i-Spy With My Little FBI

When I compared President Obama to James Bond and their two beloved Moneypennies in a recent post, I was half-kidding. But isn't it a coincidence that the title of his latest West Wing Week propaganda video is called "Nobody Does It Better" -- the theme song of The Spy Who Loved Me? Check it out. It's just as overblown and satiric as the typical 007 movie. Every time the camera pans to the White House press corps, for example, they're frantically transcribing every golden Obamian word on their steno pads. There are multiple shots of Obama in such an exalted state of being that the videographer had to have been groveling at the president's feet in order to capture all those precious moments:



Official White House Propaganda Photo

And speaking of the dark side, now comes word that Obama wants to force  social media and internet service providers to make it easier for his domestic goons to eavesdrop on the internet communications of every man, woman and child in the USA, the world, the universe, and points beyond. After all, the American Empire needs literally tons more data to fill the vast empty spaces of the newly-constructed super-secret Orwellian storage facility in Utah. (check out this site if you prefer your dystopia with a side of parody.)

According to yesterday's New York Times, the president is finally "on the verge" of submitting to the seductive FBI, which is apparently growing tired of the same old, same old-fashioned wiretapping. Those land lines are going the way of the dinosaur (or the faithful but aging first wife) . The much sexier Facebook, Twitter, Skype and the like are ripe for predatory Bondian picking.

It's not that the FBI doesn't already record our conversations, spying at will and without a warrant. It just figures it could use some of that good old retroactive cover from the executive branch. But the creepy part is that Obama is considering actually punishing large service providers if they, unlike him, do not swoon at the chance to act out Peeping-Tom fantasies and become full partners in government crime:

While the F.B.I.’s original proposal would have required Internet communications services to each build in a wiretapping capacity, the revised one, which must now be reviewed by the White House, focuses on fining companies that do not comply with wiretap orders. The difference, officials say, means that start-ups with a small number of users would have fewer worries about wiretapping issues unless the companies became popular enough to come to the Justice Department’s attention.

Still, the plan is likely to set off a debate over the future of the Internet if the White House submits it to Congress, according to lawyers for technology companies and advocates of Internet privacy and freedom.

(snip)

Under the new proposal, providers could be ordered to comply, and judges could impose fines if they did not. The shift in thinking toward the judicial fines was first reported by The Washington Post, and additional details were described to The New York Times by several officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Under the proposal, officials said, for a company to be eligible for the strictest deadlines and fines — starting at $25,000 a day — it must first have been put on notice that it needed surveillance capabilities, triggering a 30-day period to consult with the government on any technical problems.

Such notice could be the receipt of its first wiretap order or a warning from the attorney general that it might receive a surveillance request in the future, officials said, arguing that most small start-ups would never receive either.
 

As Philip Bump of The Atlantic points out, the White House proposal does not take into account that those small, temporary or start-up service providers with few users could easily bypass the new rules for allowing back-door i-Spying:

Which brings us to the most obvious way for terrorists or drug dealers or law-breakers or, yes, privacy puritans to avoid the FBI's proposed wiretapping ability: if you want to reduce the likelihood that your communications will be observed, check out what will hereafter be known as "burner" companies — new shops that enable the sort of communications you want to do but are unlikely to have enough users that one draws the attention of the FBI. Become a TechCrunch afficianado! When a company announces it's "a new way to connect people," that's your best bet, as long as it doesn't become too popular. (The "burner" analogy to cheap cell phones — you've seen The Wire, right? — is flawed, of course; that would be more like creating new Facebook accounts to send messages for a day or so.)

And, in keeping with the theme of government of, by and for the plutocracy, the new rules will also make it easier for corporations to use the backdoor technology to hack into our private communications. One more reason not to use Facebook. And forget about Twitter. Whoever doesn't already realize that your every Tweet is out there for public consumption is a twit. Even deleted Tweets linger in cyberspace forever.

The FBI doesn't even need a back door when most of our lives are already an open book. Nobody Does It Better. The Homeland Security state is De Best!

We weren't looking, but somehow they found us. We tried to hide from their love light. But like Heaven above us, the spies who loved us are keeping all our secrets safe tonight. 

Not.

Rampant Rape in the Military: Who Knew?

He is shocked, shocked that raping is going on in this establishment. Commander in Chief Obama, along with the Congress, Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines and all the ships at sea are floundering. How in the name of almighty empire could this be happening to the greatest military force the world has ever known?

Let the annual bromides begin.

He wants it rooted out, pronto. Same as he wanted it rooted out last year, and the year before that. And just to show how much he cares, he's punted the scandal of a 37% increase in military sexual assaults in one year over to yet another wishy-washy defense secretary to sweep under the rug deal with:

I’ve … indicated to him that we not only have to step up our game but exponentially go after it,” Obama said.

It is never a good sign when the big boss frames dealing with a rape epidemic among his troops in terms of a sport. Women being beaten to a pulp in the good old boys' club? Just step up your game, fellas; shoot a few hoops, have a few beers.

And you know it's a bad sign when even one of the Senate's most outspoken feminists frames her outrage in jingoism. My comment to Maureen Dowd's column today: 

Sen. (Kirsten-NY) Gillibrand said, "Obviously, there's a failing in training and understanding of what sexual assault is and how corrosive and damaging it is to good order and discipline and how it's undermining the credibility of the greatest military force in the world."

How about undermining the rights of the victims? I'm hearing echoes in American officialdom of the Vatican response to the child sex abuse scandal. How awful that the failure of a few sickos damaged the rep of the Church, what with its grand history of inquisitions and crusades and extermination-by-disease of native peoples. How terrible for American Empire that serial rapists are now harming the "good order" of the biggest war machine on the face of the earth, interfering with our capacity to invade, bomb, occupy and operate an obscene 1,000 military bases abroad, even as our leaders impose cruel austerity here at home.

It's not a lack of training. It's too much training. It's training generation after generation how to kill, and rewarding them for it with stars and bars and perks. Rape has been a feature, not a bug, of military cultures since the dawn of time.

That it's so rapidly escalating in our own armed forces is an indication that our military itself has grown too large to control, just as our banks have become too big to fail. We have entered the new age of American feudalism.

Restore good order and discipline. Cut the Pentagon budget, stop the wars, heal the corrosion right here at home.
 

 

Obama's Sugar Mama

What do James Bond and Barack Obama have in common besides suaveness, subterfuge, stealth, and secrecy? 

 

 

 

Moneypenny!

While Ian Fleming named his fictional character ironically, she being a mere secretary, Barack wouldn't know irony if it bit him in the tush. (example: his standard "This is not who we are" verbal vs. defacto policies for drone strikes, Gitmo, a record number of whistleblowing prosecutions, a record number of deportations, a record amount of campaign contributions, a slew of unregistered lobbyists in his White House, restriction of Plan B contraceptives only hours after gushing to Planned Parenthood that he'd forever honor the freedom of the uteri of America, etc.)

Another difference is that the fictional Moneypenny is smitten with Bond. In real life, MoneyPenny is smitten with power, and Obama is smitten with MoneyPenny's money.

But speaking of irony -- the socialite parents of Obama's Commerce Secretary-designate and mega compaign bundler Penny Pritzker must have had it in spades, what with hilariously naming their privileged spawn after a one-cent piece. And Penny Sue, no less, after the Mom who died tragically young in 1982, having inexplicably flung herself from a tow truck hauling her broken-down car. Penny's father also died young, of a heart attack at age 39.

The surviving and thriving Penny and her entire multi-generational clan make the dreaded Greater Evil Mitt Romney look like St. Francis of Assisi. Patriarch Abram, who lived to be 100, deliberately modeled his dynasty after the banking Rothschilds. The Pritzkers were stashing their billions in offshore accounts when Mitt was still in diapers, long before it became fashionable to do so.

MoneyPenny was a pioneer in the economy-destroying subprime mortgage industry, an institutional racist who helped evict poor black Chicago families from their homes. The multimillion-dollar fine the Pritzkers paid in restitution for losing millions in Superior Bank depositor accounts was just the cost of doing business. A friendly judge actually barred the victims from suing the Pritzkers, who personally recouped and pocketed part of the FDIC payout after their bank collapsed under the weight of its own greed.

In their heydey, which culminated in the roaring 90s, the Pritzkers leveraged buyouts of such stalwarts as Eastern Airlines, the biggest private hospital chain in Britain, and Royal Caribbean. The medical school at the University of Chicago is named after them, as is the prestigious architecture prize. All told, the number of the extended family's vast holdings was at one point in the 10,000 range. Afterward, the clan began an orgy of self-cannibalization, becoming embroiled in a generation-spanning slew of lawsuits reminiscent of Dicken's Bleak House.

Right up until the time Obama dropped his last vestige of pretend-populism last week and nominated her to his cabinet, MoneyPenny had been serving on Rahm Emanuel's Chicago school board. She rubber-stamped the firing of hundreds of unionized teachers and the closing of more than 50 schools in poor, mainly black neighborhoods. Did I mention that she is a big fan of for-profit charter schools? And why not -- she owns one of them. She also owns creepy credit reporting agency Trans-Union. Don't like mistakes on your credit reports? MoneyPenney blames you for not regularly checking them. So (Penny) Sue Her! Plenty of people have. But no matter. Her family has its own in-house law firm, which does nothing but defend these predators, 24/7.


A few years ago, during Chicago's record heat wave, her Hyatt hotel management team ordered heat lamps turned on striking workers. She has resisted calls to include the hired housekeeping help on the Hyatt board. She's cashed in on every local, state and federal tax loophole on the cooked books. She's successfully and serially protested against the property tax levies on her Chicago estate. 

MoneyPenny had to keep a low profile as Barack's Sugar Mama throughout his first term, when his re-election hopes hinged on differentiating himself from that other vulture capitalist, Mitt Romney. It might not have sat well with the base had he openly canoodled with the feminine version of Mitt. He did give MoneyPenny a secret ride on Air Force One last summer after she'd raised some secretive millions at a closed-press fund-raiser in San Francisco.

(Another bit of irony: one of MoneyPenny's nieces, Liesel Pritzker, was a child actress who had a role in the Harrison Ford blockbuster Air Force One. She also starred in A Little Princess. Liesel later sued MoneyPenny and her uncles and her cousins and her aunts for looting her trust fund. The Pritzkers make the Dynasty and Dallas TV soap opera famiglias look like The Waltons. The wholesome TV Waltons, not the real Waltons, whom they actually do kind of resemble)

Mitt ultimately lost because his operatives, unlike Barack's, failed to confiscate cell phones at fundraisers. One disgruntled bartender took aim in Boca, and the 47% takers/makers speech went down in history. The plutocratic cell phones at the Obama pay-to-play soirees were all safely stashed in garbage bags for the duration. No more Clinging to Guns and Religion moments for Obama! He bit the bullet to live another term as placeholder for the interests of the oligarchy.

From all indications, an honest to goodness 21st century robber baroness will be confirmed as our Commerce Secretary and end up having nominal jurisdiction over such entities as NOAA. Which is ironically fitting, given that we're long overdue for both climate and financial cataclysms, occurring solely because of the negligence and corruption and greed and deregulatory frenzies of the powers that be.

We don't need a MoneyPenny. We need a HennyPenny. Because in actuality, the sky is falling.

Merchants of Death

The privilege of gaping at piles of twisted metal and gawking at long-suppressed videos of people jumping to their deaths from the Twin Towers will not come cheap. So decree the people running the Atrocity Exhibition 9/11 Museum at the site of the 2001 World Trade Center attacks. Tickets will go at about $25 a pop. It's the high cost of fetishization. It's the overhead of building in the underground. Touring Ground Zero cannot come at zero cost to the public. This is America. The site, after all, is adjacent to Wall Street and Club Cipriani, home of the $25 hamburger.

Profound sanctimony and solemnity also become very expensive when the people in charge of perpetuating it are earning six-figure salaries, and the billionaire shrillionaire named Bloomberg is only lending -- not donating, mind you -- a few million of his own stash to the museum. First responders may have paid with their lives, their blood and their health. But everybody will be paying Hizzoner, with interest.

The profit motive and ticket info were not mentioned in a 60 Minutes puff-piece ("Curating Moments of Terror and Tragedy") that aired last weekend, in which Lesley Stahl got the grand tour of the Grand Guignol. Making horror tasteful, making necrophilia seem like respect.... it's hard out there for people profiting off the mass murder of others. But Alice Greenwald, museum curator, is experienced, having just come to 9/11 from the Holocaust Museum. Here's a maudlin sampling of the transcript:

Alice Greenwald: Welcome to Foundation Hall.

Lesley Stahl:...that takes your breath away.

Alice Greenwald: It's haunting and a little chilling knowing you're in the belly of ground zero. In the place where so many innocent people lost their lives.

Lesley Stahl: So here we are, we're right where the buildings collapsed. We're in it.

Alice Greenwald: Most museums are buildings that house artifacts. We're a museum in an artifact.

Lesley Stahl: Where we are is almost sacred.

Alice Greenwald: I think you are become super conscious of where you're standing. And that's a powerful thing. It's a very powerful thing.

It devolves from there -- trust me. But watch if you must.

Even though Stahl managed to scrounge up a few survivors to shill for the museum, other family members are not so sanguine. Sally Regenhard, mother of a firefighter who died in the attack, calls the for-profit mausoleum a "pay-to-grieve national disgrace". She just penned a scathing New York Daily News op-ed:

None of the 9/11 family members that I have worked with ever wanted a billion-dollar money pit; all we hoped for was a simple, uplifting, honorable and patriotic memorial for all who were lost that terrible September day.

Instead, we have a “money is no object” monstrosity inflicted upon us — a design we did not choose, and which we bear no responsibility for — that was incredibly expensive to build and even more logic-defying to maintain.

(snip) 

How dare they charge visitors to pay respects to those lost on 9/11, including my son, a firefighter and recon Marine sergeant?

If his USMC brothers and friends from all over the country want to pay him respect, they have to pay Bloomberg & Co. $25 first.

What a crime! How many families could afford to pay that?
 

Answer: judging from the ever-increasing income gap between rich and poor in America generally and in New York City particularly, not very many. In the Big Apple, the poverty rate has reached its highest point in more than 10 years. Median earnings for working people fell to $32,210 from $33,287 — much more than the national decline, according to the Census Bureau. The bottom lost ground, while the top gained. That includes Mayor Bloomberg, whose net worth of $25 billion climbed by another $3 billion just in the past year. He wants every penny of that $15 million museum loan repaid, by the way.  

The CEO of the 9/11 Museum, who is paid a relatively modest  $400,000 a year to decide such things as how much to charge the public, also came under criticism last year when he ditched the ceremony commemorating the 1993 WTC bombing to go on a Colorado ski trip with his tycoon father. Joe Daniels, a former private equity manager, had previously blamed his absence on a personal obligation. But when he was caught out, he just shrugged. "I have one of the best dads in New York," he gushed to a local reporter, adding that the unpaid volunteers had it all under control anyway. You really can't make this stuff up. The rich really are different than you and me. If there is such a thing as a gene for shame, it seems to be sorely lacking from the DNA of the pampered wealthy. The plutes are brutes.

*****************************************************

Postscript:

I was curious about other atrocity exhibitions/mausoleum museums and whether they, too, are run by the Grifters of Grief. Some results:

Oklahoma City Memorial: ticket prices range between $10 and $12. I found this surprising.

Holocaust Museum, Washington: free admission.

Auschwitz Holocaust site, Poland: free admission.

Arlington National Cemetery: free admission.

Gettysburg Civil War Battlefield: admission is $12.50 for adults.

Dresden Cathedral museum, site of World War 2 bombing: one low-priced annual ticket gains you admission to all German museums.

Wounded Knee massacre site, South Dakota: adults are charged $5 admission.

Tiananmen Square Massacre museum, temporarily located in Hong Kong: free admission.

Moro Crater in the Philippines, site of the slaughter of more than 500 Muslim civilians by the United States Army under the direction of Gen. Leonard Wood: Admission is free, because no memorial was ever built.

Museum of Chemical Weapons (yeah, there is such a place) and other Army tourist traps at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri: admission is free, but photo ID, vehicle registration and proof of insurance (!) are required. That pretty much leaves out non-drivers and un-Americans. And if you're disabled, forget about going as well, since the exhibits are not wheelchair-accessible. Some parts of the military-industrial complex apparently are exempt from the Americans With Disabilities Act as well as from the Geneva Conventions article against torture.

Party on.

Wonky Wankers

Oh, no! A randomized controlled trial reveals that when poor people get medical insurance because they won a lottery, they don't instantaneously shed their ravaged, neglected bodies and become pictures of robust good health overnight. The wonkosphere is going nuts. Pseudoliberals worry that the "bombshell" results of an Oregon study on insured and uninsured poor people could put a damper on Obamacare's Medicaid expansion. Republican nihilists are crowing "we told you so" -- you give a bunch of takers gummint health care and they still get sick, so why waste money on them?

No matter that 10,000 lucky ducky Medicaid sweepstakes winners reported feeling a whole hell of a lot better mentally, just knowing they no longer had to pick between going to a doctor and eating. They may feel better, but they still have diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol. The punditocracy is shocked, shocked that after lifetimes of living on the edge of mortality, the Medicaid study group did not immediately regain its health when accessing health care. These policy experts are not taking into account the continuing poor diets of the poor, that often the only food affordable to them is laden with sugar, salt, fat and chemicals. They're not taking into account the irreversible effects of environmental pollution on people. They're not taking into account the lingering, unaddressed scourge of income disparity. They are of the exceptional American mindset that a pill and a doctor visit should cure everything, overnight.

Zeke Emanuel, former health care advisor to the Obama Administration, calls the study results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, "disappointing" -- not inconclusive, mind you! --which means they'll have to tinker with "the system." (code, probably, for privatizing it.) This is what happens to physicians when they turn into deficit-obsessed technocratic policy wonks, controlled by numbers instead of focusing on real people.

Slate's Ray Fisman writes:

Now that the clinical results have started to come in, it’s time for liberal media types like myself to eat some humble pie. Today’s New England Journal article presents a set of findings showing that Medicaid had no effect on a set of conditions where you would expect proper health management to make a difference. There are effective treatment protocols for hypertension, cholesterol, and diabetes, yet insurance status had no effect on blood pressure, cholesterol levels, or glycated hemoglobin (a measure of diabetic blood sugar control).

(Liberal media types like Fisman obviously buy into the insta-cure messages spewed over cable by Big Pharma snake oil salesmen.)

Conservatives, of course, are gleefully twisting the study results into their own toxic pretzels. They argue that since expanded Medicaid coverage means more people will finally be diagnosed with disease, it naturally follows that Medicaid actually makes people sick! The Cato Institute's Michael Cannon writes that the Oregon study should throw a huge stop-sign in front of Medicaid expansion:

There is no way to spin these results as anything but a rebuke to those who are pushing states to expand Medicaid. The Obama administration has been trying to convince states to throw more than a trillion additional taxpayer dollars at Medicaid by participating in the expansion, when the best-designed research available cannot find any evidence that it improves the physical health of enrollees.
 

The study itself is unfortunately behind a paywall. But the lead author does caution about reading too much into it, suggesting we need to take the long view, that other studies show that people's health improves over time when given adequate medical care.

Tell it to the politicians. One side of the duopoly panics and caves, the other side smirks, and the private insurance predators controlling both parties laugh all the way to the bank.
 

A Couple of Comments

Thought I'd paste my two New York Times comments in this space tonight, since the subject matter is interrelated. I was so busy writing my rich people post this morning that I missed Obama's presser, and didn't catch a replay of the sadness until later in the day. This guy is not only a lame duck, he's damn near a dead duck. All flapping wings, whiney quacks and absolutely no soaring flight to the oratorical heights. It apparently marked his 100th day of his second term in office. So, does that make him the ill-fated Barry of the Hundred Days, starring Daniel Day-Lewis? Is there actually any difference between Hollywood and Washington? I'd also caught a little hint of the new Obamian Defensive Dejection Syndrome in clips of the Co-respondents' Ball, a true parody of a parody of a parody if ever there was one. Or, if you took it seriously, mutual masturbation porn.

My first Times comment was in response to a pretty scathing editorial on Gitmo:

What was appallingly missing from President Obama's statement was any sense of empathy for the prisoners who are essentially being tortured.

HE doesn't want the prisoners to die. The hunger strike hurts US, champions of freedom that we are. It diminishes OUR standing in the world, "lessens cooperation with OUR allies on counterterrorism efforts" -- in other words, the almighty USA no longer has the moral standing to issue any sanctimonious "we deplore this" and "we condemn that" protests when other nations perpetrate their own human rights abuses.

It's not just the medical torture at Gitmo. It's the criminal failure to prosecute the torture of the Bush administration. It's the ongoing program of drone assassinations that is another prime recruitment tool for "extremists" or militants, defined by our leaders as any person in the prime of life, who dares to exist in the wrong place at the wrong time. The wrong place can be a wedding, a funeral, the site of a medical rescue attempt of drone strike casualties in the first round of attacks, farmers tending their crops, families sitting around the dining room table.

The president talks a good, self-serving game. Whether he walks the walk and now uses all the executive tools at his disposal in the face of some long overdue public pressure remains to be seen.

And as far as Lindsey Graham and his fellow GOP scare-mongers are concerned, I suggest they be sent to Gitmo immediately and force-fed a battery of psychiatric tests.

***************************************************

Now, on to Maureen Dowd. I felt compelled to pre-empt the usual veal pen criticism of her Obama snark, nip the usual bullshit in the bud, as it were:  

I know Maureen Dowd will take plenty of heat for this latest column on Obama's lack of parenting skills. She has obviously gotten under his skin, even earning a rueful mention at that dystopic celebrity bash over the weekend. She will be accused of such atrocities as sharpening her literary nails on thin presidential skin, jamming her stiletto heels into a good man when he's down.

When she criticizes Obama, she becomes the word that rhymes with what Babs Bush once called Geraldine Ferraro. Amazingly, every time she disses Bush, she deserves another Pulitzer. Like Obama, she just can't win. But she gets props for not bowing to the liberal blogosphere the same way Obama perpetually bows to Republicans.

What irked me about Obama on this particular day was his passive- agressive posture, joking about quitting and showing absolutely no empathy for the prisoners of Gitmo. It was all about our standing in the world, his personal need not to have them die on his watch.

Attempting to distance himself from his own policies, he insists that Gitmo is "Not Who We Are". Uh.... actually, it is. It's like his calling the cruel cuts to Meals on Wheels for seniors "stupid" and suggesting we replace them with "smart" Social Security cuts. Does he really not hear his own cognitive dissonance?

If Obama is feeling that beleaguered, he should take Mitch out for a drink, slip him a mickey, then render him down to Gitmo for a time-out in the naughty chair.

What Do Those One Percenters Want, Anyway?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that rich people have an outsized influence on politics. The wealthiest Americans and corporate persons just financed a two billion dollar presidential campaign, after all. That their weighted votes have borne fruit is most recently evidenced by the Congressional stampede to liberate the plutocrats who were mistakenly and outrageously caught up in the sequestration dragnet with meal-deprived old people and evicted preschoolers and ousted chemo patients.

On Friday, our legislators restored FAA funding to air traffic control towers. By Monday, frequent high-flyers were soaring unimpeded while the lesser people remain grounded in their economic gulags.

A group of Northwestern University researchers recently sat down with some 80 Chicago-area multimillionaires to find out just what else they expect from the politicians they purchase. The results are both exhaustive and exhausting, both predictable and surprising. For example, the revelation that only the tiny minority at the pinnacle of the wealth distribution pile pretend concern about Duh Deficit and yammer away for austerity is old news. Regardless of party affiliation, rich people tend to be fiscally conservative. Wealthy Democrats differ from wealthy Republicans mainly on social issues, such as reproductive rights and gay rights. (That's probably why millionaire faux liberals like the Clintons are falling all over themselves to Tweet their joy at the coming-out party of a millionaire gay basketball player while simultaneously ignoring Sequester cruelty to poor people.)

   Other findings:

-- Only 16% of the millionaires surveyed think climate change is "very important."

-- More than 80% of the ultra-rich Chicagoans are self-described political junkies, spending at least five days a week "attending" to political issues. A full two-thirds give money to political campaigns. Twenty percent bundle large sums of money for politicians.

-- Half the Windy City multimillionaires report enjoying regular face-to-face contact with their representatives, and are on a first name basis with such heavyweights as Mayor "Rahm" and "David" (former Obama adviser Axelrod).

-- Compared with a dozen spending priorities of the general population, the wealthy respondents favor increased government investment in only three: infrastructure, scientific research and education. In contrast to two-thirds of the public at large, only one third of rich people favor a Medicare for All national health insurance program. The rich favor spending less money on the SNAP (food stamp) program.

--While the majority of wealthy people are fully aware that income disparity is getting worse, only 19% believe the government should be responsible for providing jobs to the unemployed (as opposed to 68% of the general public). Less than half favor raising the minimum wage. Less than half think it is the government's job to see that nobody goes without food, clothing and shelter. While favoring cutting, rather than expanding, Social Security, the majority of the rich would not be averse to raising the current FICA contribution cap.

--The Chicago millionaires surveyed tend to favor teacher merit pay and charter schools. Only 35% think the federal government should spend whatever is necessary to ensure that all children get a quality education. Asked if it is the responsibility of the government to make sure that minority children get the same educational opportunities as white children, "even if it means you will have to pay more in taxes", only slightly more than half replied in the affirmative.

--While most wealthy people intellectually accept Keynesian economics (the government should run a deficit during times of recession and war), they paradoxically still prioritize cutting rather than spending. So much for the debunking of Reinhart-Rogoff.

-- Surprisingly, two-thirds of the wealthy and the general public alike favor progressive taxation. But paradoxically once again, the rich are adamantly opposed to actual income redistribution -- despite their intellectual awareness of the hazards of extreme income disparity. No amount of education can overcome that deep, ingrained greed. They're willing to pay taxes as long as those taxes go to pay for programs valuable to them. (safe highways for their Bimmers, safe buildings for their coddled bods, public money for charter schools, scientific research to cure their future diseases.)

-- The richer the plutocrat, the less he or she favors government regulations. The study's authors conclude:

The data show a significant tendency for wealthier respondents to take positions more toward the “cut back”than toward the “expand” end of this index. Each additional $10 million in wealth corresponded to a drop of nearly half a point on the 10-point scale. There was also a tendency for the wealthiest respondents to tilt even more than the less wealthy toward cutting back Social Security. ... If a similar or stronger tendency carries through to the highest levels of wealth in the United States as a whole, and if the wealthiest Americans wield especially large amounts of political power, this finding may help explain why cutting these popular programs has remained on the political agenda.

The influence of the rich and the donor class also explains why neither party gives a rat's patootie about campaign finance reform. Wealth begets power begets more wealth begets more power, ad infinitum. President Obama himself long ago abandoned any pretense of caring about the issue, despite constant pressure from public policy groups. From today's Washington Post:

But for many former allies, Obama’s decision to convert his campaign operation into a political advocacy group with unlimited funding was the final straw.

“The president has engaged in uncharted waters that open the door to influence,” said Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer, a longtime activist who describes Organizing for Action as “a precedent that other federal officeholders are likely to follow.”

The article notes that Obama has failed to fill vacancies on the Federal Elections Commission and even failed to replace his former counsel for ethics and government reform, a position he created during the early hope-and-change phase of his administration, and which lasted about as long as his plans to close Gitmo. That door to influence? It's not only been open for a long time, it's flown off its hinges. 

Ergo, the continuation of austerian policies and a Democratic president's continued desire for a Grand Bargain of social safety net cuts despite their terrible tolls on the economy and the health of ordinary people. Read the entire Northwestern report linked above, and marvel at how the selfish preferences of his rich Chicago backers uncannily mirror those in his budget. (the exception to the rule is in defense spending. Chicago millionaires want the Pentagon budget slashed right along with the Medicare budget. Except for the General Dynamics Crown Family, those war profits must not be trickling down to the Windy City!) 

"Let me tell you about the very rich," wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald. "They are different from you and me."

Yeah, replied Ernest Hemingway. "They have more money."