Horticulture of the Vanities

(Reuters)

Today in Oligarchy: You're so Thain, you prob'ly think the trees are about you. 

That would be John Thain, the chairman and CEO of CIT, who recently paid to restore a 50-acre section of the Bronx Botanical Gardens. Naturally, he renamed it the "Thain Family Forest." But even that doesn't quite cut it. As David Dunlop wryly chronicles in the New York Times, you cannot take a leisurely stroll through this plutocratic Sylvania without encountering The Thain Family at every turn, on every twig, on every piece of bark. It's hard to see the forest for the sleaze:

They turn up on prohibitory signs, too. “Please Stay on the Path: The Thain Family Forest is a fragile ecosystem.”One expects donors’ names at entrance ways and on directional signs and maps. It’s more unusual to find donors’ names woven into the interpretive narration. At the garden, however, the words “Thain Family Forest” are slipped into signs about black oaks, hemlocks and hillside blueberries (“a favorite of birds and small mammals in the Thain Family Forest”); about vernal pools and great horned owls; about mound formations and forest layering; and even about snags, as standing dead trees are called, which help “reveal the Thain Family Forest’s great age.”

Indeed, by the time you reach the sign beginning, “When a tree falls in the Thain Family Forest —,” you may be tempted to finish the thought yourself, “— does it make a Thain Family Sound?”

Truth be told, John Thain himself is a fragile egosystem. You may remember John, formerly of Goldman Sachs, as the tycoon who was put in charge of the financially troubled Merrill Lynch and then proceeded to loot the company of more than $1 million for furnishing his office -- just as the financial world came crashing down on everybody else. Even as Thain self-pampered, and was firing people right and left, he himself was on his way out: Bank of America was already in the process of taking over the company and releasing him with a golden parachute. From the Daily Beast, here's a sampling of what he indulged in while Wall Street's victims were losing their jobs and their homes:

1) $2,700 for six wall sconces.
2) $5,000 for a mirror in his private dining room.
3) $11,000 for fabric for a "Roman Shade.”
4) $13,000 for a chandelier in the private dining room.
5) $15,000 for a sofa.
6) $16,000 for a "custom coffee table.”
7) $18,000 for a “George IV Desk.”
8) $25,000 for a "mahogany pedestal table.”
9) $28,000 for four pairs of curtains.
10) $35,000 for something called a "commode on legs.”
11) $37,000 for six chairs in his private dining room.
12) $68,000 for a "19th Century Credenza" in his office.
13) $87,000 for a pair of guest chairs.
14) $87,000 for an area rug in Thain's conference room and another area rug for $44,000.
15) $230,000 to his driver for one year’s work.
16) $800,000 to hire celebrity designer Michael Smith, who redesignied the White House for the Obama family for "just" $100,000.

When Thain was caught out by the media, he reimbursed the moribund company out of his own personal $83 million compensation package. An investigation into whether Thain used TARP funds to pay himself and his cronies bonuses even as Merrill was imploding was started by then-Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.  Unsurprisingly, it came to nothing. It might have upset the confidence of the markets.

Hey, Zuccotti Parkers! How about we occupy The Thain Family Forest!!


A Tree Grows On Wall Street 






Live from D.C. -- Mayor Shrillionaire!

The Center for American Progress will be livestreaming Mayor Bloomberg's lecture this morning, beginning at 10 a.m.  So if you were unable to show up to occupy and slurp your free coffee, you can watch it here.


(see previous post for background info).


Update: King Michael is upset with everybody in Washington. Here's the snippet that had me snorting the coffee out of my nose:

“The international business community is beginning to whisper comparisons about the U.S. Congress and the Greek Parliament, and if the Supercommittee falls victim to the same kind of partisan paralysis that increasingly defines Washington, those whispers will grow louder."

Oh no.  Not the dreaded whispering campaign by the oligarchs.  The whispers are soft but are soon to become loud PSSSSTs, I reckon.  Bloomberg has an acute sense of hearing as well as a preternatural sense of smell when it comes to Occupy events.  He naturally went on to blather about class warfare, and the big lie about "uncertainty" in the markets  -- the lack of hiring, says he, is caused not by corporate greed and concentration of wealth in the top one percent, but by Big Guv.

But when it comes to suggesting  equal parts revenue to balance out federal cuts, Bloomberg is very much a NIMBY kind of guy.  As in, let the New York State millionaire surtax expire at the end of the year so that Wall Street doesn't just up and leave Wall Street.... for maybe its second untaxed luxury home in Washington, or the Bahamas, or the middle of the ocean.

And he is a great believer in the centrist canard that impoverished Grandmas should share the sacrifice equally with hedge fund managers. Bloomberg, who just last year called for the Bush tax cuts to be made permanent, has flip-flopped and says everybody's tax cuts should expire.  Even Warren Buffett's secretary's.

Want more? You can read the entire transcript here.    

The Shrillionaire Mayor

You'd think that a guy so filthy rich that he changed the law on term limits and bought himself a third stint as mayor would feel a little more secure and sanguine over a protest movement. This is, after all, the man whom Forbes magazine has just ranked as the most powerful person in New York, surpassing Rupert Murdoch for the first time in the plutocratic heft department. But Michael Bloomberg appears to be finally losing it, big-time, over a street protest in the backyard of his fiefdom. 


His latest whine on a long list of whines: OccupyWallSt protesters are just awful people for not having called the cops about a vagrant groper who may have been dumped in Zuccotti Park by the cops themselves in their ongoing and hapless efforts to break up the camp.  Fumed Bloomberg: "Instead of calling the police, they form a circle around the perpetrator, chastise him or her and chase him or her out into the rest of the city - to do who knows what to who knows whom."


He then went on to plagiarize Daffy Duck."It's despicable! I think it is outrageous and it really allows the criminal to strike again making all of us less safe."


Bloomberg's comments came the same day that he said Occupy should blame Congress for "forcing" the poor banks to give out liar loans to greedy unqualified homebuyers.  According to Hizzoner, Wall Street had nothing to do with the economic meltdown.  They never bundled subprime mortgages into toxic investment packages and single-handedly made trillions of dollars of household wealth disappear overnight. Nah. that must have been Reagan welfare queens who had the nerve to take out mortgages they couldn't afford.


Bloomberg has always been carefully PC about Occupy's right to exist (calling it "cathartic and entertaining" for the participants). But, but, but: “My personal view is, why don’t you get out there and try to do something about the things that you don’t like, create the jobs that we are lacking, rather than just yell and scream," he uttered from both sides of his perfectly centered mouth.


According to Bloomberg, residents in the area have complained about quality of life issues. Only trouble is, there are only a few dozen residents in the immediate vicinity, which is a business district. Restaurateurs, he said, complained business was suffering because of the encampment. Then it turned out business is suffering because of the heavy police presence and their metal barricades preventing access to the establishments.  The barricades have been moved and removed any number of times in a continuous game of musical chairs.


Bloomberg's X-ray vision can apparently see rivers of urine running in the streets, and his patrician nose can smell the stench of feces from blocks miles away in his Gracie Mansion digs*. His olfaction is as sensitive as the Princess and the Pea's tush. The very thought of non-rich people getting attention in his back yard is obviously causing a major attack of oligarchic angst and a shattering blow to his sense of entitlement.


Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi has called Bloomberg's reaction to the Occupy phenomenon his "Marie Antoinette" moment. Read his latest blog post for a scathing takedown of Hizzoner. Here's a snippet recounting a typical celebrity centrist soiree that had the "No Labels" crowd liberally laughing:

And it wasn’t hard to see why. Bloomberg’s great triumph as a politician has been the way he’s been able to win over exactly the sort of crowd that was gathering at the HuffPost event that night. He is a billionaire Wall Street creature with an extreme deregulatory bent who has quietly advanced some nastily regressive police policies (most notably the notorious "stop-and-frisk" practice) but has won over upper-middle-class liberals with his stances on choice and gay marriage and other social issues.

But back to that predatory vagrant that Bloomberg insists is endangering him. According to The Daily News, the 26-year-old victim of that incident is walking around carrying a sign that says: "I was more victimized by the NYPD who handled my sexual assault case than I was by the assaulter."


Lauren di Gioia told the newspaper that police kept her waiting for hours after she reported the attack, even telling her she was to blame for sleeping outside.  The same old "you asked for it" crap that prevents a lot of sexual assault victims from ever coming forward."I'm a perfect example of somebody who went through the process. I followed all the steps of the law, and I felt victimized by it. I felt like I was a criminal, too," the paper quotes her as saying.


Correction: in my last blog post, I listed Bloomberg's net worth at $18.1 billion.  I was off a bit. According to the New York Times, he is actually worth $19.5 billion, making him the 12th richest person in America out of a nation of more than 300 million.  He is in the top one percent of the top one percent, or the top .000000001 percent. 


And he doesn't think a millionaire surtax to help save the jobs of teachers or prevent the closings of fire stations is such a fiscally prudent idea.






The Bloomberg Motto: Not One Porta-a-Potty Shall Go to Zuccotti. Let Them Wear Depends.

Update:  I just got my invitation from the White House's favorite Democratic think tank, The Center for American Progress, to listen to Bloomberg give the freaking keynote address on how to reduce the deficit at its "American Action Forum" next week.


This ought to be good.  The gazillionaire who just blamed Congress for the biggest banking fraud in American history will now proceed to advise Congress how to make amends and slash Medicare, Medicare and Social Security.

As the work of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, also known as the super committee, comes to a head, the prospect for an agreement remains uncertain. On Tuesday, November 8 in an event co-hosted by the Center for American Progress and the American Action Forum, New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will present his views on how Congress should address the pressing issues facing the committee, the economic implications that are at stake, and his ideas on how a pragmatic, growth-oriented consensus can be forged.

For any Occupiers in the D.C. area who would like to attend this event, here is the lowdown. (Don't forget to RSVP and get there early for your free coffee):

November 8, 2011, 10:00am – 11:00am

Space is extremely limited. RSVP required.
Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis and not guaranteed.

Coffee will be served at 9:30 a.m.

Center for American Progress1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor
Washington, DC 20005Map & Directions

Nearest Metro: Blue/Orange Line to McPherson Square or Red Line to Metro Center.

For more information, call 202-682-1611.

* Correction: Bloomberg has never lived in the official mayoral residence. He has, however, graced Gracie Mansion with his presence on occasion. For example, when he performed some of the first same sex marriages in the state. Thanks, Purple Girl, for providing his correct address (see comments).

Zuccotti Park Asylum

It's no secret that much of the nation's homeless population is made up of the untreated mentally ill. Since a wave of "deinstitutionalization" in the 60s closed down state-run psychiatric hospitals, the sight of bag ladies and tramps sleeping under bridges has become a common one in most urban areas.


The epidemic of foreclosures and unemployment during the past few years has added members of the middle class to the homeless population.  Homelessness among returning veterans who suffer from PTSD and alcoholism and drug addiction and other war-induced illnesses has skyrocketed too.


So is it any wonder that Zuccotti Park and other "Occupy" sites have become magnets for homeless people looking for a little food, warmth and companionship? 


The New York Daily News , which has been right on top of the day-to-day coverage of all things Zuccotti Park, ran a piece by Harry Siegel yesterday claiming that NYPD has been "dumping" skid row denizens into the park. Protesters suspect that Mayor One Percent, Michael Bloomberg, is behind an orchestrated campaign to disrupt the encampment by filling it with the dregs of humanity.  However, as with every other ploy that he and his minions have used to try to destroy Occupy, Bloomberg's alleged move is having an unanticipated effect.  Far from causing fear and loathing among the "normal" occupiers, the disturbed arrivistes are getting some help and tough love from the park's own security detail.


By all accounts, the park "police" have a lot more heart than the city in dealing with the troubled souls. There are social workers in the park population who know just what to do and who to call. And if the new arrivals cause enough trouble, they're being kicked out under a newly enacted "Code of Conduct."  From today's News:

“If you want to be part of our group, you have to be civilized,” said Paul Isaac, 45, who is part of Occupy Wall Street’s security team. “Unfortunately, some people come to disrupt the peace.”

The list includes rules against stealing, sexual harassment and hurting others - including their feelings. The group also put a ban on fuel, weapons or drugs in the park..

“Basically, we want people to respect one another,” Isaac said.

The alleged dumping of the destitute and the addition of the homeless to the Occupy sites has finally forced the previously invisible reality of extreme poverty into the national spotlight.  Poor people never had a lobby or a voice before, and now they do.  "Nickel and Dimed" author Barbara Ehrenreich writes: 

What occupiers from all walks of life are discovering, at least every time they contemplate taking a leak, is that to be homeless in America is to live like a fugitive. The destitute are our own native-born “illegals,” facing prohibitions on the most basic activities of survival. They are not supposed to soil public space with their urine, their feces, or their exhausted bodies. Nor are they supposed to spoil the landscape with their unusual wardrobe choices or body odors. They are, in fact, supposed to die, and preferably to do so without leaving a corpse for the dwindling public sector to transport, process, and burn.

Homeless people never had neighbors with cell phones to record police brutality as they were rousted from their tent cities, and now they do.  They never had a reporter walk up to them and ask them about their lives, and now they have a chance to tell their own stories.  For every abusive or obnoxious derelict, there are ten more who are living lives of quiet desperation as the cold winter closes in. People in this movement are watching out for one another at the same time they're being mad as hell at the banksters and the thieves. 

And you can take the NYPD's non-denial denial about the dumping allegations with a grain of salt too. Police, hospitals and prisons all over the country have been caught in the act on numerous occasions literally discarding the humanity who just don't fit into "normal society." The most egregious case ever caught on film was that of a confused woman, still in hospital gown, being abandoned on a Los Angeles city street by an ambulance.  LAPD said it was common practice for outside law enforcement agencies to act as taxi cabs to bring derelicts from outside the city limits for dumping on skid row.

The jackbooted storm troopers of the NYPD, the pepper spray, the orange kettling mesh, the mass arrests have only served to solidify public support of the protesters. So the latest ploy of exporting addicts and drunks to the camp sites may simply be the next phase of the Oligarchy's attempt to destroy the movement. This, from Allison Kilkenny of "In These Times":

This action forces OWS to focus its energy internally rather than externally. Now, the group is busy managing its own people, worrying about drug deals and dangerous behavior from possibly foreign enemy forces. This was focus that had previously been aimed outward and upward - targeting what OWS calls the "one percenters."

Like when a magician uses a distraction technique to draw the audience's attention away from a sleight of hand, the NYPD and Bloomberg's administration may be using addicts to distract from what they're actually doing, which is attacking OWS on multiple levels, and ingeniously, making it look like they're not attacking the group at all.

 One of the precursors to Occupy Wall Street was a campout protest over the summer called "Bloombergville."  Demonstrators had planned to "occupy" the front of the mayor's residence one night, but then called off their plans as a token of respect when Hizzoner's elderly mother passed away. NYPD later arrested the group for blocking a different sidewalk and they disbanded. Temporarily, as it turned out.

Bloomberg may be one of the richest of the overbearing overlords of the universe, but that doesn't mean he has any class. He can't hold a candle to the humanistic souls he professes to despise, and so obviously fears.



"And no matter who you are, if you believe in yourself and in your dream, America will always be the place for you." -- Michael Bloomberg, net worth: $18.1 billion.



Trick-or-Treating the Zombies of the Military Industrial Complex

Paul Krugman's column today is a treatise on the "Weaponized Keynesians" -- those Republican ideologues who insist that government should not be in the business of creating jobs -- unless, of course, it's the jobs created through military spending.

These fiscal conservatives love to call tax hikes on the rich and any cuts to defense spending  "Job Killers".  But as Krugman quotes Barney Frank as saying, pumping money into Defense miraculously creates a whole slew of jobs. Stimulus is so stimulating when it involves death and destruction!

So, how do we get our own pet liberal stimulus bills past the war-happy Austerians?  I think we have to start getting sneaky and creative. Just go along with the "War is So Bipartisan" theme.  Make speeches celebrating sadism, torture, death and destruction, and then call Congress and tell them to Pass This Bill Right Now!

 We could rename the endangered Head Start Program the "Douglas MacArthur Early Childhood Education Program for Future Old Soldiers Who Fade Away."  Medicaid payments to local community health centers being slashed? No problem! Introduce a bill funding Defense Against Disease centers. Millions of people will be freezing this winter due to the defunding of home heating assistance.  Put that money under appropriations for heat-seeking missiles. Mortgage relief and rental subsidies and clean, safe homeless shelters can go under Homeland Security. And when we nationalize all the too-big-to-exist banks, we can call them the "In God We Trust Companies" to make the right- wing fundamentalists go all rapturous.


Congress has a nine percent approval rating. They've been starved of oxygen under that suffocating dome. How hard can it be to get the better of them? The possibilities are endless. Let's entangle them in the spider web of their own deceit.

Snow Falling on Pumpkins

Call it the Nightmare Before Christmas, literally and figuratively. For the second time in as many months, our elitist Northeast has been pummeled by a freak storm.  Floods last month, pre-Halloween blizzard yesterday, along with the obligatory power outages. Thanks to those readers who expressed concern, and mea culpa for my lack of blogitude these past several days.  Laziness, coupled with an episode of climate change Armageddon that was amazingly unhyped, for a change.


 So what did I miss during my blackout? Well, Old Man Austerity is making a comeback along with Old Man Winter.  Apparently, the Grand Bargain is being rebargained in the Super-Committee Politburo. Apparently, these apparatchiks have not been paying attention to OccupyWallSt.  The Democrats are offering chained COLA in Social Security, again. The Republicans are refusing to even consider tax increases, again.  Stalemate!  Congressional approval rating plummets to nine percent! (I have a feeling the nine percent comprise members of Congress, their families, their bloated staffs, their lobbyist bribers, and members of the corporate media whose lives and livelihoods depend on nonstop access to Spin City).


The Washington Post is running an outrageous front-page story claiming Social Security is going broke. Of course, it isn't. The trust fund is flush with cash, even though it's been raided and the government doesn't want to put back what it "borrowed", and current revenues are less than in previous years because of the tax holiday and unemployment. Paul Krugman has the most cogent explanation.  It's short, and it won't make your head explode.


Meanwhile, according to "The Hill", the usual suspects are predicting a market crash unless the Super Committee does something. The Third Way, a neoliberal think tank with close ties to Senator-with-Close-Ties-to-Wall Street Chuck Schumer, is warning of a possible downgrade by Fitch and Moody's unless we cut, slash and burn to appease the investor class. This includes cuts to the Social Safety net. By cutting off Grandma's meds and doctor visits, we can have an infrastructure bank and build some bridges. It's the centrist American way.

My favorite line from The Hill article: "Supercommittee failure would undermine the credibility and political clout leaders need to sell their constituencies on continued deficit reduction, they argue."

(Read the whole article if you dare. It is absolutely guaranteed to make your head explode).

Sacrificing the Elderly Poor to Protect Tax Cheats

If you're a Social Security recipient on Medicaid, a bipartisan cabal plans to kick as many of you off the eligibility rolls as possible, just so corporations can get even richer. It's all part of yet another back-door deal in which the Obama Administration pretends to be hoodwinked by Congressional Republicans. In the latest act of Kabuki Theater, the GOP leaders have agreed to pass the most right-wing portion of the president's American Jobs Act: ending a requirement that the government withhold three percent of payments to federal contractors to ensure tax compliance. But but but -- only on condition that it becomes harder for poor people to qualify for Medicaid. Somebody's gotta pay to make the lives of the rich easier, and it ain't gonna be the rich. Besides, this change in eligibility was something Barry proposed way back when The Grand Bargain was the talk of the town.

It is unbelievable but true that in these times of social unrest and ever widening income disparity, the Democrats still buy into the conservative ideology that programs to further enrich the wealthy must always be paid for by our country's most vulnerable citizens.  And even more egregiously in this particular case, it's tax breaks for tax cheats!

From Talking Points Memo's Brian Beutler, here's how the latest proposed social safety net slashing will work: 

The government uses a measure known as Modified Adjusted Gross Income to determine Medicaid eligibility. Currently, though, it only incorporates the taxable portion of Social Security income in that calculation. Under this proposal, it would factor in all Social Security benefits. That means some seniors who currently qualify for Medicaid would no longer be eligible. Doing this would save about $14.6 billion over 10 years — more than the cost of repealing the 3 percent withholding compliance measure.
In sum: make it easier for big contractors to cheat on their taxes, and covering the cost by limiting Medicaid eligibility for sick old people.

This stinks of more corrupt collusion between the Democrats and Republicans, two barely distinguishable factions of the same oligarchic uniparty.  And to think we were under the illusion that the OccupyWallStreet movement would strike fear into their venal withered hearts. They actually have no hearts. The Washington Post has all the sordid details here.

Obama himself was schmoozing at one of his endless series of $35,000-a-plate fundraisers just across the bay from Oakland the other night as riot police attacked peaceful protesters, lobbing tear gas and shooting rubber bullets into their encampment.  Earlier yesterday, he joked with Jay Leno on the "Tonight" show before heading to yet another soiree at the home of Hollywood stars Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith.

The usual Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, will make their usual aggrieved noises over the latest Obama betrayal. Nancy Pelosi will remain stonily silent in her passive-aggressive way, but the deal most likely will go through. These deals always do, not in small part because Obama is the Earner in Chief, holding the key to an expected billion dollar Democratic war chest. Those who don't fall in line run the risk of having their careers redistricted out of existence.



Obama Fiddles....



While Occupy Oakland Burns



** Update 10/27: The House voted to move forward with both bills last night, with just a few Democrats making a noise against the deal. New rules designed to keep the more affluent poor off Medicaid will not take effect until 2014, when all of us will be magically under the thrall of the private insurance companies, and Obamacare theoretically swings into full gear. So if you're currently receiving Social Security plus Medicaid, you're okay for a few more years. Of course, who knows what other goodies the super-secretive Super Committee has up its sleeve to balance the budget?