Vichy Democrats: Pelosi and the Politics of Collaboration

[Wiley50]

By DON SANTINA

As the Bush Administration’s economic stimulus plan sailed through Congress last month, a few Democratic senators timidly raised objections to the legislation that Nancy Pelosi’s House had approved, particularly in relation to certain provisions deleted by the House. These provisions, which would have provided critical assistance to people most hard hit by the continuing recession included an extension of unemployment insurance, expansion of food stamps, and rebates to the working poor whose incomes fall below the radar of income tax requirements.

They lost.

“There’s no reason for any more delay on this,” House Speaker Pelosi said as the Senate approved the plan.

In a not-surprising move earlier in the legislative process, Pelosi had surrendered those provisions during a joint session with president’s budget crew. It was not surprising because in her fourteen month reign as Speaker of the House, Pelosi has collaborated incisively and repeatedly with the policies of the Bush Administration.

The term “collaboration” is popularly considered to be a construct of WWII, but the phenomenon is certainly older than Judas and threads through recorded history to its penultimate high point in Vichy France after the German conquest in 1940. In Vichy France, the collaborators appeared in basically two forms: active and passive collaboration with the German masters. Simply stated, the active collaborators identified Jews and resisters for the Nazis to take to the concentration camps, and the passive collaborators watched it happen and made excuses about why they could do nothing about it.

Through the power of her office, Speaker Pelosi’s collaboration with the White House Agenda has been both active and passive. For the sake of identification, the White House Agenda can be defined as: aggression overseas, suppression of dissent at home, and the transfer of wealth upward to the richest segment of society.

http://www.counterpunch.org/santina03142008.html

[Greyhound]

1. If te Vichy administration is the penultimate collaboration, what is the ultimate? n/t

[texshelters]

2. Well put, and one wonders why

Pelosi and most democrats just march along with Bush.

Is it because they get their campaign money and job after being in Congress from the same corporations that Bush works for?

Tex Shelters

[Enrique]

3. interesting timing of this article

it appears the day of the House dems' most forceful opposition to Bush in recent memory, passing the FISA bill.

[golddigger]

4. Leave Nancy alone! She endorsed Obama today.

[emanymton]

5. Possibility Of Black Mail And Or Threats Against Lives ...

.

can explain the non action by the people in power.

Your points may be correct. But it is also possible that the people who can act are being stopped by the threat of harm against them (or their families) by others in government. The mailed anthrax terrorist attack is an example of what could happen if one does not submit to the administration.

.

[warren pease]

6. She's one of them; why wouldn't she collaborate?

The rich really are different; they never really know how much they're worth and they don't seem to lose much sleep over it. For instance, Ms. Nancy's assets totaled as much as $86,371,990 or as little as $23,707,119, according to her financial disclosure statement for 2006, which is available for your reading pleasure at the link above and brought to you by opensecrets.org/.

It's possible she's lost a couple mill given the ongoing depression, but I doubt it. I'm sure her financial advisers got her out of the wrong things at the right times -- like converting dollars to Euros.

Her favorite industries to put her money in are finance, insurance and real estate. And they seem to like her right back; those three bribe dispensers are all among the top 20 industries she hits on for "donations."

As of March 3rd, they've responded by kicking in $319,882 for the 2007 - 2008 election cycle, tops among all sectors tracked by opensecrets.org/.

Intangible assets like leadership qualities, number of detectable vertebrae, strength of character, political acumen and a moral compass don't appear on the disclosure statement. But it's a good bet she's running serious deficits on all counts.

If Ms. Nancy's financial security doesn't warm your heart sufficiently, you'll also be happy to know that our representatives in both houses of congress seem to have enough socked away to make it through the Great Bush Depression without serious hardship. According to a news release issued March 13 by the Center for Responsive Politics:

"...the personal finances of members of Congress suggest they will be able to weather the storm far better than most Americans, according to a new analysis of three years of lawmakers' personal financial reports..." by the Center.

The news release also reveals that "U.S. senators had a median net worth of approximately $1.7 million in 2006, the most recent year for which their financial data is available, and 58 percent of the Senate's members could be considered millionaires. In the House of Representatives, the median net worth was about $675,000, with 44 percent of members having net worths estimated to be at least $1 million. By contrast, only about 1 percent of all American adults had a net worth greater than $1 million around the same time."

I don't know about you, but I was having kind of a shitty day, worrying about money and bills and all that nagging stuff that seems to occupy more and more of my time and energy these days.

But when I saw that my elected representatives, for whom I have the highest regard, were likely going to make it through the tough times ahead without having to endure the misery that awaits the peasantry, I got a little flush of national pride just thinking how, after centuries wasted trying to live the false ideology of government by the people, we've finally got our priorities straight.

You've got to admire a nation that rewards its political masters with lifelong security for simply occupying a fancy leather chair for a couple of years. And it's "hurd wurk" speechifying at weird hours to an empty chamber and a lone C-Span camera because they needed to be on record supporting a resolution to designate the third Saturday in May as "National Mayonnaise Appreciation and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Readiness Day." Not to mention working 16 hour stretches on the phone to scrounge up enough money from their civic-minded corporate contributors to get re-elected.

And they've got the courage to make the ultimate sacrifice; no matter if they're Dems or Repubs, they'll be voting straight GOP party line because it's vital to national security to avoid pissing off the White House

In addition to not risking the fury of a snarling viper with a 9 percent approval rating, this is a tactic their advisers tell them is sure to get them re-elected because, at heart, people just can't get enough of the Bushies and all they've done for this nation and the world community.

Yup, it's a great, great country alright that has such people in it.


wp

[Wiley50]

7. wow, just wow

Great post as usual, Warren

[warren pease]

8. Thanks, Wiley...

Unfortunately, the subject of your OP is always close to my heart -- or maybe my spleen, anatomy never being my strong suit.

It would be a great day for the planet -- and my blood pressure -- if these rudderless "leaders" would have some kind of epiphany, start acting as though they understand the concept and function of an opposition party and quit pissing me and millions of others off every damn day.

I've finally learned to suppress my gag reflex when they crank out another "strongly worded statement," which always gets warped into a fresh GOP talking point because the dems know less about PR than the Giant Rats of Sumatra know about quantum mechanics.

I've finally learned to grab the dead-phones before I have to hear again how "disappointing" and "unfortunate" it is that, ohhh... what could it be this time? Maybe the Bushies just murdered another few hundred thousand Middle Eastern women and kids, alas and alack, but there's really nothing the dems can do about it -- at least nothing that wouldn't be impolite and a probable breach of etiquette.

OK. Let's say "our leaders" are worried about offending their cohorts in the White House who, in the weird world of ever-shifting context and realpolitik, are also their tennis partners, dinner companions, drinking buddies, partners in a few time-shares and fellow travelers on corporate-funded overseas "fact-finding missions."

Fine. Ms. Nancy and Harry the Hamster don't have to make a fuss; they could just quietly toss those supplementary appropriations bills and support the troops bullshit resolutions into the same drawer where H Res 333 lies gathering dust.

But I think the weirdest/sickest/most impossible to understand thing of all about these invertebrates is the way they behave as if the White House were occupied by decent, honorable people whose intentions are strictly above board rather than a bunch of murdering thieves and fascist sociopaths.

It's like they're sure there's nothing going on behind the curtain. Nobody's got designs on world domination. The US only acts defensively when it's threatened. We oppose state-sponsored terrorism. That's why we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and might get Israel to nuke Iran for us. The next notice we have of Iranian aggression might be a mushroom cloud. Blah, blah, blah...

It's not about aggression abroad and repression at home. Freedom's on the march, we're fighting them over there instead of here, we're providing Americans with the protection they want against another 9/11 (known elsewhere as "Pearl Harbor II: America Duped Again;" a PNAC Pix Production) and we're reluctantly making temporary trade-offs between individual rights and public safety for the good of the majority.

Damned if that's not what it looks like from here. And these frauds and rudderless "leaders" are, at best, passively allowing the destruction to continue and, at worst, actively helping the regime for reasons of profit, power and career advancement. Or maybe it's self-preservation; maybe they're wimping out so they don't get anthraxed.

If the latter, they have my sympathies, but fear for personal safety is a very lousy trait in anyone who aspires to leadership. People will not follow people who are constantly scared. So if they need to step down and hand their positions over to braver or more reckless people, fine.

Then they need to go very public to protect themselves, and to add their stories to the gigantic pile of evidence attesting to this administration's pattern of nonstop criminality.

Even the co-opted propagandists running US mass media would have to cover that one, although they'd treat it like they do OJ sightings and the latest D-List celebrity train wreck. Fux would spin it until most of their viewers believed that Pelosi and Reid procured it themselves as part of a mutual suicide pact. Sounds like the standard Fux audience comprehension level.


wp