QOTD

Thomas Frank on pretty much the problem with American politics right now:

One of the things about a meritocracy, and this is a line I repeat many times in the book, there’s no solidarity in a meritocracy. The guys at the top of the profession have very little sympathy for the people at the bottom. When one of their colleagues gets fired, they don’t go out on strike. They don’t do that. This comes from personal experience. When academic labor force is becoming adjunctified, Uber-ized, whatever you want to call it, there’s no real protest from on high, from the leaders of academia. Here and there, yes people are very sympathetic and they feel bad about it but there’s no organized counter-effort. There’s no solidarity in this group, but there is this amazing deference between the people at the top.

Frank is talking about what we at the Yellow Blog have been referring to as the "Yuppie Left" for over a decade.  They're pretty much Mitch Landrieu's core constituency and they're the people most responsible for the exploding inequality and gentrification of post-Katrina New Orleans.  Knock over all the affordable housing for all they care. Their property values are up.

A long time ago, during the 2008 Presidential primary...

I had taken to calling these ninny, Yuppie fucks "cultists" But people told me I was being mean.

According to these defenders, it's just wrong -- morally, ethically and psychologically -- to criticize the President. Thus, in lieu of any substantive engagement of these critiques are a slew of moronic Broderian cliches ("If Obama catches heat from the left and right but maintains the middle, he is doing what I hoped he would do (and what he said he would do) when I voted for him"), cringe-inducing proclamations of faith in his greatness ("I am willing to continue to trust his instinct, his grace, his patience and his measured hand"), and emotional contempt for his critics more extreme than one would expect from his own family members. In other words, the Leave-Obama-Alone protestations posted by Sullivan are fairly representative of the genre. How far we've fallen from the declaration of Thomas Jefferson: "In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

You just want to be on the side that's winning

I'd go off on yet another long rant about why most Democrats and most people who call themselves "liberals" now are useless pseudo-intellectual Yuppie turds, but it's more fun and instructive to just make sure everyone is still reading the Daily Howler. Sommerby's "Heathers" series is spot-on. Most of it, as usual, is aimed at the fatuous media, but this graf from Part 1 speaks more generally to the compromised Yuppie Left at large.

Did someone yell, “Kill him?” (at a Palin rally) The Secret Service said this report was wrong. Did someone yell, “Go back to Kenya?” We can find no report of same. By the way: The conduct of Palin—and McCain—was reprehensible in these matters. But you know how we liberals can be! Rather than go to all the trouble of developing winning arguments about the Big Pols, we love to start sliming the Great Unwashed, hoping to let the cry of one represent the evil of all. After that, we wonder why the Great Unwashed won’t support our progressive agenda.

As our Yuppie Left President and our bought and paid for Congress prepare to deliver a badly compromised and private insurance driven health reform bill while simultaneously ordering more young Americans into a bloody imperial war zone, just remember that it was our so-called liberal pseudo-intellectuals and not the clownish ignoramuses they like to make so much sport of who made it all possible.

Howler posts:


Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Holding the wrong people accountable

While projects like "Accountability Now" are a good start, I think they place blame on the wrong people. It's a bit beside the point to blame "Blue Dogs" or Democrats from conservative districts for more or less representing the point of view of their constituents.

The real problem is the failure of leadership on the part of the Dems in charge (Obama, Emmanuel etc.) who mistakenly believe themselves clever enough to please everybody. And make no mistake, proving themselves clever is what truly motivates these people.

Shocking

Entitled Yuppie princess lives entitled Yuppie lifestyle.

Moving on now...

Update: And, of course, a Blue Dog idiot is no improvement... but if the choices are really that dismal then there's no foul in speaking out against one or both of them.

Continuity of Bullshit

See Krugman

"Shared Responsibility" is pure red meat for competitive Yuppie types as well as the easily flattered who always imagine themselves to be the "responsible" individuals the President is addressing. What we're really being told here is that the ruling class will not be held responsible for its crimes and failures because... you know... we all "share" in that.

Shock Doctrine kind of morning

Ever have one of those days when you pick up the paper, turn on the internets, look around and think "My God we are so fucked"?

On most days I'm in the mood to sit back and giggle at the buffoonery of it all. But that's just a handy way of avoiding the depression over the fact that this entire process of "recovery" is leading us further and further down the road to having less of a living city and more of a hollowed-out tourist attraction/movie set.

Today the depression is a little harder to avoid. You figure a pretty nifty method of killing off a city would include:

• Shutting down the public hospital system and making off with the spoils:
  

  The Times Picayune puts it a bit more delicately, but make no mistake about it this proposal (variations of which have been around for as long as there have been private, for-profit hospitals in Louisiana) is an ideology-driven attempt to tear the last vestiges of Long-ism (read that "paying attention to the needs of working people") from Louisiana.
  
  Were that all there was to this, it would be a hell of a fight. But, the proposal being floated by these healthcare executives — and, by the Bush administration in the months immediately following Katrina/Rita, by the Public Affairs Research Council (PAR), and the Blueprint for Louisiana group — comes to the fray with the additional burden of having been discredited in other states where similar approaches have been talked about and even tried — primarily Massachusetts.
  
  The core issue is shutting down the LSU Health Science Center hospitals, formerly known as the Charity Hospital System (also known as the safety net hospitals). And, then "letting the money follow the patient" — right into the coffers of the very people who have made healthcare and health insurance too expensive for all but the wealthiest among us: the for-profit hospitals and the insurance companies.




• Destroying what remains of the affordable housing infrastructure with no plan for 1/1 replacement.



• Turning the public education system over to a bizarre experiment in privatization built upon smoke and mirrors budgeting, union busting, and "vocational education" stovepiping.



• A disingenuous emergency services and flood protection plan fraught with cronyism and indifference at nearly every turn.



• A callous and city-backed demolition and land-grab scheme which favors the interest of cookie-cutter developers over neighborhoods.



• Entergy



• A reduction of most city public services and offices to near skeleton staff level while maintaining only enough of a veneer to please visitors. "Oooh that streetcar is pretty." or "Okay so I found the library. What can it tell me about Jazz?" or "The French Quarter is as clean as Disney World!" You need a link? You haven't been reading Moldy City.

In short, killing a city in the wake of disaster requires three core elements.

1. An ideological retreat from the very idea that a government ostensibly "by the people" can or should act positively to aid and support those people in a time of need.


2. A coterie of cronies, contractors, carpetbaggers, and professional self-promoters willing and able to scoop up the spoils associated with this massive dismantling of the social contract.


3. A Yuppie Left too gah gah over their "blank slate" myth, too distracted by their fear of Dragons, and too quietly enthusiastic over the public housing demolitions to care.

But at least Brad Pitt has put up some nice big glowing pink blocks in a field where people's houses used to be. I think that's very nice.

City Tax Farming Contract Ruled Unconstitiutional

Tax law ruled unconstitutional
30 percent penalty set on delinquencies
Friday, October 05, 2007
By Gordon Russell

The beneficiaries of a controversial contract to collect delinquent property taxes in New Orleans may have to return around $30 million they grossed over the life of the deal under a ruling handed down by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeal this week.

The appellate court deemed unconstitutional a 1998 city law that established a 30 percent penalty on delinquent taxes for the purpose of paying the Texas law firm that won the collections contract.

The firm, now called Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson, shared its fees with a local group with strong political ties called United Governmental Services of Louisiana.

This is one of the uglier manifestations of political cronies benefiting from privatization of government services. In this case, a collection agency is paid a fee for tracking down delinquent taxes. The 30 percent fee is appended directly to the taxpayer's bill. As is often the case in miserable times, the good money is made in hunting misery bounty.

But bounty hunting, being the miserable business that it is, requires an especially amoral disposition in those who seek its ill-gotten fortunes. Just what sort of folk are we thinking about here? Yeah.. the usual.

The contract, signed in 1998, was among the more controversial of Morial's tenure, in part because of the winning partnership's nebulous duties and in part because of its political pedigree.

Partners in United Governmental Services include restaurateur Sam Kogos, a member of Morial's inner circle; lawyer John Keller, a partner with Morial's uncle Glenn Haydel in a lucrative Regional Transit Authority management contract; lawyer William Grace, who was a Morial appointee to the Sewerage & Water Board; and businessman Westervelt "Westy" Ballard, Grace's brother-in-law.

In a separate case, Haydel pleaded guilty to bilking the RTA of $550,000. He is serving a two-year term in federal prison. Keller pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of knowing about, but failing to report, wire fraud committed by Haydel and others.

Any minute now the NOLA-hating Yuppie Left will jump out of its chair and start screaming once again about how this unique New Orleans crony-capitalism can only be cleaned up by young professional reformers from the civilized world. And any minute now, they'll again be not thinking big enough.

Just last week, Paul Krugman pointed out that the same kind of brutal cronyism is being perpetrated on a much grander scale at the federal level. It's astonishing that Federal tax collection and even US military operations are conducted by mercenary outfits for private gain. It's not quite as astonishing... but every bit as repulsive... that municipal and state governments around the country exhibit these same symptoms of societal rot turning the very nuts and bolts of public institutions into private revenue farms.

But the Yuppie Left won't acknowledge this. It interferes with their favorite passtime of telling everyone that if we just turn down the music, build a few more condos, fix the broken windows, and get a real job then maybe we'll be worthy of less scorn. And only then will the corruption be sophisticated enough to justify fixing our Federally flooded city.