structural problems and the rotten decay inside the US economic/financial/political system.
All Mr. Ratigan did was tell the truth. It is long past time that someone did that. Every word he stated was the unvarnished truth. Congress is totally corrupt. You know it and I know it and every venal Congress member knows it. So why doesn’t the President tell the truth and deal with it?
Dylan for President
On the surface…he’s right.
Scratch the surface…and you find the POWER ELITE
are causing EVERYTHING to happen in an orchestrated
chain of events.
The REAL terrorists are the Puppet Masters of the Kenyan Puppet(BO) and BOZO Ben Benanke and Tim Geithner.
Controlling them…the murdering clintons (Rest In Peace Vince Foster, see the clinton body count),the mudering bushes (Rest in Peace Michael Connell, see the bush body count), dick “the US” cheney, kissinger, bill gates, the rockefellers, gore, and all the higherarchy of the TLC, CFR, and Bildebergs et al can HARMonize the destruction of this country and every soverign nation of the world in order to usher in the ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT for the organization that ultimately will control the world.
The HAVES want to remain HAVES when this takes place. Their personal status quo is their ONLY concern; while we as HAVE NOTS become like feudal serfs-SLAVES…or DEAD, no place in the NEW WORLD ORDER for USELESS EATERS, as they cull the world’s population to a MANAGEABLE 500 MILLION, see Georgia Guidestones.