Trashmen

Follow the money.

As EM08 continues to throw up all over us, new stories of shitheads behaving like, well, shitheads, are now a regular occurrence. Meanwhile, Barack, congress and everyone else with a hand in determining more money down the drain are worrying me to no end. I heard our president saying that it was urgent we act swiftly.

But urgency is part of the problem that just compounded EM08.

Back in November I said that Barack should use David Cay Johnston, the one "economist" who I think makes sense. It was Johnston, before the bank theft, who posed the one key question on Lou Dobbs' show; "Let's say we give the banks this $700 billion. But what if things get worse?"

And worse they have.

What a shitstorm, and like William Goldman said about Hollywood, "No one knows anything."

Op-Ed Columnist
Wall Street’s Socialist Jet-Setters

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 27, 2009

WASHINGTON

As President Obama spreads his New Testament balm over the capital, I’m longing for a bit of Old Testament wrath.

Couldn’t he throw down his BlackBerry tablet and smash it in anger over the feckless financiers, the gods of gold and their idols — in this case not a gilt calf but an $87,000 area rug, a cache of diamond Tiffany and

Cartier watches and a French-made luxury corporate jet?

Now that we’re nationalizing, couldn’t we fire any obtuse bankers and auto executives who cling to perks and bonuses even as the economy is following John Thain down his antique commode?

How could Citigroup be so dumb as to go ahead with plans to get a new $50 million corporate jet, the exclusive Dassault Falcon 7X seating 12, after losing $28.5 billion in the past 15 months and receiving $345 billion in government investments and guarantees?

(Now I get why a $400 payment I recently sent to pay off my Citibank Visa was mistakenly applied to my sister-in-law’s Citibank Mastercard account.)

The “Citiboobs” — as The New York Post, which broke the news, calls them — watched as the car chieftains got in trouble for flying their private jets to Washington to ask for bailouts, and the A.I.G. moguls got dragged before Congress for spending their bailout on California spa treatments. But the boobs still didn’t get the message.

The former masters of the universe don’t seem to fully comprehend that their universe has crumbled and, thanks to them, so has ours. Real people are losing real jobs at Caterpillar, Home Depot and Sprint Nextel; these and other companies announced on Monday that they would cut more than 75,000 jobs in the U.S. and around the world, as consumer confidence and home prices swan-dived.

Prodded by an appalled Senator Carl Levin, Tim Geithner — even as he was being confirmed as Treasury secretary — directed Treasury officials to call the Citiboobs and tell them the new jet would not fly.

“They woke up pretty quickly,” says a Treasury official, adding that they protested for a bit. “Six months ago, they would have kept the plane and flown it to Washington.”

Senator Levin said that the financiers will not be able to change their warped mentality, but will have to be reined in by Geithner’s new leashes. “I have no confidence that they intend or desire to change,” Levin told me. “These bankers got away with murder, and it’s obscene that close to nothing is being asked of financial institutions. I get incensed at the thought that a bank that’s getting billions of dollars in taxpayer money is out there buying fancy new airplanes.”

New York’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, always gratifying on the issue of clawing back money from the greedy creeps on Wall Street, on Tuesday subpoenaed Thain, the former Merrill Lynch chief executive, over $4 billion in bonuses he handed out as the failing firm was bought by Bank of America.

In an interview with Maria Bartiromo on CNBC, Thain used the specious, contemptible reasoning that other executives use to rationalize why they’re keeping their bonuses as profits are plunging.

“If you don’t pay your best people, you will destroy your franchise” and they’ll go elsewhere, he said.

Hello? They destroyed the franchise. Let’s call their bluff. Let’s see what a great job market it is for the geniuses of capitalism who lost $15 billion in three months and helped usher in socialism.

Bartiromo also asked Thain to explain, when jobs and salaries were being cut at his firm, how he could justify spending $1 million to renovate his office. As The Daily Beast and CNBC reported, big-ticket items included curtains for $28,000, a pair of chairs for $87,000, fabric for a “Roman Shade” for $11,000, Regency chairs for $24,000, six wall sconces for $2,700, a $13,000 chandelier in the private dining room and six dining chairs for $37,000, a “custom coffee table” for $16,000, an antique commode “on legs” for $35,000, and a $1,400 “parchment waste can.”

Does that mean you can only throw used parchment in it or is it made of parchment? It’s psychopathic to spend a million redoing your office when the folks outside it are losing jobs, homes, pensions and savings.

Thain should never rise above the level of stocking the money in A.T.M.’s again. Just think: This guy could well have been Treasury secretary if John McCain had won.

Bartiromo pressed: What was wrong with the office of his predecessor, Stanley O’Neal?

“Well — his office was very different — than — the — the general décor of — Merrill’s offices,” Thain replied. “It really would have been — very difficult — for — me to use it in the form that it was in.”

Did it have a desk and a phone?

How are these ruthless, careless ghouls who murdered the economy still walking around (not to mention that sociopathic sadist Bernie Madoff?) — and not as perps?

Bring on the shackles. Let the show trials begin.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 28, 2009, on page A31 of the New York edition.

Shove It

Via Robin on the Stern Show, I learned about teen embedding. When I showed my daughter several stories about teen embedding - where teens have self-mutilated by putting objects such as paper clips and crayons under their skin - she just shook her head in dismay. Google "teen embedding" and you'll see the stories.

It's not so much that teens are fucked up these days, that's normal; I think it's an expression of these times. It may as well be self-amputation, which also occurs. People are shocked but let's not forget that the practice of trepanation has been around a long time. So it's clear that humans have long self-mutilated.

The difference maker is that humans also have large brains; we evolve. Things such as social constructions like racism are systems that have come under scrutiny and we process through them, however imperfectly, yet we continue to make moves, both symbolic and real.

As an old fart, Ive regaled my daughter about what it was like to be alive in the crucible of the 60's and 70's. And I think I've been honest with her when I say that hippies were full of a bunch of goofy shit, but they also got up off their asses and helped stop an insane war, bounce a criminal out of the presidency and fought hard for civil rights and women's rights.

We also were fortunate to have a very active base of activist athletes and artists (film, music and literature in particular) who were plugged in and pumping out messages that spoke to us on the level of the social-political hurricane swirling around us. Without the slightest hint of romance, I can say that there was something in the air.

Today, my daughter finds her generation full of ennui, entitlement and a complete lack of awareness of history. I was talking to one of her friends who's in his 20's and I asked him if he knew who Robert Oppenheimer was, or J. Edgar Hoover, or what the New Deal was. It was shocking, but not surprising that he didn't know, much less showed any interest.

Thing is, it's really not all their fault; education here is a travesty. Kids come out of college and have absolutely no working knowledge of financial systems, much less political systems, and how history has shaped them and impacts the world, and thus their lives. Everyone, via dumbya's boneheaded "No Child Left Behind" program, teaches to rote memorization and test taking, and our kids come out of it beaten up, bored to death, uninspired and automatonic. The drop out rate is appalling in the hood; in East LA, it's probably over 30%, and I guarantee you if that were happening in Beverly Hills or Malibu, parents would be storming their respective city halls and heads would be rolling. But because it's disenfranchised brown mudpeeps, it's a non-subject.

It's tragic, really, when you hear someone such as a western European speaking English and their command is superior to that of a lot of our kids. And while everyone stresses reading as a fundamental skill, and indeed it's important, writing is a lost art. Forget it, it's gone, left to the few.

My father, in his last days, taught cons in medium security; his goal was to bring them up to high school equivalency. He had a wide range in ages, from 18 to old vets, lifers, and one day he asked me what I thought was the average literacy rate of his students. I thought about somewhere in high school. He then told me one of the most shocking things I've ever heard, that it was probably around 5th grade level, if that. Many were illiterate, others, functionally so. Of course, they were all black and brown.

In the midst of EM08, which is distracting everyone by continuing to throw up all over us, there is an American travesty that's been in the works for decades. Thing is, we know what to do. Programs such as "Head Start" which worked with pre-schoolers, have all but shown conclusively that they work well. Too many studies have shown that kids benefit by learning other languages and art, such as music - their academic achievement rises and they grow up to be healthier, more well-adjusted people.

Instead, we have bred generation after generation of disenchanted young people, and embedding is but one way they seek to feel, to live, or reach out for something. Talk about sustainability; these kids are a "resource" of the most precious kind, and we're wasting it like there's no tomorrow.

Churchill had a great quote about how crazy we are: "America always makes the right decision after they've exhausted every other possibility." I'm not sure in this case, because as George Carlin points out, the owners of this country want education dumbed down real good. George said, "It's called 'The American Dream,' because you have to be asleep, to believe it."

Truly.

On This Day

With Barack's first official day here, there's a small flame being lit in America, and it has the feeling of what the 60's/70's felt like, however remotely.

Here's hoping Barack's first day is the start of a new, positive beginning for everyone, not just us Americans. The talking's over, now it's doing.

Onward...

Theory's alright, but practice is supreme.
--David Hilliard

Shithead of the Month

So my friend, Angry Black Woman, went on a trip and had ID theft committed and all of her money was stolen. Here's the jerkoff who took the money.

Shithead of the Month