{"id":364347,"date":"2018-06-07T00:47:59","date_gmt":"2018-06-06T23:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=364347"},"modified":"2018-06-07T12:05:59","modified_gmt":"2018-06-07T11:05:59","slug":"the-evilness-of-todays-u-s-democratic-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/the-evilness-of-todays-u-s-democratic-party\/","title":{"rendered":"The Evilness of Today’s U.S. Democratic Party"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t about the Republican Party, which has been controlled by its super-rich ever since Abraham Lincoln was shot in 1865; it\u2019s focusing instead upon the Democratic Party, which didn\u2019t previously serve only the super-rich, but now (like the Republican Party) it does: This is the Party that serves Democratic Party billionaires, instead of Republican Party ones. It\u2019s not democracy, and it therefore cannot even possibly be a democratic republic, either; it is, pure and simple, rule by the aristocracy, otherwise called an \u201coligarchy.\u201d That\u2019s the proven reality of today\u2019s America.<\/span><\/a> <\/span><\/p>\n

At least the Republican Party doesn\u2019t pontificate that it wants anything else than that. But the Democratic Party does, and those lies (which now are repeated endlessly by the Party) are compounding the Party\u2019s evilness. When the few people who run the Democratic National Committee, after Trump\u2019s election, chose Hillary Clinton\u2019s candidate Tom Perez, instead of Bernie Sanders\u2019s candidate Keith Ellison, to run the Party, this locked-in the Party\u2019s rot — made it enduring for the foreseeable future, not merely a Clinton-Obama phenomenon.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Ever since at least Bill Clinton\u2019s Presidency, the Democratic Party has been effectively controlled by billionaires who believe (unlike the ones who fund the Republican Party) that so long as a few crumbs of symbolically progressive rhetoric<\/i> are repeated as \u2018representing\u2019 what the Party stands for, the billionaires will be able to grab from the Government whatever they want, and their abuses of (and deceptions against) the public will be able to continue without real accountability. Thus, though low-class crooks (and many poor innocents who become wrongly convicted) go to prison, super-rich or \u2018upper-class\u2019 mega-crooks become instead \u2018philanthropists\u2019, and they get buildings named after themselves, while receiving further tax-write-offs, at the same time.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Democrat Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2009 right after America’s orgy of bankster crimes, which the Republican President George W. Bush had tolerated, and which had brought down the global economy. This Democratic President didn\u2019t prosecute the banksters; he protected them from prosecution<\/span><\/a>. Although he promised the public that he would prosecute the banksters, he told the banksters privately that he would \u201cprotect\u201d them<\/span><\/a>, and he even went so far as to tell them, in private, that the public who wanted them to be investigated, and wanted them to be maybe even prosecuted, for what they had done, were comparable to the KKK in the 1920s, who, with pitchforks, had pursued Blacks, and then lynched them. The public in a supposed democracy were here being analogized, by this Democratic U.S. President, to being a racist, bigoted, mob. The banksters were their supposed victims. Obama told the banksters, in private, as reported in Ron Suskind\u2019s 2011 Confidence Men:<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy administration is the only thing between you and the <\/i>pitchforks<\/i><\/b>.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

It was an attention grabber, no doubt, especially that carefully chosen last word.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

But then Obama\u2019s flat tone turned to one of support, even sympathy. \u201cYou guys have <\/i>an acute public relations problem<\/i><\/b> that\u2019s turning into a political problem,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd <\/i>I want to help.<\/i><\/b> But you need to show that you get that this is a crisis and that everyone has to make some sacrifices.\u201d According to one of the participants, he then said, <\/i>\u201cI\u2019m not out there to go after you. I\u2019m protecting you. But if I\u2019m going to shield you<\/i><\/b> from public and congressional anger, you have to give me something to work with on these issues of compensation.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

No suggestions were forthcoming<\/i><\/b> from the bankers on what they might offer, and the president didn\u2019t seem to be championing any specific proposals. He had none: neither Geithner nor Summers believed compensation controls had any merit.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

After a moment, the tension in the room seemed to lift: <\/i>the bankers realized he was talking about voluntary limits on compensation until the storm of public anger passed. It would be for show.<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Obama said \u201cEveryone has to make sacrifices,\u201d but he was talking to people who simply refused to be included in that \u201ceveryone.\u201d As the mega-crooks who had been profiting from the crimes that had brought about the global economic collapse, those \u201csacrifices\u201d should have been life-imprisonments. Only by means of such accountability, would their successors not try anything of the sort that these banksters had done. But such was not to be the case.<\/span><\/p>\n

Obama kept his word to them. The banksters got off scot-free, and kept their personal hundreds of millions of dollars \u2018earned\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Examples:<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

On 21 September 2013 in The New York Times<\/i>, William D. Cohan, formerly of Wall Street but now an independent investigative journalist, headlined\u00a0“Was This Whistle-Blower\u00a0Muzzled?”<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and he described how Richard M. Bowen III, who had testified to the FCIC, was muzzled by them. Bowen testified because he claimed that he had been fired by Citigroup after allegedly having told Robert Rubin (who made $142 million there) that the bum mortgages they were selling to the public were rigged and would bomb.<\/span><\/p>\n

On 14 January 2014, Cohan headlined at Bloomberg News,\u00a0“Prosecutors Balk, Bankers Walk”<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0and he summed up the outcomes for the people who had planned and orchestrated these thefts by fraud:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cJimmy Cayne, the\u00a0former chief executive officer of Bear Stearns & Co., continues to enjoy\u00a0playing bridge and golf, his $400 million-plus fortune, his sprawling\u00a0mansion\u00a0in Elberon, New Jersey, and his duplex at the Plaza Hotel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDick Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers\u00a0Holdings Inc., …\u00a0is closer to $520 million, according to\u00a0people who prepared and studied Lehman\u2019s public filings.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Stan O\u2019Neal resigned from Merrill Lynch\u00a0& Co. in 2007, less than a year before it almost went bankrupt, he\u00a0was\u00a0given a parting gift of $161.5 million and a board seat \u2014 which he still holds\u00a0\u2014 at Alcoa Inc.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAngelo Mozilo, the former Countrywide\u00a0Financial Corp. CEO, … walked off center stage with a net worth of\u00a0about $600\u00a0million.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Those are just a few.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, none of them was prosecuted, even though they all masterminded their respective organization’s role in the mega-crime, and benefited enormously from doing that. <\/span><\/p>\n

Things have been a bit worse for a few of their employees, however:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe lone civil case that occasioned a victory\u00a0lap for the Securities and Exchange Commission was against Fabrice\u00a0Tourre, the\u00a0former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. vice president who was guilty of nothing more\u00a0than following\u00a0orders as a foot soldier in the Wall Street army. Tourre is\u00a0currently appealing his 2013 conviction in this ridiculous\u00a0case; I hope he\u00a0wins.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It was for reasons like these that, on 12 November 2013, Reuters headlined \u201cJudge Criticizes Lack of Prosecution Against\u00a0Wall Street Executives for Fraud\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and reported that:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe federal judge\u00a0who oversaw the recent civil fraud trial against Bank of America Corp\u00a0criticized the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday for failing to\u00a0prosecute\u00a0high-level executives over the financial crisis.\u00a0U.S. District Judge\u00a0Jed Rakoff of Manhattan said while companies have been prosecuted for causing\u00a0the 2007-2009 financial meltdown, Wall Street executives\u00a0have escaped justice.\u00a0\u2018The failure of the\u00a0government to bring to justice those responsible for such a massive fraud\u00a0speaks greatly to weaknesses in our prosecutorial system that need to\u00a0be\u00a0addressed,\u2019 Rakoff said.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So: though Obama publicly promised prosecution of banksters<\/span><\/a>, he privately delivered protection of banksters \u2014 those people thus being the same ones who still occupy top positions of honor and authority, instead of shame and imprisonment, in American society. His promises to the public were lies, but his promises that were made secretly to these top agents of the aristocrats were his actual commitments. That\u2019s<\/i> how an aristocracy operates. Aristocrats (and their direct agents) are above the law. This is how an aristocracy is, in fact, most implicitly defined: people who are not, in fact, above (and making) the law, are subjects, in the traditional feudal \u2014 but now in the fascist \u2014 social order. Today\u2019s aristocrats are the billionaires, plus some of the centi-millionaires. The top executives of mega-banks are crucial agents of the aristocracy; and, for that reason, can\u2019t be prosecuted (since to prosecute them would make the principals \u2014 the aristocrats themselves \u2014 likewise vulnerable).<\/span><\/p>\n

America has the highest percentage of its people in prison of any nation on Earth, except the tiny island of Seychelles<\/a><\/span>, and almost all of its prisoners are poor \u2014 basically people who can\u2019t afford the high costs of an adequate legal defense. As Michael Lynch\u2019s excellent 2007 book Big Prisons, Big Dreams<\/i><\/span><\/a> points out, \u201can important\u00a0criminal element omitted from\u00a0America\u2019s prison system includes white-collar and corporate criminals.\u201d Furthermore, whereas formerly, the economic-class composition of America\u2019s prisoners was routinely tabulated by the U.S. federal Government, it no longer is: the U.S. Government \u201cnow excludes information on income and occupation necessary for making inmate social class determinations. Currently, the only useful information that remains for making a\u00a0class assessment is\u00a0level of educational attainment.\u201d A tabulation of this, that was made in 2002, found: \u201c89 percent of inmates had a high school education\u00a0or less.\u00a0These \ufb01gures\u00a0are well below the educational\u00a0attainment\u00a0of the general U.S. population, where about 41 percent of the population fall into the same educational categories.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Prisons, in other words, are modern America\u2019s poorhouses. That too is characteristic for an aristocracy \u2014 not<\/i> for any authentic democracy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, late in Obama\u2019s Presidency, he appointed the DNC chief who rigged the Party\u2019s primaries and caucuses for his chosen corrupt heir, Hillary Clinton, and against Bernie Sanders<\/span><\/a>, the candidate who (by all the polls) had far higher favorability ratings from the entire electorate than Ms. Clinton did, and than did Donald Trump (or any other candidate). And, after losing to Trump, the Democratic Party don\u2019t blame themselves for the outcome, they blame Vladimir Putin. They try to incite World War III, rather than recognize that they had appointed an incompetent nominee. And they expect to win the 2018 mid-term elections because the Republican candidates are even more blatantly bad on domestic issues than they, the Democrats, are. And they blame the electorate, instead of themselves, for the increasing numbers of voters who either stay away from the polling-places altogether, or else register with no party. The aristocracy are thus giving us just these two choices: the liberal fascist Party, versus the conservative fascist Party. That fascist \u2019choice\u2019 is today\u2019s American \u2018democracy\u2019<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

For many Americans, polling-places thus now reek too much to visit. Those places that should be shrines to democracy, have become, instead, mere fronts for America\u2019s aristocracy, controlled from the top, behind the scenes<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse This isn\u2019t about the Republican Party, which has been controlled by its super-rich ever since Abraham Lincoln was shot in 1865; it\u2019s focusing instead upon the Democratic Party, which didn\u2019t previously serve only the super-rich, but now (like the Republican Party) it does: This is the Party that serves Democratic Party billionaires, instead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":364348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,519],"tags":[115,30,96,3604,804,524,755,49,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-364347","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-newswire","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-cover-up","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-politics-2","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-usa","16":"tag-usa-news","17":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}