Worlds Fattest Cat

Populism, Right And Left, In Present Day American Politics

There was a fascinating article about Rep. Eric Cantor in yesterday’s Washington Post. Cantor is the leader of the Tea Party clique in Congress that has turned a standard, non-controversial debt ceiling increase, one done more than 70 times over the years, into a mechanism to push an ultra-conservative fiscal agenda. Cantor, this Post article also notes, is a long time defender (and contributions recipient) of a Wall Street clique, hedge funds and private equity funds, some of whose managers have realized personal incomes exceeding $1 billion a year, incomes on which they paid exceptionally low taxes because of a loophole in the tax code.

That’s the background. Here’s the populist hook.

The Tea Party movement is a populist movement. A major target of this populism is anti-elitist hostility directed at Wall Street, which Tea Partiers peg (rightfully) as an institution whose greed, arrogance, and utterly inappropriate influence over key sectors of the government is much to blame for this country’s (and the world’s) present economic angst.

Yet Rep. Cantor and other Tea Party factotums in Congress get away with the claim that they represent the Tea Party’s populist hostility to Wall Street while flagrantly fronting for some of Wall Street’s fattest, fat cat elitists.

How do they get away with this? In part by burying this Wall Street fat cat protection in a larger anti-tax rhetoric. Equally important, though, they get away with it because the Democratic Party lets them get away with it.

The Democratic Party should be calling Cantor and his cohorts out on this hypocrisy, but it can’t. The reason is that Democrats, and most notably their leader in the White House, are as beholden to Wall Street, as much its active protectors, as Cantor and the Republicans.

The Democratic Party bonded with Wall Street in a hard embrace during the Clinton years. Mr. Obama continued this embrace with the economic advisers he chose when he first got into office, and the kid gloves policies toward The Street he has followed ever since.

You listen to the president’s melodious calls for equal sharing of pain and you get the idea he might mean some pain for the Wall Street’s rich. Then you look at the plan from Harry Reid, the Democratic, the Obama approved Senate plan billed as counter-proposal to the Tea Party-dominated Republican House plan, and what do you find? Not a single increase in taxes for the rich. And certainly, most certainly, no discomfort for the best-and-brightest, the richest-and-slickest, on Wall Street.

World's fattest cat | Pets Online

@sarabower1 EXCUSE ME? you’re actually telling ME about that? i care about animals more than most people FOR SURE! of couse i wish i could help those poor animals who are abused. i wish i could help every animal who is. but i cant. and it makes me really sad. and your comment is very right about the cats but that doesn’t mean that this cat isn’t abused. but maybe he isn’t. maybe he just likes to eat a lot, which caused him to get extremely fat. i don’t know, but it’s still the owner’s fault.

Weekly World News

Weekly World News

Weekly World News

Planet Cat, A CAT-alog

Wild things