Continuing to post the connections that emerged during my recent adventure on trains, planes and strangely-named buses, here's a follow-on discussion between Keith Olbermann and Chris Hayes from the excellent "small businesses means billionaires" show.
Note, however, that this discussion veers wider than the earlier one:
- It brings in Karl Rove's Billionaire Boys Club & Election Purchase Boutique (introduced here by Chris in Paris).
It includes a discussion of the real motives of our snarling can't-live-without-em Blue Dogs (Movement Conservatives in People's Party clothing).
It adds a soupçon of Citizens United, the gift that keeps on taking.
Then wraps the package in a metaphor that technically can't be applied.
An interesting mash-up — a very small number of ever-hungry billionaires buying congressional tax benefits over the corpses of the middle class; a well-bribed Congress eager to drain those corpses to feed that hunger; specialty pass-through shops to funnel those bribes to waiting congressional hands; and a court case (Citizens United, a Mr. Roberts specialty) poised to turn a fire hose of cash into a river.
It's all very neat. Chris doesn't want to call it a putsch, but he may as well have. The phrase "slow-motion coup" also comes to mind.
Side note: If you care, here's a taste of the Amazon blurb for Winner-Take-All Politics, the book Chris Hayes mentioned:
A groundbreaking work that identifies the real culprit behind one of the great economic crimes of our time— the growing inequality of incomes between the vast majority of Americans and the richest of the rich. ... Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson demonstrate convincingly that the usual suspects—foreign trade and financial globalization, technological changes in the workplace, increased education at the top—are largely innocent of the charges against them. Instead, they indict an unlikely suspect ... American politics.Sounds like a well researched read. Available now in poor houses and homeless-shelter bookstores everywhere.
GP
