"The Divide"

My wife's been out of town on business for a few days. When she called last night, she told me that she had bought me a new book: Matt Taibbi's "The Divide." I am looking forward to reading it.

A blurb from OpEdNews.com about Taibbi:

Quote :

His relentless coverage of Wall Street malfeasance turned him into one of the most influential journalists of his generation, but in his new book, 'The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap,' Matt Taibbi takes a close and dispiriting look at how inequality and government dysfunction have created a two-tiered justice system in which most Americans are guilty until proven innocent, while a select few operate with no accountability whatsoever.

I'd like to borrow it when you're done.

Okay. But I must warn you that I'm a slow reader.

My copy arrived middle of the week. As soon as I finish "Noble Savages" it's up next.

Excellent, thanks!
Maybe as we read it we can discuss it.
Course knowing Taibbi we'll all agree with him, lol!

I finished the book a few nights ago.
Not a fun read; really can piss you off at times.
But typical Taibbi: no beating around the bush.

Matt Taibbi, on page 70, wrote:

But Holder's testimony had at least ended the mystery. It was obvious now that the once-modest selective-leniency idea that he had cooked up in 1999 had grown exponentially and was now loosed from its cage [...] It had gone from a simple tool to save a few jobs to a magical thing that was enabling the transformation of the world's biggest banks into bona fide organized crime operations, companies that had now gone far beyond shredding a few documents and were engaged in everything from rigging energy prices to manipulating interest rates to drug trafficking. [Emphasis added]

I think Taibbi has inadvertently hit on the core issue here, albeit quietly and without fanfare.

I've been convinced since the early 1980s that Reagan sold our economy to the Mafia, and they've been pulling the strings ever since.

I don't think it was inadvertent. I think Taibbi knew exactly what he would find.

Reagan can't be solely blamed for the condition of the economy or the crimes of the financial services industry. Yeah, he chopped taxes for the wealthy, raised them on the middle class, gave impetus to the war against unions, and had possibly the most blatantly corrupt administration in history. For those who weren't interested at the time, he did similar things on the state-wide level when he was governor.

You have to consider the damage done by the Clinton administration. The repeal of significant portions of the  Glass–Steagall Act opened the gates for legitimate financial crime and played a large part in getting us where we are today.

And don't forget our wonderful Congress, which is nothing more than an enabling institution for the criminals.

And also remember to blame the large portion of the electorate which has such religious fervor for capitalism, even though they have no fucking understanding of what it is, for electing the Congressional turds (and turdettes; don't want to forget the ladies).

You don't hear about "organized crime" anymore; when was the last time there was a prosecution? No, they've gone mainstream, they've gone legit, they've bought the cow so they no longer need to steal the milk.

Reagan's well-known ties to organized crime, and the plethora of Syndicate figures he appointed to his administration, lead me to believe you *can* trace it all back to him. The whitewashing continues today -- saw a Newsweek special issue on the newstands recently extolling the wonders of all things Reagan.

I cannot remember ever reading anything which convinced me that Reagan was connected to organized crime. Just because he was the head of a union which had ties to the Teamsters, and was under contract to a Hollywood studio, some of which were less than admirable, doesn't really make him a mobster. And I can't recall ever hearing that members of his administration belonged to the "Syndicate."

Reagan was a man of little intelligence and low morals, but he surely was not the Dr. Evil of the presidency - he didn't have the brains for it.

Dan Moldea - "Dark Victory"
Lou Cannon - "The Role of a Lifetime"
Together these two books convinced me Reagan was complicit with organized crime. As you say, he more-or-less stumbled into it, he was not bright enough to have done it by grand design, but the hustlers around him (and who put him in office for this purpose) certainly knew he was malleable and could be convinced to sign anything and sell it to the public if given a speech to read (full of small words and platitudes).

_Howard wrote:

I cannot remember ever reading anything which convinced me that Reagan was connected to organized crime.

http://nomadicpolitics.blogspot.com/2012/03/11-reasons-why-ronald-reagan-is.html
Read the section entitled "Mafia"
http://www.moldea.com/ReaganRedux.html

I'm sorry, NoCo, but I cannot give any significant credence to these writings. Reagan and MCA are not the same entity and MCA mostly takes the brunt of the attack from these publications. Reagan is vilified - which I like a lot - but I think these are really shitty articles.

Throughout his private and public careers, Reagan was all over the map as far as his political positions were concerned. Whatever benefited him was what he adhered to. When MCA got hold of him, he became their butt boy, which is pretty much a general description of Reagan throughout his life.

But as far as his policies creating the problems we have today, he was no more than a seed in some small patches. Possibly the worst thing he did was to give the term "Conservative" a positive bent. Prior to him, it was almost universally a pejorative term.

My first opportunity to vote was when I was 22 years old. I voted against Reagan for governor of California. I was given the opportunity to vote against him three more times. I must have jinxed the elections.

So why do you think the crime rate has dropped every year since the mid-1990s?

That's a damn good question.
But I'm sure it has nothing to do with RR.

I'm about 2/3 through The Divide, and Taibbi's alternating chapters between immigrants getting screwed by the system, with chapters of Wall Street shysters screwing the system, is getting a bit old. Doesn't he ever make any connections across the divide?

The connection is the difference in the application of the so-called justice system.

Yeah, so? I had to read a book to find out?

I wouldn't think so.

Chapter Seven is doing a good job of laying a lot of the blame for the widening divide at the feet of Bill Clinton. I always thought his administration was a little too cozy with Wall Street, and he did put a lot of foxes in charge of henhouses.

Obama too, is racking up an administration with a simply horrid immigration record. The Dems are as bad as the Pubs, in almost exactly the same way. They both have strings going up from their arms and legs.

Finished this morning. The last chapter makes an attempt at "summing up" but it was too little too late.

Disappointing. Nothing new. No unique insights.