Corruption!

I don't have much to say about yesterday's elections, although I suspect that John Corzine's tenure at Goldman-Sachs didn't do him much good. Hell, even fat-cat Mike Bloomberg didn't do as well as everybody who counts the money expected.

Actually, I was thinking about the non-election in Afghanistan. If there were something less prestigious than "third world," I guess Afghanistan would qualify, and if there is a country more corrupt, well...

Okay — so what is corruption? In Afghanistan, the men with wealth and power buy and coerce their way to more wealth and more power. Hmmm... does that sound a little familiar? And if your Supreme Court says that strong-arming the political class with vast infusions of money is not corrupt — that, in fact, it is free speech — does that make it any less corrupt?

Obama told Karzai he has to clean up the Afghani government. Yeah, right. Let's see if Karzai takes any action against his brother — or, if family ties are too strong, Abdul Rashid Dostum, or Muhammed Qasim Fahim. Wake me up when it happens. I need a long nap — a very long nap.

You also can wake me up when the government steps in to stop Goldman-Sachs from buying tax exemptions — at deeply discounted prices — from Fannie and Freddie.

Face it: capitalism and corruption are inseparable, and it doesn't matter if the source of wealth is opium or derivatives, nor if the country is first world or third. All hail the plutocrats!

Odds and ends

Sotomayor confirmation:

Being elected to the Senate is harder (well, more expensive) than being elected to the House. In most Congressional Districts, a trained monkey could be elected -- indeed, might have a distinct advantage, provided it threw its excrement at the right people. Senators, however, must rise at least to the level of Zippy the Chimp.

Will they make Sotomayor take a drug test? I don't see how she could have withstood those questions without tranquilizers to help her stay calm and amphetamines to keep her awake.

Goldman-Sachs profits:

Now that Lehman and Bear-Stearns are gone and Merrill-Lynch is a subsidiary of the moribund B of A, Goldman-Sachs is the only game in town. Although they've put aside money to pay anticipated executive bonuses, those won't come due until the end of the fiscal year -- and who knows what might happen next quarter?

Is it conceivable that Goldman's execs will agree their bonuses should be tied to long-term growth, or that the federal government will force the issue? Don't hold your breath.

California:

When LaFolette and his Progressives fought for the referendum process way back when, they never foresaw contemporary California. Starting with Proposition 13, back in 1978, the referendum process in California has driven the state into total dysfunction. Spend enough money and you can get Californians to support any vaguely populist sounding bullshit you like. Then you can just stand back and watch the state go a bit further down the crapper. Hell, you don't even have to live there!

While the Governator counts down to the end of his political career, a particularly pernicious little piece of shit by the name of Ted Hilton is building his reputation by abusing children. In the meanwhile, I've read that current Attorney General and former governor Jerry Brown is interested in being governor again -- along with a bunch of other characters whose motivations are beyond ordinary human comprehension.

I'm usually opposed to state constitutional conventions, because they almost always do more harm than good. In the case of California, though . . .

Meanwhile, in New York...

I don't know the extent to which outsiders are following what a wrestling promoter probably would call the Amazing Idiocy in Albany, but it's pretty idiotic. I'm sure a lot of New Yorkers were wishing they had Spitzer back, whores and all, but it's starting to look like Patterson is getting things in hand.

Constitutional or not, Richard Ravitch was an inspired choice for Lieutenant Governor, and you couldn't find a better choice than Jay Walder to replace Ravitch at the MTA. Both sleazy outer-borough city Dems who defected to the Republicans are back in the fold now, I'd say in large part due to Patterson's actions, and some urgently needed legislation actually might get passed when everybody gets back from vacation.

New York hasn't changed much since the days of Boss Tweed, but at least it has rules. They're corrupt rules, but, in their corrupt way, rational. All in all, I'd rather be here than in California.

Glimmers of Hope?

The President has seen "glimmers of hope." I'm trying to figure out where.

Maybe it has something to do with Wells-Fargo's record quarterly profits, or the determination of Goldman-Sachs to repay its TARP funds. Financial stocks seem to be staging a bit of a recovery, which is not especially surprising with the FDIC guaranteeing billions upon billions of dollars of the loans they are making -- essentially taking on all the risk in exchange for a negligible fee.

Goldman-Sachs posted a profit -- made possible, as it happens, by payment at 100% of face value on a credit default swap issued by AIG. Does a profit really count if it depends on free money provided by the taxpayers? Yes, apparently, it does count. If you can get the suckers to hand over their money, it's yours, right?

The only "glimmer of hope" I could believe in right now would be an effort to remove from government anybody and everybody with a history at Goldman-Sachs. Two administrations' worth of Goldmanistas already have eliminated virtually all of the company's competition. Isn't that enough?