.
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Outsourcing my feelings about Sylvia Burwell to a professional:
These are the two main attractions in your American Economic Virtual Menagerie. Over here, we have the financial-services sector, represented by a large basket of writhing cobras. And over here we have your Walmart, represented by a tiny iron cage filled with rabid vampire bats. Now, if you’re watching this at home on Animal Planet, you will note that Jack Lew, who used to be the director of the Office Of Management And Budget, and who now is likely to become the Secretary Of The Treasury, with a stop as White House chief-of staff along the way, comes from the first of these deadly assemblages. The new nominee to head OMB comes from the second one. To quote The Master, as regards this administration’s personnel policies as regards its economic team, show me someone who’s not a parasite, and I’ll say a prayer for him…
But, hey, there’s the happy fact that it’ll be a double-XX carrier advising the President on which social classes can best be sacrificed to the Great God Austerity. Yay, team…
Jewish Steel
Santigold! swoon
Anne Laurie
@Jewish Steel: I would’ve thanked you for introducing me to her music, but I wasn’t sure you wanted to be associated with my general lack of musical taste!
? Martin
Er, Burwell was president of the foundation. Also led up Gates Foundation global development fund. Also was deputy director of OMB under Clinton.
Honestly, on the ‘people who have managed a lot of money’, she’s about as pure as we could possibly hope for.
Mike G
But the Teatards tell us Obama is a “Marxist”, so he can’t possibly be infesting his economic team with corporatist tools and Wall Street rentiers. That’s unpossible.
jl
In biology, I have read articles that try to show that parasites and their hosts tend to co-evolve so that the parasite does not kill the host outright too quickly so that both come to s sad quick end. Not sure that process works in economics with an under regulated financial sector.
The prophet Nostradumbass
copyright violations, you suck, blah blah blah.
Comrade Luke
Gonzaga Bulldogs, #1 in the nation.
Never thought I’d see the day.
Go Zags!
Jewish Steel
@Anne Laurie:
20 years of teaching guitar. Whatever deficiency you might claim, I promise you I’ve seen worse!
S. cerevisiae
Let’s see if the Wild can break the Blackhawk’s streak tonight. The offense is starting to gel, and Jonas Brodin is something special.
Amir Khalid
Sabah update:
There has been a military assault on the “Royal Army of Sulu” invaders in Sabah. No casualties among Malaysian forces, per the IGP (Inspector-General of Police i.e. national police chief) but he has been silent on whether there were any Sulu invader/civilian casualties. Reports don’t suggest that the invaders have been killed, or dislodged from where they were holed up.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Comrade Luke: How long until they get the St. Mary’s treatment?
(I am a grad of Santa Clara :-)
Amir Khalid
Here’s a non-mainstream media take on the Sulu invasion and what led up to it.
Joey Maloney
@? Martin: Was just coming to note that: the Walmart Foundation‘s job is to whitewash Walmart’s evil and much-deserved reputation, and it does that by actually doing good things.
I hate to harsh on a good firebagging freakout, but there it is.
? Martin
@Joey Maloney:
Right. And even if you think it’s craven of Walmart to even run the foundation, that’s not a burden you put on the president of the foundation. You put that on the Walmart executives. The foundation president’s job is to do the best things with the money that she can, and I think she’s done a pretty good job with it.
Petorado
@Amir Khalid:
Thanks for the update. A sister has been traveling in the region and she’s mentioned travel concerns, but around the Kota Baru/ Thai border. What you mentioned was a great distance away in East Malaysia and she’s been in the West. Just found out she’s now in Bangkok.
She’s really loved the Malay people and enjoyed her weeks in the country, Hope you’re doing well!
Joey Maloney
@Amir Khalid:
Are they fighting back with épées? Bare-chested? Wearing tight-fitting black highwaters with flared cuffs and black boots with a modest heel?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVgfYqmpHm8
eclecticbrotha
“Look at These Hoes?” Seriously?
kay
She can join Arne Duncan in representing the views of Bill and Melinds Gates and the Wal Mart heirs, because Lord knows they don’t have enough power already.
It’s funny how Lew gets a bad rap. I’d take him over a Gates-Walton devotee any day of the week.
I hate this pick. We really, really need someone in there who doesn’t come out of this narrow pipeline, where promoting the ideas of the wealthiest people in the country is a route to personal success.
WereBear
@jl: Unregulated parasites turn Ebola and kill the host as fast as they can.
Tea Partiers: the Mad Scientist’s assistant of politics. They can kill the Master, but not acquire his knowledge.
kay
@? Martin:
I think the “gifts” come with an enormous amount of influence and control over public policy. I’m not comfortable with the exchange of control for gifts to cash-starved public programs. I want to look a gift horse in the mouth. I’m old- fashioned. If Bill Gates or the Wal Mart heirs want to direct public policy I think they should have to get elected.
Do they really need MORE access? Is there any way we coukd cast a wider net outside the same 250 people cycling thru industry, foundations and government? It all sounds the same because they’re the SAME PEOPLE.
WereBear
@kay: I totally agree with you, but only in the movies does someone get plucked from the mailroom and put in charge of the whole shebang.
I know, you weren’t saying that… but why not someone who has built their little non-profit into a bigger one? Why not someone who truly cares?
But we might wind up with Jimmy Carter in the White House. I adore him, and he’s shown his heart is huge and in the right place. But when it came to Getting It Done, LBJ was better.
I think that’s the mindset we are dealing with here. We can tell you to care. So that’s not the important part.
Todd
There’s an ancient Vulcan proverb that applies here:
kay
@WereBear:
I loved Michelle Obama’s kid fitness effort. Public health, voluntary, parent and kid directed.
My heart just sank when I saw she was taking it big with corporate spinsors, an over-priced sneaker company and a company that pushes processed food to kids. Kids aren’t marketed to enough? Can they have ONE THING that isn’t designed to sell them something?
They’re cutting pys ed and extracurriculars at tge demand of these same “corporate partners” not to mention Arne Duncan’s got kindergartners sitting on their ass taking standardized tests for ONE THIRD of school time.
Now we have them begging corporations for a fitness program?
WereBear
@kay: I didn’t know that was what was happening. I agree, that is a terrible end for a great beginning.
As I seem to need to continually remind people; such unchecked corporate power is fascism.
Keith G
@WereBear: Certainly we can have other choices – a Carter or an LBJ. (Not the the Carter record was as bad as a very manipulated narrative leads folks to believe)
The Obama economic team all seem to be from the same Robert Rubin/Erskin Bowles cookie cutter. Those two men have gotten much done, in some cases unfortunately so.
mai naem
I am disappointed in Obama’s Cabinet picks. And, I don’t want to hear about how he can’t get it through the Senate blah blah blah. That’s BS. The Interior department woman has a history of working for Exxon Mobil. The OMB woman was an underling of Erskine Bowles during the Clinton admin. Also was brought in by Robert Rubin. Jack Lew is yet another Wall Streeter. Defense is a Republican. Energy’s got a cheerleader for fracking and nuclear. At this rate he’s going to nominate some deputy from the National Federation for Independent Business to be Sec. of Labor. I am genuinely surprised that Obama’s dipping into WJC’s stable of people so much. Not impressed.
JoyfulA
@Amir Khalid: Yikes! This in addition to all the Lawyers, Guns, and Money coverage of U.S. political writers being paid by the Malaysian government and my own current manuscript to copyedit with its mentions of the Malaysian stock market.
From what I’m reading, Sulu-Sabah seems to be another problem created by colonialism, like Nigeria and Iraq. Of course, the U.S. solutions to such problems in that era were a lot worse.
Amir Khalid
@Joey Maloney:
Actual fucking firearms, my friend. They’ve killed half a dozen Malaysian cops already. The Malaysian military has brought in F-18s and seven battalions. The 200-odd Sulu invaders are not coming out of this alive, I’m sure of that.
Kay
@WereBear:
I think I know what she believes, that she’ll be able to resist the control aspect and leverage the money for good. I think the people who take Gates money for “school reform” all start out that way, although I don’t know why because Gates is clear that he wants control. I think everyone goes into it like that, and maybe she can. I just can’t get over the fact that nothing is ever “free”.
I think we’re teaching them that they have to “pay to play”, take the donors money and accept the donor’s direction. I think I want to go back to the Carnegie approach, where he ran the plants and we elected people to run the libraries he paid for.As awful as he was as a boss, he wasn’t also running public libraries. There was a clear division there.
Are these “gifts”? Really? Because gifts don’t come with strings. Honestly, I think I’ll pass and struggle along without my wealthy corporate sponsor.
Kay
@Keith G:
But that was part of his problem. Not enough “savvy” and well-connected insiders. An honest person who didn’t know enough about the “levers of power”. They basically tore him to shreds for it. The people who opine on the President, the “opinion leaders” come from this same narrow tunnel. I mean for goodness sakes, often they’re married or otherwise related to one another.
It’s a conundrum. It’s like we have to pick between “effective and re-elected” OR “outsiders”. We can’t have both, because this is a very small club. Outsiders very quickly become insiders or they’re gone.
Joey Maloney
@Amir Khalid: I’m listening to World Have Your Say’s segment on this on the BBC. When the analysis of a conflict starts with a discussion of a dispute over the translation of a single word in a 17th-century treaty, you know you’re in for a rough ride.
Kay
@mai naem:
IMO, Lew is getting a bad rap. He (supposedly) was a very tough negotiator on behalf of poor people. The GOP didn’t want to go in with him. That’s valuable, and it’s rare. It’s a skill.
Amir Khalid
@Joey Maloney:
Actually, that one word, “pajak”, is unambiguous. It’s Malay for lease. Nobody has ever used it to mean sale. But in 1963, Sabahans voted to join the Federation of Malaysia. One should ask them now if they want to be Filipinos; or to be part of a sultanate that hasn’t ruled its own territory since the late 18th century, when the sultan yielded what was left of it to Spain. (That territory is now the southern Philippines.)
El Caganer
There’s a Sylvia Burwell on the advisory board of Pete Peterson’s foundation.
askew
@? Martin:
Yeah, this post looks like something mcjoan or MB would write at Daily Kos. Smearing someone based on a 1/2 truth. This site normally has higher standards than this.
Linnaeus
I’m with Kay on this. I’m not going to freak out about this choice, and I do think Burwell’s a better choice than some others the president could have picked, but we should look at these wealthy foundations in a fuller context. The good they’re doing comes also with giving them increased influence over public policy, which will reflect the priorities of those who control and run the foundation.
Case in point: charter schools here in Washington. Bill Gates and Alice Walton dumped a lot of money (their own, not foundation money) into the campaign to support the charter school initiative that was on the ballot last November. The initiative passed; IIRC, Washington voters had rejected charter schools three times prior to 2012.
The Gates Foundation is a big supporter of charter schools, so we now have a well-funded and organized institution ready to provide support for them. None of this is coincidental – just connect the dots.
Kay
@Linnaeus:
I feel bad about that, because I got emails from a reader about it, so I read the proposed law, and I saw it was limited to non-profit charters. It looked like a good charter law, ya know, if you’re a charter fan, a good charter law is better than a bad charter law (like Ohio’s, BAD, a for-profit grifter public money sink). So I thought this was a “better” charter law, in that it had safeguards.
Sadly, I did not know at the time that charters often put a for-profit entity inside a non-profit shell, where the for-profit has total control, so “non-profit”: is meaningless. It’s easy to game the charter laws.
FlipYrWhig
@? Martin: if anything, Burwell is NOT from “the pipeline,” seeing as she was a wonk-staffer _before_ going to Walmart. It looks to me like Walmart looked outside their own pipeline to find her. Maybe there’s something more to this I don’t know, but as far as I can tell she’s not guilty of anything vile Walmart has done. We don’t hold professors at Catholic colleges responsible for the institutions’ backwards-ass policies on birth control.
Kay
@Linnaeus:
Yesterday there was this horrible piece making the rounds, so depressing, about how markets were celebrating but people were struggling, and one of the “analysts” said “markets want more austerity”.
Oh, by all means, let’s get them some, then! God forbid “markets” shouldn’t get what they demand, immediately. Why, if they go down…I don’t know, we all prosper? Does this work in reverse?
Linnaeus
@Kay:
The pro-charter people emphasized the public, non-profit aspect of the proposed charter school law in their literature pretty strongly. They knew that would be necessary to allay the suspicions of skeptical voters.
And the law may in fact turn out to be not as bad, though as you say, these laws can be gamed more easily than you might think. But it’s troubling to me to see more and more public policy in the hands of a relatively few wealthy people and institutions. I can vote for school board candidates; I can’t vote for board members of the Gates Foundation.
Linnaeus
@Kay:
It’s almost like a theology.
Kay
@Linnaeus:
Me too. I think state and local people are bowled over by the big names, too. I actually think Arne Duncan is completely smitten by the star power, so not just “state and local”.
I know they are, in the Ohio statehouse. My state representative owns a bottled water franchise. He’s about 60. He wears a bad toupee. You tell him Bill Gates wants to “reform” our schools, he’s bowing and scraping at the Great Man’s feet. “He’s a….GENUIS, and SO RICH!” A local kindergarten teacher doesn’t stand a chance at that hearing.
burnspbesq
It’s comforting to know that in an uncertain and ever changing world, some things are constant and true.
Charles Pierce is always an idiot and a bad writer, and AL is always incapable of telling shit from Shinola.
Linnaeus
Slightly OT, but a (IMHO) teling anecdote:
Several years ago, the University of Washington built a new facility for its Genome Sciences department (as part of its reorganization of life sciences here), which got some funding from Bill Gates. The building was put up rather quickly, and this resulted in some problems, e.g., toilets in several bathrooms not working properly, etc. This problem continued for several months…until it was announced that Gates would be speaking at the new Genome Sciences building. Then there was a huge rush to fix everything that was wrong. Some friends of mine working in the building took note of that.
Kay
@Linnaeus:
Of course. I don’t know why admitting it is even controversial. People are impressed by the wealthy and famous. There’s an assumption they’re better at everything.
I had an experience over Christmas that should scare the school reformers. I was sitting at a local event, a Christmas party, with 5 women I know slightly. This is a conservative area, so several were probably Republicans. One was a public school teacher, and she was telling us funny stories about the testing regimes. In Ohio, if a kid pukes on the standardized test, they have to bag the test and turn it in. Cheating. They’re worried about cheating.
There was general and universal derision around the testing regimes at that table. People have had it with the constant testing and test prep. I think you’re in trouble when women, public school parents, start jeering at your “accountability” measures. That’s not a good sign :)
WereBear
@burnspbesq: And you are always as obnoxious, hostile, misogynist and tasteless as you can possibly be.
Ah, perhaps I do you a disservice.
You could possibly be worse than you are!