Third World America (34 page)

80
a fate that would have a multibillion-dollar impact
: Ibid.

81
The crooked firm’s chairman, Kenneth Lay
: Dan Ackman, “Enron Shifts Cash to Democrats,” 27 Dec. 2001,
www.forbes.com
.

82
Enron also spent $3.45 million lobbying Congress
: Public Citizen, “Blind Faith: How Deregulation and Enron’s Influence over Government Looted Billions from Americans,” Dec. 2001,
www.citizen.org
.

83
“Kenny Boy” Lay was known to boast about his “friends at the White House”
: Interviews with Ken Lay,
Frontline
, 27 Mar. 2001, 22 May 2001,
www.pbs.org
.

84
friends who helped him engineer the replacement
: Robert Scheer, “Connect the Enron Dots to Bush,” 24 Dec. 2001,
www.thenation.com
.

85
He also had a lot of input on energy policy
: “Enron Had Cheney’s Ear,” 8 Jan. 2002,
www.cbsnews.com
.

86
including two with Lay
: Michael Abramowitz and Steven Mufson, “Papers Detail Industry’s Role in Cheney’s Energy Report,” 18 Jul. 2007,
www.washingtonpost.com
.

87
The last of those meetings took place six days
: “Enron Had Cheney’s Ear,” 8 Jan. 2002,
www.cbsnews.com
.

88
Back in 2000, Massey was responsible for a coal
: Brad Johnson, “Don Blankenship’s Record of Profits over Safety: ‘Coal Pays the Bills,’ ” 8 Apr. 2010,
www.thinkprogress.com
.

89
The company very successfully limited the damage
: “Two for the Money,” 20 Oct. 2006,
www.kentucky.com
.

90
According to Jack Spadaro
: Ibid.

91
And you can’t get any cozier than Linda Daschle
: Doug Ireland, “I’m Linda, Fly Me,” 23 Jan. 2003,
www.laweekly.com
.

92
But there is no need to worry about familial
: Paul Blumenthal, “Daschle, Dole Release Health Care Plan, Forget to Mention They Are Health Care Lobbyists,” 18 Jun. 2009,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

93
Daschle, you’ll recall, came within a few
: Jeff Zeleny, “Daschle Ends Bid for Post; Obama Concedes Mistake,” 3 Feb. 2009,
www.nytimes.com
.

94
Daschle has also bolstered his personal bottom line
: Linda Keenan and Janine R. Wedel, “Shadow Elite: Think BP’s the Bad Guy? Think Bigger, Way Bigger,” 13 May 2010,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

95
Hopefully he wasn’t the one who advised BP
: Tim Webb, “BP Boss Admits Job on the Line over Gulf Oil Spill,” 14 May 2010,
www.guardian.co.uk
.

96
Tom Daschle is a senator
: Arthur Delaney, “How Tom Daschle Lobbies in Secret: Influence Laundering,” 25 Nov. 2009,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

97
Robert Rubin is co-chairman of Goldman Sachs
: Eric Dash and Louise Story, “Rubin Leaving Citigroup; Smith Barney for Sale,” 9 Jan. 2009,
www.nytimes.com
.

98
Dick Cheney is a congressman
: Dan Froomkin, “Halliburton’s Return: Oil Spill Puts Symbol of Cronyism and Corruption Back in the News,” 11 May 2010,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

99
You thought Halliburton had been eradicated
: Ibid.

100
You thought it was over when the Justice Department
: Ibid.

101
You thought reports that Halliburton had allowed
: Ibid.

102
Well, they’re baaa-aaack! And their work sealing
: Charlie Cray, “Time to Drill Down into Halliburton’s Role in Big Oil Spill,” 30 Apr. 2010,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

103
Doing a segment on Halliburton’s involvement
: Robert F. Kennedy, “Sex, Lies and Oil Spills,” 5 May 2010,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

104
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews couldn’t contain his indignation: Hardball with Chris Matthews
, 11 May 2010,
www.msnbc.com
.

105
Janine Wedel calls them “flexians”
: Linda Keenan and Janine R. Wedel, “Shadow Elite: Think BP’s the Bad Guy? Think Bigger, Way Bigger,” 13 May 2010,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

106
His résumé is the personification
: Robert Rubin: Executive Profile and Biography,
www.businessweek.com
.

107
Early in 2010, he penned a lengthy essay in
Newsweek: Robert E. Rubin, “Getting the Economy Back on Track,” 29 Dec. 2009,
www.newsweek.com
.

108
What grabbed my attention was not the 2,500-word piece
: Ibid.

109
Given that the piece is about the
: Jonathan Stempel and Dan Wilchins, “Robert Rubin Quits Citigroup Amid Criticism,” 9 Jan. 2009,
www.reuters.com
.

110
But that’s how our system “works”
: Robert E. Rubin, “Getting the Economy Back on Track,” 29 Dec. 2009,
www.newsweek.com
.

111
This from the man who, as Bill Clinton’s Treasury secretary
: Timothy A. Canova, “The Legacy of the Clinton Bubble,”
Dissent
Summer 2008,
www.dissentmagazine.org
.

112
and who lobbied the Treasury during the Bush years
: Mark Lewis, “Rubin Red-Faced over Enron? Not in the
Times,”
11 Feb. 2002,
www.forbes.com
.

113
“Politics is like sales”
: Simon Johnson and James Kwak,
13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown
(New York: Pantheon, 2010), 104.

114
Just as Ptolemy was convinced
: Owen Gingerich and James R. Voelkel, “Tycho and Kepler: Solid Myth Versus Subtle Truth,”
Social Research
72, 1 (22 Mar. 2005).

115
Writing about the “grand book” that is the universe
: Galileo Galilei,
Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo
, trans. and notes by Stillman Drake (New York: Doubleday, 1957), 237–238.

116
“The struggle of man against power …”
: Milan Kundera,
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
, trans. Aaron Asher (New York: Harper Perennial, 1996), 4.

117
Until the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Goldman Sachs
: Shahien Nasiripour, “Goldman Sachs Fraud Charges Could Be Just the Beginning, Say Analysts,” 16 Apr. 2010,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

118
Six months earlier, the SEC arranged a settlement
: Martin Z. Braun and William Selway, “JPMorgan Ends SEC Alabama Swap Probe for $722 Million,” 4 Nov. 2009,
www.bloomberg.com
.

119
As part of the settlement, JPMorgan
: William Selway and Martin Z. Braun, “JPMorgan Arranging Alabama Swaps Provided Payoffs, SEC Shows,” 5 Nov. 2009,
www.bloomberg.com
.

120
We saw the same dynamic played out
: Michael J. Merced and Louise Story, “Nearly 700 at Merrill in Million-Dollar Club,” Feb. 2009,
www.nytimes.com
.

121
Bank of America executives failed to inform
: Ibid.

122
Bank of America agreed to pay a $33 million fine
: Stephen Bernard, “Judge Overturns Bank of America-SEC Settlement over Merrill Bonuses,” Associated Press, 14 Sep. 2009.

123
A heroic U.S. district judge, Jed Rakoff
: Larry Neumeister, “Federal Judge Approves $150 Million Bank of America, SEC Settlement, but Calls It ‘Half-Baked Justice,’ ” Associated Press, 22 Feb. 2010.

124
The SEC and Bank of America came back
: Ibid.

125
The judge said he was forced by judicial restraint
: Ibid.

126
The total amount of fines levied by the SEC
: Jonathan Stempel and Rachelle Younglai, “SEC May Wield Stronger Hand After BofA Bonus Case,” 26 Aug. 2009,
www.reuters.com
.

127
Three weeks after the Deepwater Horizon
: Associated Press, “BP Oil Spill Underwater Video Shows Oil Gushing Like Steam from Geyser,” 13 May 2010.

128
Within a week, Obama administration officials
: “Ken Salazar Calls Gulf Coast Disaster a ‘Grave Scenario’ and ‘Very Catastrophic,’ ” Associated Press, 2 May 2010.

129
Katrina looked like it could be bad but
: Joby Warrick, “White House Got Early Warning on Katrina,” 24 Jan. 2006,
www.washingtonpost.com
.

130
Even though we now know that people in the Fed were forecasting
: Ryan Grim, “Greenspan Wanted Housing-Bubble Dissent Kept Secret,” 3 May 2010,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

131
But the government promised to protect homeowners
: Dan Levy, “U.S. Foreclosure Filings Rise 16% as Bank Seizures Set Record,” 15 Apr. 2010,
www.businessweek.com
.

132
In October 2009, the unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent
: Peter S. Goodman, “U.S. Unemployment Rate Hits 10.2%, Highest in 26 Years,” 6 Nov. 2009,
www.nytimes.com
.

133
When BP first applied to operate the Deepwater Horizon
: Marian Wang, “After Spill, More Gulf Drilling Plans Got Environmental Exemptions,” 11 May 2010,
www.propublica.org
.

134
Let’s start with Iraq, an unnecessary war
: Margaret Griffis, “Casualties in Iraq: The Human Cost of Occupation,” 8 May 2010,
www.antiwar.com
.

135
and American taxpayers three-quarters of a trillion
: Matthew Duss, Peter Juul, and Brian Katulis, “The Iraq War Ledger: A Tabulation of the Human, Financial, and Strategic Costs,” Center for American Progress, 6 May 2010,
www.americanprogress.org
.

136
And for what? As the Center for American Progress
: Ibid.

137
In the run-up to the war, General Eric Shinseki
: Eric Schmitt, “Threats and Responses: Military Spending; Pentagon Contradicts General On Iraq Occupation Force’s Size,” 28 Feb. 2003,
www.nytimes.com
.

138
U.S. deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz told Congress
: House Committee on the Budget, Hearing on FY 2004 Defense Budget, 27 Feb. 2003.

139
The Bush administration also told the public
: Andrew Natsios,
Nightline
, 1 Oct. 2003,
www.abcnews.com
.

140
To say the administration massively underestimated
: James Glanz and T. Christian Miller, “Official History Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders,” 13 Dec. 2008,
www.nytimes.com
.

141
The
New York Times
described our reconstruction efforts
: Ibid.

142
In late 2002, Charles Prince was put in charge
: Eric Dash and Julie Creswell, “Citigroup Saw No Red Flags Even as It Made Bolder Bets,” 22 Nov. 2008,
www.nytimes.com
.

143
The banking giant was already knee-deep
: Ibid.

144
According to a former Citigroup executive
: Ibid.

145
“I’ve thought a lot about that,” Rubin said
: Ibid.

146
Former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines
: Marcus Baram, “Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Hearing,” 9 Dec. 2009,
www.huffingtonpost.com
.

147
We saw a familiar insistence on ignoring all warnings
: Diana B. Henriques and Alex Berenson, “The 17th Floor, Where Wealth Went to Vanish,” 14 Dec. 2008,
www.nytimes.com
.

148
Well, financial fraud investigator Harry Markopolos, for one
: Gregory Zuckerman, “Fees, Even Returns and Auditor All Raised Flags,” 13 Dec. 2008,
www.wsj.com
.

149
In the wake of 9/11, Condoleezza Rice assured us
: Dan Collins, “ ’99 Report Warned of Suicide Hijacking,” Associated Press, 17 May 2002.

150
Except, of course, the 1999 government report
: Ibid.

151
After Katrina, the Bush White House read
: Joby Warrick, “White House Got Early Warning on Katrina,” 24 Jan. 2006,
www.washingtonpost.com
.

152
Then there is the high priest of “Who Could Have Known?”
: Neil Irwin and Amit R. Paley, “Greenspan Says He Was Wrong on Regulation,” 24 Oct. 2008,
www.washingtonpost.com
.

1
But just three years later, as John Kao points out
: John Kao,
Innovation Nation
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 4.

2
We had a similar reaction to the Soviets’ launch of
Sputnik: Ibid., 6.

3
President Obama captured this essential part
: Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on the ‘Education to Innovate’ Campaign,” 23 Nov. 2009,
www.whitehouse.gov
.

4
America is rich with resources
: Thomas Friedman, “Advice from Grandma,” 21 Nov. 2009,
www.nytimes.com
.

5
“You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps”
: Frederick Lewis Schuman and George D. Brodsky,
Design For Power: The Struggle For the World
(New York: A.A. Knopf, 1942), 200.

6
Instead, we have to reconnect with
: Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on the ‘Education to Innovate’ Campaign,” 23 Nov. 2009,
www.whitehouse.gov
.

7
Among those working to make this happen
: Fix Congress First!,
www.fixcongressfirst.org
.

8
“We must,” says Lessig
: Lawrence Lessig, “Why I’m Calling for a Constitutional Amendment,” 27 Jan. 2010,
www.fixcongressfirst.org
.