Do you find merit in the argument that all this attention and fuss being drawn to the executive's bonuses is really an effort to hide the significance and corruption involved in the bailout of AIG itself?

I'm supposing that they want to get us all excited about opposing the bonuses as being greedy as a way of saying, well the much larger and still criminal swindle of the bailout itself was appropriate, or uncontentious. How much effort will now be put to stopping the massive bailouts themselves once all this sweat is poured into the relatively insignificant bonus question? I doubt much.

Don't you think that we know full well that these houses selling for two to five or more times their worth given the prevailing wages had to have been a scam. And, don't you think it was obvious that neither the government nor anyone else tried to put a stop to it years ago because they knew full well that there was money to be made in the scam? And, wasn't there always the argument that the banks, lenders, insurance companies, etc. etc. would be too big to fail and that the government loaded down with tax dollars would have to come to their rescue?

It's like this, we know that the government was in cahoots with the banks and international corporations to create a massive debt in Argentina. We know that their government's argument there was that the people had to bail out these corporations and take on their debt. So, if it was done so successfully in Argentina, why shouldn't we think that the same corporations that gutted that country for profit wouldn't do the same to this one? They can teach seminars on how to do it just as well up here. They have phones and do infomercials on swindling, fraud, government corruption, and so on.

Isn't this the bigger picture?

Your post today raises an issue that I have thought many have considered in the past. You say here, as just one summarizing thought,

"...Does anyone really doubt any more that the predominant characteristic of our political culture is "the incestuous relationship between governments and large [] corporate conglomerates"?..."

The issue is what to do about the distinction between a society that may, or may not, provide 'political rights,' where this involves the maintenance of the 'rule of law,' and a society that doesn't need to do this perpetually because the suffering caused by the conflict between the weak and the powerful has been resolved and one no longer has to work so hard to maintain the 'rule of law,' or make a big deal of having 'political rights.'

So, my understanding of the argument is that, whereas Marx would have us just get rid of the oligarchs, i.e., those movers and shakers in the banking industry, for example, who cause these economic catastrophes and then profit from the effort made to fix them, you would have us as a society just work to have better laws and the observance of them.

I have thought one of the reasons that our country has been swindled so much by the powerful, is that we have very seldom paid any attention to people like Marx, Klein in the "Shock doctrine", or James Kunstler and other Peak Oilers, who warn us about the elite's malevolence.

It's all about the glories of capitalism here.

I am not sure that Marx's solution of just getting rid of the owners and letting the workers take over is a great solution, but I'm also not sure that a nation of 'laws' or 'rights' is enough of an answer either.

When the foxes are in charge of the chicken coop, they will manipulate the laws and provide 'rights' that tend to benefit themselves, and not so much the chickens. It is very difficult, it seems, to maintain a 'rule of law' or 'political rights' that protects the chickens, that is, us, without addressing the fact that the foxes have been glorified, coddled, and given special privileges in American culture.

I think Marx, and the rest, would say, no wonder we have these economic, military, and cultural fuck-ups when we as chickens not only put them in charge but also refuse to recognize that foxes eat chickens.