Yes, I’m mad again! Every so often I get into this go getem mad mood where I feel like taking to the streets, pitchfork in hand, ready to go after the bankers and the rich, in other words after the usual right-wing manipulators of American culture for their own ends. But I’ll probably just remain a passive radical…. although mad.
Anyway, Frank Rich lays it on the line this morning in his NYT Op-Ed piece, Bernie Madoff Is No John Dillinger. This should be required reading for everybody.
Bernie Madoff is no John Dillinger because John Dillinger was a widely sympathetic figure during the 1930′s: he went after the bankers who people blamed for ripping us all off during the great depression. Today Bernie Madoff, as portrayed in the corporate controlled media, appears to be the focus of the blame for our great recession while Wall Street and the bankers who have ripped us off to a far greater extent than Bernie Madoff get off practically scot-free. Bernie Madoff is no John Dillinger. Let us wake up!
Frank Rich quotes from Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz’s Vanity Fair article as follows:
“In the developing world, people look at Washington and see a system of government that allowed Wall Street to write self-serving rules which put at risk the entire global economy — and then, when the day of reckoning came, turned to Wall Street to manage the recovery. They see continued re-distributions of wealth to the top of the pyramid, transparently at the expense of ordinary citizens.”
Joseph Stiglitz is mad.
Frank Rich quotes Barney Frank who told bankers back in February:
“People really hate you, and they’re starting to hate us because we’re hanging out with you.”
Barney Frank is mad.
Here’s Rich’s final paragraph:
In 2009, too many who worked hard and played by the rules are still suffering, while too many who bent or broke the rules with little or no accountability are back reaping a disproportionate share of what scant prosperity there is. The tepid national satisfaction taken in Bernie Madoff’s terminal prison sentence should be a warning to the White House. In the most devastating economic catastrophe since Dillinger’s time, many Americans know all too well that justice has yet to be served.
And I’m one of those. How about you Barack?
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