Anthony Weiner vs. Evan Bayh: Which One's A Bigger Scandal?

[seafan]

This is what is sorely missing in what passes for "mainstream media" these days --- some badly needed, unapologetic and fearless perspective.


In the midst of the shrill media circus around Anthony Weiner, THIS snake slithers away into the tall grass.


RJ Eskow writes in this post:



June 9, 2011:

.....

Ex-Senator Bayh, who was lionized in the media as the selfless embodiment of bipartisan idealism, just took a job lobbying against the health, safety, and well-being of the American public. His efforts are likely to hurt a lot of people. Weiner hurt himself, his wife, and the quality of television news for a week or so.

.....

When he retired Bayh said, "I simply believe I can best contribute to society in another way: creating jobs by helping grow a business, helping guide an institution of higher learning, or helping run a worthy charitable endeavor."

He was lying. We know that because he refused to rule out a lobbying job even as he pontificated about education, charity, or private enterprise. Now the nation knows that his "other way" involved being paid a huge salary to undermine and destroy the agencies targeted in a Chamber of Commerce memo: "the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau."

Saint Evan's new job will be to do all he can to prevent the government from protecting the public against, respectively (following the order of agencies listed above): death and disease caused by pollution; unnecessary accidents and deaths in the workplace; unemployment, recession, theft, and fraud caused by corporate crime; and being directly and personally ripped off by banks.

.....

What does Evan Bayh stand for? How is he different from Pete Domenici, Alan Simpson, Erskine Bowles, Kent Conrad, Richard Lugar, or all the other interchangeable gray-suited cogs cutting backroom deals with each other in the name of "bipartisanship"?

People like that have no core beliefs. Their contempt for "ideology" is really frustration with anyone whose inconvenient values impede their ability to cut deals that promote their own self-advancement.

The new bipartisanship isn't about finding common ground between left and right. It's about powerful people coming together in mutual self-interest, at the expense of the public's well-being and against its will. It's about destroying a social covenant that has been in place in one form or another for 75 years. It's about undermining the basic premise behind Social Security by promoting falsehoods that were discredited a half-century ago by a truly bipartisan commission under Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

It's about convincing people to cut Medicare, a program that has reduced elderly mortality by 13 percent and cut down on hospital days by a similar percentage. It's about distracting people from the devastating effects of tax cuts, runaway health profits, and unnecessary military costs, by convincing them its "irresponsible" not to destroy the financial security of the middle class.

.....

Welcome to Evan Bayh's idea of "bipartisanship".

It only applies to advance the enrichment of himself and his wealthy cronies.


Never for the people's needs.

Richard (RJ) Eskow, a consultant and writer, is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future. This post was produced as part of the Curbing Wall Street project.

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. Bravo for Eskow!

Bayh is not only a piece of shit, lying SOB, he is an "in your face" piece of shit, lying SOB! Again, I always come back to being astounded at the nakedness of it all. Bayh is not trying to hide anything about his activities. His reliance on the mass stupidity of the American public to shield him from a tsunami of outrage, ridicule and shame rolls on unaffected by any sense of reality. Sadly, he is simply one example of many in our modern political system.

Cheers to Eskow for at least tossing a tiny bit of truth onto the intertubes.