Wall Street's Useful Idiots

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The KGB used to refer to gullible western peaceniks as “useful idiots” who were easily manipulated to further the Soviet’s cynical Cold War agenda.  Having been a “useful idiot” myself, since I worked against the nuclear arms race, I take exception to that description but it does ring true today in another context.

The Tea Party, a populist movement galvanized by outrage over Wall Street’s rampant greed and the taxpayer bailout that rewarded their excesses, now fairly fits the definition of “useful idiots”.  But this time they serve a different totalitarian “evil empire”, Wall Street.  Every one of the Tea Party’s representatives in Congress and their newly elected governors, are unflinchingly pursuing Wall Street’s legislative agenda, that is diametrically opposed to populist American values.

So much for grassroots, but we already knew that professional Republican operatives like Karl Rove and Dick Armey had corralled the movement.  Now it is clear they have captured it; teabag, teapot, cup and saucer, sugar and all. 

True there are some rumblings against the Afghan quagmire from the Libertarian wing of the Tea Party, but most of the noise is about the deficit and the need for deep budget cuts.  And to a man and a woman, they are faithfully parroting Wall Street’s line as they foist the deficit hoax on the American people with a mantra the mainstream media have obediently echoed. 

Little wonder the Republicans are making headway rewriting recent history to blame the economic crisis of 2008 on big government regulation, not Wall Street’s reckless endangerment of the global economy.  In recent hearings in the House they have exposed their legislative priorities that unwaveringly reflect their fidelity towards their main paymasters. 

Their first two targets, chosen by the Koch Brothers and the Tea Party’s Wall Street backers, are women, Lisa Jackson the head of the EPA and Elizabeth Warren, the head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  Aided by smear campaigns orchestrated by the Wall Street Journal and the dominant right wing media, they threw everything they could to slime and tarnish these women to not just discredit them, but to undermine the credibility of the agencies they head and thus diminish their effectiveness in oversight. 

But the real agenda enacted by the “useful idiots” for the big five banks, is to preserve the bank’s ability to bleed the middle class dry.  Since wages have been flat for working Americans and the Middle class since the 1970s, household debt has doubled as a share of personal income over the 30 years up to the crash of 2008. 

Apparently the banks want more blood out of this stone, with unbridled access to fleece the nation’s debt slaves.  Elizabeth Warren is a speed bump on their path to a plantation economy.  While the household debt crisis is much more dire and closer to home, the national debate is focused on an abstraction and a distraction, the national debt.

Although the deficit was largely caused by unfunded losing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined with the massive bailouts to staunch the bleeding as Wall Street imploded, you would never know that today.  The zealous deficit hawk and Wall Street billionaire Peter Peterson has cleverly spread his money around to rewrite history and lay the blame on big government spending, in particular Federal entitlements and State public employee benefits.  Of course government spending is to blame, but it was taxpayer money spent on the wrong things; unnecessary wars and rescuing unconscionable financial fraudsters.

Again, since it is clear the Kochs got exactly what they paid for and so did Wall Street, we return to political campaign finance as the root of all evil.  Although Clinton offered up the Democratic Party for sale to Wall Street, and then Obama closed the deal, in 2010 the Democrat’s fair weather friends screwed them and gave their money to Wall Street’s traditional friends the Republicans. 

Surely they will do it again in 2012, since the evidence is they are helping Republicans now.  While Wall Street extracts more wealth for themselves, the oligarchs are helping wreck the economic recovery for Main Street, presumably to ensure their hirelings win big next time and they end up with the whole enchilada.

So why has Obama not come to Elizabeth Warren’s defense?  Why not turn the tables on these cynical revisionists who are throttling his economic recovery?  Why not recapture the outrage against Wall Street that the Democrats allowed the Tea Party to run away with in the first place?Make the Tea Party explain their fealty to these same champions of free enterprise who ripped us off in 2008, and are at it again; but this time with an apparent political agenda to create a one party corporate plutonomy. 

Oil and grain speculation, on top of poor harvests, are driving up the price of gas and food, and as the economic recovery falters, the Republicans chances of winning back the Senate (where many more Democrats are up for reelection), not to mention the White House, are looking better and better.  Will we wake up too late when the Tea Party’s backers will be able to totally elimination the EPA?  Will we sit by and watch that uppity woman Elizabeth Warren burned at the stake?