Get ready to fall off your seat. Sarah Palin, a.k.a., Flawed Vessel, recently received a bit of positive press in the New York Times. According to the Time’s Anand Giridharadas, Palin’s recent speech in Iowa seemed to show a willingness to take on some sacred cows of Republican Party orthodoxy, and the relatively more silent collusion informing Democratic Party practice – in particular, the cozy relationship between big business and big government. Among her remarkable statements:
“This is not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk,” she said of the crony variety. She added: “It’s the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest — to the little guys. It’s a slap in the face to our small business owners — the true entrepreneurs, the job creators accounting for 70 percent of the jobs in America.”
I found myself thinking about these words as I looked over this chart that a friend sent to me today. If “Ponzi scheme” is the expression of the moment, “money laundering” seems to be a phrase begging to come back into fashion.
“If “Ponzi scheme” is the expression of the moment, “money laundering” seems to be a phrase begging to come back into fashion.”
Or ‘money-manipulator ‘ A term I just read for the first time today.
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2011/09/19/getting-real-again-2/
Sarah Palin might be better than expected. But Thomas Fleming as curmudgeon in chief would always be a good read.
Just like we used to read out loud in our grade school readers : Run Tom Run
When I saw that article Time Article on Palin last week I was floored that she was sounding like a distributist or a porcher. Is she registered for the conference?
One way to look at this is that Palin is going back to what made her so successful in Alaska – prior to 2007, her reputation there was apparently one of a Republican willing to take on the oil companies.
Two observations:
1) Even Hannity and Limbaugh condemn “crony capitalism” on their respective shows. The problem is that conservatives of their sort view the problem with it as being entirely on the “crony” side of things, none of it on the “capitalism” side. Ditto “state capitalism.”
2) Pro-corporate conservatives tend to see corporate excesses as isolated or unconnected incidents. Oil companies were bad news in Alaska, steel and chemical companies were bad news in Pittsburgh, big coal is bad news in the Appalachians, etc. What they don’t do is to take the next step and question whether or not there is a connection between these various corporate excesses, and that maybe these things aren’t one-offs, but are instead indicators of a problem with corporatism in general.
One experiences the same unease when hearing something rational from the perpetually near candidate Palin as one feels when reading Marx’s diatribes against the Bureaucracy. One hates agreeing with someone that you wish to happily disagree with.
But then, anti-big business, oligarchic smearing politics is about as obvious a fertile campaign plank as can be found….for those on the outside of our New Byzantium at the fork of the Anacostia and Potomac. Once inside donchaknow, hopey changey goes the way of the Dodo as the former outsider slides into a sinecure of silken insider. But our newest “localist” is doing her level best to champion the “lil feller” from her perch in the Fox Corporate Bird Cage.
New Byzantium? You are aware that for some of us on this site “Byzantium” is not a wholly negative term, as it was the civilization that bequeathed us our Christianity. And really, everyone ought give the Byzantines a vote of thanks as they preserved a great deal of learning during the Dark Ages of the West.
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