Views » February 6, 2009

Team of Zombies

By David Sirota

Only weeks ago, the political world was buzzing about a “team of rivals.” America was told that finally, after years of yes-men running the government, we were getting a president who would follow Abraham Lincoln’s lead, fill his administration with varying viewpoints, and glean empirically sound policy from the clash of ideas. Little did we know that “team of rivals” was what George Orwell calls “newspeak”: an empty slogan “claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts.”

Obama’s national security team, for instance, includes not a single Iraq War opponent. The president has not only retained George W. Bush’s defense secretary, Robert Gates, but also 150 other Bush Pentagon appointees. The only “rivalry” is between those who back increasing the already bloated defense budget by an absurd amount and those who aim to boost it by a ludicrous amount.

Of course, that lockstep uniformity pales in comparison to the White House’s economic team — a squad of corporate lackeys disguised as public servants.

At the top is Lawrence Summers, the director of Obama’s National Economic Council. As Bill Clinton’s Treasury secretary in the late 1990s, Summers worked with his deputy, Tim Geithner (now Obama’s Treasury secretary), and Clinton aide Rahm Emanuel (now Obama’s chief of staff) to champion job-killing trade deals and deregulation that Obama Commerce Secretary Judd Gregg helped shepherd through Congress as a Republican senator. Now, this pinstriped band of brothers is proposing a “cash for trash” scheme that would force the public to guarantee the financial industry’s bad loans. It’s another ploy “to hand taxpayer dollars to the banks through a variety of complex mechanisms,” says economist Dean Baker — and noticeably absent is anything even resembling a “rival” voice inside the White House.

That’s not an oversight. From former federal officials like Robert Reich and Brooksley Born, to Nobel prize-winning economists like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, to business leaders like Leo Hindery, there’s no shortage of qualified experts who have challenged market fundamentalism. But they have been barred from an administration focused on ideological purity.

In Hindery’s case, the blacklisting was explicit. Despite this venture capitalist establishing a well-respected think tank and serving as a top economic adviser to Obama’s campaign, the Politico reports that “Obama’s aides appear never to have taken his bid (for an administration post) seriously.” Why? Because he “set himself up in opposition” to Wall Street’s agenda.

The anecdote highlights how, regardless of election hoopla, Washington is the same one-party town it always has been — controlled not by Democrats or Republicans, but by Kleptocrats (i.e., thieves). Their ties to money make them the undead zombies in the slash-and-burn horror flick that is American politics: No matter how many times their discredited theologies are stabbed, torched and shot down by verifiable failure, their careers cannot be killed. Somehow, these political immortals are allowed to mindlessly lunge forward, never answering to rivals — even if that rival is the president himself.

Remember, while Obama said he wants to slash “billions of dollars in wasteful spending” at the Pentagon, his national security team is demanding a $40 billion increase in defense spending (evidently, the “ludicrous” faction got its way). Obama also said he wants to crack down on the financial industry, strengthen laws encouraging the government to purchase American goods, and transform trade policy. Yet, his economic team is not just promising to support more bank bailouts, but also to weaken “Buy America” statutes and make sure new legislation “doesn’t signal a change in our overall stance on trade,” according to the president’s spokesman.

Indeed, if an authentic “rivalry” was going to erupt, it would have been between Obama’s promises and his team of zombies. Unfortunately, the latter seems to have won before the competition even started.

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• Reader Comments

  If this is all true, it is extremely depressing. How can any of the appointees think outside the box if they have never been outside of it themselves?

  Posted by kevin pearson on Feb 6, 2009 at 2:00 PM

  BINGO!
  We got a team of Zombies from President GUMBY.

  So far Obama has proven to be FLEXIBLE in his appointments and is BENDING OVER BACKWARD to accommodate Wall Street interests. And is SOFT on all those “honest mistakes” in unpaid taxes.

  [Side note: Since 2006, when Geithner was informed of his “$34,000 “mistake” the IRS has hassled me twice on my tax returns —both of which I was finally found to be accurate and both of which cost me out of pocket to prove.]

  Now a tax dodger is going to running the IRS show.

  Obama’s idea of getting tough on the big bank CEOs is to put a $500,000 salary cap on them.

  Hey, how about taking back the big bucks they got for causing all this grief! Anyone else, in any job would have been on the street for such performance.

  This guy is all mouth… but no teeth.

  Posted by whattheheck on Feb 6, 2009 at 5:36 PM

  Obama has made some very positive changes since day one. The obstacles that he faces are huge. The legacy of theft from the poor to give to the rich from Bush & Co is horrific. Of course, that is only a surface scratch compared to all of the other things they did that Obama needs to correct.

  Posted by kevin pearson on Feb 6, 2009 at 6:51 PM

  This economic debacle Started way before Bush (not to excuse his particpation and enablement) and neither the Bush team — Paulson, Bernanke, etc. nor Obama’s is addressing the fraud perpetuated on the American public.

  Rubin as Sec of Treasury presided over the removal of the Glass Seagall Act.

  Paulson went to congress and managed to boost Goldman Sachs and others ability to margin from 20:1 to 40:1!
  (He also was allowed a $200 million tax exemption on sale of $500 million GS shares.) He immediately rescued his Wall St. buddies with TARP 1 at our expense.

  Barney Frank (whose lover was an exec with Fnnie Mae and contributed $48,000 from Fannie to Barney’s campaigns) allowed the top guys and board members to change their pay to percentage of loans issued — Can anyone say conflict of interest?

  Gaithner worked hand in hand with Paulson iin the TARP set-up.

  The perps are from both sides of the isle and go back decades in the legalizing of the scam they were all benefiting from.

  Obama is doing nothing to create “Change we can believe in.”

  I’m just glad I don’t have young kids. How do you teach honesty and ethics and respect for government today?

  This is a truly sad time.

  Posted by whattheheck on Feb 7, 2009 at 4:03 PM

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