Columnist David Brooks proves once again the intellectual bankruptcy of American "conservatism"

David Brooks "Two Cheers for Capitalism", New York Times July 31, 2015

"Masters of Delusion"
David Brooks & Alan Greenspan's Magical Thinking

David Books proves again that what is left of the conservative movement offers nothing but Goldwater-era slogans, wishful thinking and rank delusion. I’d say the “beauty” of Brooks’ conservatism is that it never has to answer to fact or reality.

Take Brooks’ statement on “oligarchy”. Indeed, he would have us believe that today’s corporate raiders, hedge-fund parasites, Donald Trumps and legion of Trump wannabe’s are some kind of “vanguard” bent on the destruction of America’s oligarchs. I’d have never guessed that the captains of Wall Street and Silicon Valley were so deeply suicidal. Poor babies! After all, it’s not the few shattered relics of the labor movement, hippie enviros or working moms that bought out Washington D.C.

Curiously, the overseas economic engines he cites as evidence of laissez-faire capitalism’s great success are hardly ‘laissez-faire’. China’s capitalist revolution is firmly under the guidance and control of Peking. South Korea’s corporate structure and government are symbiotic. Germany’s economy is infused with government planning and regulation. It appears that a well regulated economy and a tight partnership between government and capital in which government is primus-inter-pares has been the key to success.

It’s become a bit of a cliché to use the term “magic of the marketplace” today. Certainly no self-styled “intellectual” like David Brooks would use it. But of course that is precisely what he is referring to. He must have slept through the great crash a few years back. It’s not like it happened because there were too many regulations; what few there were (and are) were not enforced. The crash was not “creative”. We are worse for it, not better. It’s simply amazing that after all that, the tired and discredited economic “thinking” of a charlatan like Alan Greenspan is still credible. 

More fool us. More fool David Brooks.

Written by Gary Fitzsimmons

So what was the point?

Funny how long ago 2008 seems to be. Alas, it's not been quite seven years but the brutal battle between Hillary Clinton and a less-than-one-term Illinois Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination had finally ended. I say "brutal battle" because for those of us in the trenches at the time it really was. The Clinton Democrats who controlled all of the organizational infrastructure of the party were apoplectic that their golden-girl was circling the drain. They were especially vicious as befits their brand of self-promoting political chicanery.

They didn't take loss very well. I spent a dreadful five hours "testifying" before a bunch of clowns that then Texas Democratic Party Chairman Boyd Ritchie appointed to the State Credentials Committee defending black delegates from an attempt by the Clinton campaign to disenfranchise them. A Clinton operative, Janice Mattox, filed 130 challenges against Dallas African-American, Texas. Pretty galling when you consider she happened to be the sister of the late Jim Mattox, former Texas Attorney General, who used the very same black voters to propel his many campaigns for public office.

When one member of the committee accused her of mounting a racially motivated attack on black delegates, Mattox "lost it". Somehow it never occurred to her that filing challenges against entire delegations of black voters might be construed as, well....racist. Nor did that occur to Hillary Clinton's vice-chairman of the Credentials Committee Gary Horton: a pompous old boob from Galveston who just so happened to be residing in Mattox's beach house at the time.

Nevertheless, it was a bit of irony that the Clinton campaign did clue-in to how bad Mattox's challenges looked. Hillary 2008! later claimed no responsibility or even knowledge of the filing of the challenges. That's in spite of the fact that the Hillary Clinton campaign flew three campaign staffers to Dallas to assist Mattox and even stayed in her home. And of course there was the little bit of lawyer-trash Clinton hired to represent the campaign at the credentials committee - conveniently seated on the opposite side of the dais from Mattox.

But if you thought that in the heady aftermath of Obama's victory dance his friends would be rewarded with access and progressive policy you'd be sadly mistaken. And after almost seven years, we weren't even rewarded with "good government".

Almost immediately after Barack Obama took office he jettisoned the Democrats who supported his candidacy. The anti-war Democrats who supported him back when he was running 9% in the polls keeping him viable were rewarded for their efforts with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. He later lavished them with drone strikes, an Afghanistan surge, and a global surveillance program.

The liberals were rewarded with a bevy of rank Wall Street whores appointed to Treasury and his council of economic advisors. Obama actually promoted the likes of street-hustler Larry Summers: the vile piece of filth drummed out as President of Harvard University who was one of the nation's great architects of the 2008 financial collapse. Environmentalists actually got an Interior Secretary sourced from the coal industry. Labor got rewarded with the appointment of an equally empty suited former Mayor of Dallas to push yet another job-killing trade agreement abortion.

After all the sturm-und-drang of the 2008 democratic primary fight turns out it was really nothing more than a fight over "who gets to go first". Pretty pathetic.

So now we've come full circle with Democrats poised to bring back the same corrupt team that we all thought had been consigned to the dustbin of history. That's the team that brought you "Welfare Reform", financial services deregulation, the tech bubble, bombing Baghdad every time the President needed a distraction from his grand jury testimony, NAFTA, triangulation, using the Oval Office as a brothel and the list goes on-and-on.

The point is there really is no point.