Reagan S&L crash - he prosecuted and jailed 50 bankers. Obama 2009 global crash - the same prosecutors were ready to go. Obama prosecuted none. The crimes of the bankers were visited upon the foreclosed. In Iceland most, if not all bankers, got government housing. The difference? In the US '78 Bellotti, the corporate funding of elections, had settled in. Neoliberals don't jail their donor-owners. Iceland had and still has honest democratic elections.
It was not till Dobb's that I realized that legislative solutions could not survive the tyranny of the Court. Two years and one week later, in complete ignorance of the world they inhabit and with an arrogance matched only by their power-lust, they give us 'Trump' the Precedent. That arrogance is born of the astonishing fact that, though pundits complain vociferously that the facially unConstitutional Precedents are facially unConstitutional, no Precedent has ever been modified save by the Supreme Court itself.
Trump has told us clearly what he would do if President again. The Court now assures him that vengeance, bloody vengeance, is his - with Absolute Immunity. And the sociopathic 6 Justices are there to help him through the election (4 of them participated in the travesty of Bush v Gore in 2000). And with Harris surging, helping Trump through the election now seems a bit more critical than it did a month ago. But this is not the 2020 rush job of alternate electors and Trump calling Georgia demanding "find me 11,780 votes". The MAGAs have worked for 4 years to perfect multi-tiered program of targeted voter suppression with new state laws allowing, for instance, all votes in Fulton County (Atlanta) to be thrown out. Such unConstitutional state laws will be appealed to the Supreme Court - where the Rulings may already be written.
There is however a vulnerabilty. Biden is the President. He can send Seal Team 6 down to the Supreme Court, under the power they vested him with, to demand resignation of the complicit 6 with extinction of all Precedents that are not 100% compliant with the amended Constitution that they are sworn to uphold.
Excellent! And I also liked the referenced Ian Welsh articles.
Personally, I give Obama credit for changing the national discourse on race relations in a positive direction. It perhaps would have been too much to take on the financial establishment at the same time. Similarly, Biden and the Dems (including Sanders) may have figured that they couldn’t take on the national security establishment while making incremental inroads against monopoly capitalism.
(My opinion is that the latter (Biden embrace of neocon foreign policy) was a deadly mistake. )
Don't kid yourself. Had Sanders won in 2016, he would have been lucky to have been Jimmy Carter 2.0. Sanders is a eunuch, and his opponents are powerful.
The time for a rule-following, norms-observing milquetoast like Sanders is long past. What is needed is a Huey P. Long.
No question Sanders was a huge disappointment. Since the 2020 race, I've always talked of "the Sanders of our imagination" — since the imagined Sanders was not the one who emerged with the 2020 chips were down and Biden stood (was propped up) in the way.
Love it. Love the realpolitik. It's not a game.
Good article, thanks. Did Obama do anything for the lower class or middle-class? I can't see it.
Thanks, Jane. Not in most people's estimation, unless you count the ACA as a gift. He did create the greatest loss of black wealth in a long time.
https://jacobin.com/2017/12/obama-foreclosure-crisis-wealth-inequality
Ironic. Nixon-to-China territory.
Thomas
Reagan S&L crash - he prosecuted and jailed 50 bankers. Obama 2009 global crash - the same prosecutors were ready to go. Obama prosecuted none. The crimes of the bankers were visited upon the foreclosed. In Iceland most, if not all bankers, got government housing. The difference? In the US '78 Bellotti, the corporate funding of elections, had settled in. Neoliberals don't jail their donor-owners. Iceland had and still has honest democratic elections.
It was not till Dobb's that I realized that legislative solutions could not survive the tyranny of the Court. Two years and one week later, in complete ignorance of the world they inhabit and with an arrogance matched only by their power-lust, they give us 'Trump' the Precedent. That arrogance is born of the astonishing fact that, though pundits complain vociferously that the facially unConstitutional Precedents are facially unConstitutional, no Precedent has ever been modified save by the Supreme Court itself.
Trump has told us clearly what he would do if President again. The Court now assures him that vengeance, bloody vengeance, is his - with Absolute Immunity. And the sociopathic 6 Justices are there to help him through the election (4 of them participated in the travesty of Bush v Gore in 2000). And with Harris surging, helping Trump through the election now seems a bit more critical than it did a month ago. But this is not the 2020 rush job of alternate electors and Trump calling Georgia demanding "find me 11,780 votes". The MAGAs have worked for 4 years to perfect multi-tiered program of targeted voter suppression with new state laws allowing, for instance, all votes in Fulton County (Atlanta) to be thrown out. Such unConstitutional state laws will be appealed to the Supreme Court - where the Rulings may already be written.
There is however a vulnerabilty. Biden is the President. He can send Seal Team 6 down to the Supreme Court, under the power they vested him with, to demand resignation of the complicit 6 with extinction of all Precedents that are not 100% compliant with the amended Constitution that they are sworn to uphold.
Excellent! And I also liked the referenced Ian Welsh articles.
Personally, I give Obama credit for changing the national discourse on race relations in a positive direction. It perhaps would have been too much to take on the financial establishment at the same time. Similarly, Biden and the Dems (including Sanders) may have figured that they couldn’t take on the national security establishment while making incremental inroads against monopoly capitalism.
(My opinion is that the latter (Biden embrace of neocon foreign policy) was a deadly mistake. )
Don't kid yourself. Had Sanders won in 2016, he would have been lucky to have been Jimmy Carter 2.0. Sanders is a eunuch, and his opponents are powerful.
The time for a rule-following, norms-observing milquetoast like Sanders is long past. What is needed is a Huey P. Long.
No question Sanders was a huge disappointment. Since the 2020 race, I've always talked of "the Sanders of our imagination" — since the imagined Sanders was not the one who emerged with the 2020 chips were down and Biden stood (was propped up) in the way.
Thomas