by David Benjamin
BROOKLYN — Tomorrow, I’m thinking about taking the capricious C train
over to Wall Street, to panhandle nickels and dimes among the “Occupy”
mobs. This won’t be money for my personal use, no sir! These are not
times for selfish interests. As President Obama says, “We’re all in
this together!” So, I won’t spend a cent. And I won’t give up ‘til
I’ve collected $13,300, which I’m then going to send straight to John
Boehner.
You gasp. You ask: Why Boehner? Isn’t he the president’s veritable nemesis?
Yes, they are implacable foes, but only because Obama never gave
Boehner $13,300 — which is Boehner’s price. At least it was in
September, 2008. It might’ve gone up since — what with inflation and
all that. Maybe I should shoot for $13,500.
My source for this number is a Republican named Manfred Schreyer who
opposed Boehner in the ’08 GOP primary. Schreyer unearthed campaign
finance gifts by Morgan Stanley, one of the too-big-to-fail Wall
Street investment banks who got bailout money from the Troubled Assets
Relief Program (TARP). In the midst of its financial implosion, Morgan
Stanley somehow found $13,300 to spare toward Boehner’s successful
defeat of Manfred Schreyer.
Thanks substantially to Rep. Boehner’s impassioned support, Morgan
Stanley got $10 billion in taxpayer-provided TARP money — which comes
to a tidy ROI (on that modest $13,300 outlay) of just under 752,000
percent.
Boy, if only U.S. Savings Bonds performed like that, huh?
The beauty part about buying a guy like John Boehner (who once
scurried around the floor of the House of Representatives handing out
checks from Big Tobacco) is that you’re not just purchasing one mere
vote out of 435 in the House. You’re buying his status as Speaker, and
his fervent oratorical commitment to your cause. As long as he gets
paid upfront, John Boehner can get aroused about almost anything. He
doesn’t have to believe in it. Remember, he grew up hanging around his
old man’s bar in Cincinnati, where he learned the fine barkeep’s art
of listening to drunks spout total nonsense for hours on end while he
— the patient publican — nods agreeably.
The drunk could be Charlie Manson, but he was welcome — and absolutely
right! — in Andy’s Café as long as he had the price of his next
martini.
Still a barkeep at heart, Boehner has an ingrained knack for cognitive
dissonance. There’s no better example than the good old days of the
Bush administration, when Boehner was House Minority Leader, and TARP
was every bit as distasteful to the GOP faithful as is President
Obama’s American Jobs Act today.
Boehner spoke both candidly and wisely about TARP. He began his famous
September 29 speech by admitting, yes, “Nobody wants to vote for this.
Nobody wants to be anywhere around it… I don’t want to be around it!”
But Boehner wasn’t just “around” TARP, he was hip-deep into it,
fighting tooth-and-nail to save AIG and Goldman Sachs, Bank of
America, Citigroup, and all the other Wall Street casinos. That day,
on behalf of a handful of the richest white people in the history of
greed, John Boehner eloquently — even poetically — reduced those
amoral tycoons to regular slobs just trying to pay the mortgage on the
mobile home and scrimp together enough green stamps to buy ice cream
for the kids on Saturday night.
Here’s some of what Boehner said. “While there’s a lot of risk to any
member who votes for this, on both sides of the aisle, just think
about what happens if we don’t pass this bill. Think about what
happens to your friends, your neighbors, your constituents. Think
about those retired people whose retirement income will shrivel up to
zero…”
At this point, in Boehner’s YouTube video
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?
in the corner of his eye. What a lovable ham.
“Think,” he goes on, “about the jobs that’ll be lost! The risk in not
acting is greater than the risk in acting.”
Boehner’s big line, which lingers in the memory of anyone who
cherishes the great gems of American political rhetoric, was: “These
are the votes that separate the men from the boys and the girls from
the women!” He continued even more stirringly, saying, “These are the
kinds of votes that we have to look into our soul, and understand, and
ask ourselves the question: ‘What is in the best interests of our
country… to keep ourselves from the brink of an economic disaster that
will harm all of our constituents?’”
He repeated the big question, even more emphatically: “NOT what’s in
the best interests of our party! NOT what’s in the best interests of
our own re-election! What’s in the best interests of our country?”
When I listen to this stemwinder, I can’t resist picturing John
Boehner entering the well of the House tonight, or tomorrow, and
delivering the same speech, word-for-word, on behalf of the
president’s jobs bill. He could appear — and sound — equally disgusted
with himself for having to accept yet another piece of legislation
that violates his integrity as grossly as did the TARP bill. He called
that bill (euphemistically) a “mud sandwich.” He could wax even more
vulgar about the jobs bill — call it “sewage soup,” or “roadkill
casserole” — only to cry out at last, “But please, ladies and germs,
we must swallow our convictions, eat this dead-skunk-in-the-road and
vote ‘YES,’ in the best interests of America, the beautiful, for amber
waves of grain…” Etcetera.
Not only could he do this — hold his nose and offer his allegiance to
the Obama jobs bill — he would. He could! Gosh darn it, he will — as
soon as me and the gang down at Zuccotti Park pass the hat and
scrounge together a measly $13,300.
Except… This just in: Apparently, besides Morgan Stanley’s
thirteen-three, Goldman Sachs ($10 billion from TARP) also bought
Boehner in ‘08, at a discount: $12,000.
The bankers, it seems, went Dutch, bringing the check up to $25,300.
I’m not sure I can raise that much — not even among the suckers and
flower children of Wall Street Woodstock.
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