Yellen at the Top of My Lungs

Politico just reported that numerous Biden Cabinet appointees are beneficiaries of the "revolving door" pattern whereby people go from business to government to business and back again.  In particular his Treasury nominee, Janet Yellen, has been paid $7.2 million to speak to Wall Street and other large corporations in just the past two years.  The report also mentioned Anthony Blinken and Avril Haines, but Yellen took in the most, and was featured in the lede.  So of course numerous Democratic trolls are attacking Politico for objecting to a woman's being paid fairly for her "intellectual property."  Would you pick on a man for doing it? they demanded.  Well, yes, I would: the left has criticized past presidents for cashing in after they left office, and not just presidents.

I think my favorite is Ronald Reagan, who was paid $2 million for a one-week junket to Japan in 1989, $1 million of that sum for just one speech.  But you know that killjoy leftists picked on a poor old retired man trying to earn some pin money with his "intellectual property" (an oxymoron where Reagan was concerned).  The Washington Post sympathized at the time:

And yet, for those who remembered Reagan in the White House, it was strange to see him so stripped of the powers of the presidency. There was no Air Force One, no phalanx of Secret Service, no Baker, Deaver and Meese, no White House spin doctors to tell the press what the president really meant to say. Reagan arrived at one banquet with a trumpet fanfare but no "Hail to the Chief," and left to the bittersweet strains of a Mozart string quartet. He was more on his own than he had been in eight years.

What a guy.  Makes you cry.  And I did.

Jon Schwarz made a typically good point: 

Democrats always say this about their favs — sure, they've cashed in *out of office*, but it will have no effect on their actions. So...why shouldn't Wall Street be able to give bags of cash to Yellen & co while they're *in office*? They're incorruptible!

Might as well.

My favorite take on the Yellen story, though, comes from David J. Rothkopf, a writer who I think blocked me on Twitter some time ago, but now that my account has been suspended I can see him again:

Would you rather she'd taken a vow of poverty and spent her non-government work time sitting in a convent scribbling formulas with a quill pen?  Is she, a woman who devoted her life to an incredibly distinguished career in academia & public service, not entitled to earn a living?

This is like the Catholics who try to rebut criticisms of papal ostentation by accusing you of wanting the Holy Father to starve in the gutter.  The idea that Yellen might earn a living by working -- say, two minimum-wage jobs with no benefits, as so many Americans must do these days.  A year or two spent living paycheck to paycheck would give her lived experience that would make her a better Treasury Secretary.  Speaking to big corporations isn't earning money, and it's absurd for Rothkopf to pretend it is.

Public and Privates

I'm not surprised by this material, since it's about what I expected from Clinton as the corporatist Reagan Democrat she is. But you can see why she didn't want it made public -- I mean, "There is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives"! I feel their pain.

At the Goldman Sachs Builders and Innovators Summit, Clinton responded to a question from chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, who quipped that you “go to Washington” to “make a small fortune.” Clinton agreed with the comment, and complained about ethics rules that require officials to divest from certain assets before entering government. “There is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives,” Clinton said.

At a 2013 speech for Morgan Stanley on April 18, Clinton praised the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan — which would reduce corporate tax rates while raising the Social Security age. “But Simpson-Bowles — and I know you heard from Erskine earlier today — put forth the right framework. Namely, we have to restrain spending, we have to have adequate revenues, and we have to incentivize growth. It’s a three-part formula,” she said ...

But there are signs in the emails released by Wikileaks that she also took a fairly progressive stance on certain topics, including health reform ...

But during the campaign this year, she again reversed her position, declaring that single payer will “never, ever” happen in the U.S. Audio obtained by The Intercept last week showed Clinton dismissing the idea of free healthcare during another private event with donors.

I've already seen Clintonistas dismissing the new Wikileaks material as no big deal, underwhelming, a letdown. And maybe it is, if you expected/ hoped it would include celebrations of eating aborted babies. And as I say, there are not really any surprises to her critics; just what we expected.

The thing to remember is that partisans will dismiss any criticism of their candidate. Trump fans aren't going to be bothered by the latest video showing Trump to be a vilely sexist scumbag -- Oh please, is that news? Tell us something we didn't already know -- because they know what he's like and that's why they like him. So do his critics, but they enjoy clucking over his awfulness.  The same is true of Clinton, as it was of Obama.  Oh, she's a devout corporatist and warmonger?  Tell us something we didn't already know!  What did you expect, Che Guevara?

The Party of Populist Anger -- The Envelope, Please

Glenn Greenwald has some good commentary on a New York Times article about Wall Street's "buyer's remorse" -- that is, they bought and paid for Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress, but now they don't think they got their money's worth, so they're going to buy some Republicans instead. As Greenwald points out:

that Wall Street is dissatisfied with the Democrats and the Obama administration reveals how extreme are their expectations of control of the Government. The second-highest-ranking Democratic Senator, Dick Durbin, recently conceded of the Democratic-controlled Congress: "frankly, bankers own the place." It's impossible to find a more loyal and attentive servant to bankers than Obama Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. As the NYT article this morning details, Wall Street executives and their lobbyists have virtually unfettered access to the administration and to the President himself. You would think they'd be satisfied with the state of affairs in Washington. Yet so extreme are their perceived entitlements of control that even mere symbolic and rhetorical disobedience from the politicians they own -- he said some mean things about us -- creates a sense of righteous grievance: our government employees do not behave this way toward us and will be punished if it continues.

And:

note that, more than a year later, Wall Street can only complain about "rhetoric," not any actual legislation that has been passed ...

As the Times writer says, "Bankers, unhappy at the president’s proposals for tighter financial regulations, are shifting donations to Republicans." That's proposals. By the time Obama gets through being bipartisan, it's not likely those "tighter financial regulations" will amount to anything that could trouble a banker's sleep or digestion. Read all of Greenwald's article. Every voter should be aware of the Times article, the bankers' threats, and the Republicans' (and the Democrats') readiness to do the bankers' bidding.

And not that it matters, but this might come in handy:



But don't forget that Obama also supported Bush's bailout. It's easy to make fun of the ignorance of Palin's fans, but Obama's fans are no better.