The Bipartisanship Racket

[Elmore Furth]

Another glib, bumper-stickeer political movement that sells out the American People -- oh, wow.

NYTimes.com
Op-Ed Columnist
The Bipartisanship Racket
By FRANK RICH
Published: December 18, 2010

JEEZ, can’t we all just get along? Can’t we be civilized? Can’t we reach across the aisle, find common ground and get things done? Can’t we have a new Morning in America as clubby and chipper as MSNBC’s daily gabfest, “Morning Joe”?

Besides, polls consistently show that hyperpartisanship is more prevalent among Republican voters than Democrats. When Democrats were asked in a Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey released last week if they wanted their leaders in Washington to stick with their positions rather than compromise with Republicans, only 29 percent said yes. When Republicans were asked the equivalent question, the no-compromise number jumped to 47 percent.

Yet what’s most disturbing about No Labels is that its centrist, no doubt well-intentioned leaders seem utterly clueless about why Americans of all labels are angry: the realization that both parties are bought off by special interests who game the system and stack it against the rest of us. Indeed, No Labels itself is another manifestation of this syndrome. Its two prime movers are a political consultant, Mark McKinnon, a veteran of the Bush and McCain campaigns known for slick salesmanship; and a fund-raiser, Nancy Jacobson, who, along with her husband, the pollster and corporate flack Mark Penn, helped brand the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign as a depository for special-interest contributions.

WHAT America needs is not another political organization with a toothless agenda and less-than-transparent finances. The country will not rest easy until there are brave leaders in both parties willing to reform the system that let perpetrators of the Great Recession escape while the rest of us got stuck with the wreckage. As Jesse Eisinger of the investigative journalistic organization ProPublica summed up in The Times this month: “Nobody from Lehman, Merrill Lynch or Citigroup has been charged criminally with anything. No top executives at Bear Stearns have been indicted. All former American International Group executives are running free.” For No Labels to battle this status quo would require actual political courage — true bipartisan courage, in fact.

The Bipartisanship Racket

[mrcheerful]

1. And they leave out the fact that the rich who caused the economic crash of 1929 never

were charged with criminal conduct either. Which was why the American people saw the bank robbers of the 1930's as hero's and not criminals, they saw the injustice of the American court where the rich got away with everything.