Saturday, November 21, 2009

 

Glenn Greenwald On the Right Side But No Props for Ron Paul

I don't mean to be a complainer, but look at the people Glenn Greenwald credits with getting the Fed audit passed by the House Financial Services committee:
One can count on one hand the number of times that establishment attacks like this fail, but this time -- at least for now -- it did. And it reveals a winning formula: where there is a strong and principled leader in Congress willing to defy the Party's leadership and the Washington establishment (Grayson), combined with leading experts lending their name to the effort (economists Dean Baker and James Galbraith), organizations standing behind it (labor groups), and a shrewd and driven organizer putting it all together (FDL's Jane Hamsher), even the most powerful forces and opinion-enforcers can be defeated, as they were here. Those progressive advocates' refusal to be distracted by trite partisan considerations, and their reliance on substantial GOP support to pass the bill (as hypocritical as the GOP's position might have been), was particularly crucial -- and smart.
Again, I don't want to be the guy complaining about his tax bill right after he wins the lottery, but still... Would progressives have even known what the Fed was up to were it not for Ron Paul? I'm being quite serious. Nobody talked about the Fed before Ron Paul's last presidential run.

I understand that Greenwald is arguing--correctly I think--that Ron Paul alone wasn't enough, that he needed the help of the other factors Greenwald lists. But c'mon, how do you talk about this without citing the principled Congressman willing to buck party leadership etc.?



Comments:
when i read it, it seemed like he made an effort to acknowledge Paul is little as possible. the mention of Grayson in parenthesis without mentioning Paul is insulting. i'm glad you posted this.
 
I noticed Greenwald's glaring omission also. I guess a good outcome would be to have Dr. Paul made an advocate in Grayson, one who could advocate from the left. (Let's see if Grayson makes this a campaign issue.) [gasp - is Paul-Grayson THE TICKET for Gerald Celente's predicted "libertarian progressive" party?]

I've always wondered why the 'progressives' who supposedly advocate the poor never condemn the engine of theft that is the Fed! Ignorance or insincerity?

Hearing Lew school Naomi Wolf about the Fed on his podcast a while back, I'll say it's "ignorance" for the most part. Soon there will be no excuse for them.
 
"[gasp - is Paul-Grayson THE TICKET for Gerald Celente's predicted "libertarian progressive" party?]"

I doubt it. Grayson doesn't like the Fed, but he seems to like the health care bill - and that's hardly a libertarian bill in any fashion whatsoever.
 
I love Dr. Paul as much as anybody here, but I do think that Grayson deserves most of the credit here. The republican were already lined up to vote for this, while dems had to buck the chairman to get this done. Grayson was the main driver of dems. And while Dr. Paul is great explaining things in a conversational setting, the cross examinations that Grayson put on some of the Fed officials were devastating (you can check some of them out on youtube).

In short, I think we should just celebrate a vote that went the right way, and the fact that some of the left is seeing the damage that monetary policy and the fed are doing.
 
What is good about Greenwald's post and the Ryan Grim post is that you can stuff them right down the throat of the establishment-whore Yglesias/DeLong/Krugman types. There's not much room for screaming "Eek, white racist Paultards!" about this event as presented by Greenwald.

Remember that Greenwald writes for Salon. Sometime check out the 4,000 death threat comments after each Camille Paglia monthly post on Salon. It's not wise to stray too far from the Salon reservation.
 
I don't know why everyones celebrating, from what I understand it's not a standalone bill. The Audit the Fed amendment is attached to the coming banking/financial reform bill. I would hope when it's time to vote on whether or not to put more governments hands on the financial industry that Ron Paul will vote Nay, despite the fact that his audit the fed amendment has been shoved in there.
 
Darf, is this the video you're referring to?
 
I think the point here is that Greenwald is on the side of political control of Fed activities, whereas Ron Paul wants the market to have control and abolish the Fed. Why would unions join this effort, but for political control (theirs) on Fed activities?
 
Kind of a shame. I mean, it's Ron Paul's bill.

Ron Paul, in my opinion, has completely changed the game.

I wouldn't know anything about anything about economics and central banking if it wasn't for Ron Paul. Consequently, friends and family, who are for the most part social democrats, wouldn't even know what the Fed is if I hadn't told them about it.
 
The Ryan Grimm story (at HuffPo!)which Greenwald cites does better. It includes a quote from Barney Frank "chiding Republicans" by mentioning Paul's long principled advocacy of such a measure. Chiding Republicans on matters of principle is all well and good, I'm all for it, but it's ironic coming from Frank, who in the end voted with, and applied considerable pressure on behalf of his true constituency at the Fed (oh wait, I guess Frank did act in accordance with his (true) principles, after all).

I get that the Greenwald story was about the tactical battle against the opposition of the Democratic wing of the insiders, and about the efforts of Jane Hamsher and Firedoglake.com, whom Greenwald likes and wants to give props to. In this context, I suppose omitting reference to Paul's long strategic battle is reasonable.

But this is not the first time that Paul was the only one talking about one of Greenwald's pet positions, and he went out of his way to fail to notice. Greenwald is a principled lefty and a huge, valuable asset, but it's a shame that the "lefty" aspect regularly prevents him from acknowledging another principled individual who's working toward similar aims.

Particularly since Greenwald uses the article, as he frequently does, to point out that the left/right dichotomy is a smoke-and-mirrors sideshow designed to distract the media (and public) from the real insider/outsider battle.

Although I suppose I don't appreciate Alan Grayson and Dennis Kucinich like I should either.
 
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