STILL WAITING FOR THAT POST-PARTISAN ANTI-FAT-CAT BECK ARMY TO SHOW UP

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I think this Bloomberg News story (if the link doesn't work, go here) is pitched, at least in part, at the tea party/Beckista crowd -- note its many references to the fact that the people in question never had to be confirmed by the Senate (which is one of the Beck/teabagger crowd's big complaints about "czars"):

Geithner Aides Reaped Millions Working for Banks, Hedge Funds

Some of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's closest aides, none of whom faced Senate confirmation, earned millions of dollars a year working for Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and other Wall Street firms, according to financial disclosure forms.

The advisers include Gene Sperling, who last year took in $887,727 from Goldman Sachs and $158,000 for speeches mostly to financial companies, including the firm run by accused Ponzi scheme mastermind R. Allen Stanford. Another top aide, Lee Sachs, reported more than $3 million in salary and partnership income from Mariner Investment Group, a New York hedge fund.

As part of Geithner's kitchen cabinet, Sperling and Sachs wield influence behind the scenes at the Treasury Department, where they help oversee the $700 billion banking rescue and craft executive pay rules and the revamp of financial regulations. Yet they haven't faced the public scrutiny given to Senate-confirmed appointees, nor are they compelled to testify in Congress to defend or explain the Treasury's policies....

I really wonder if this is emphasized in the hope for attention from Beck, or Drudge, or some other part of the wingnut noise machine. After all, we've been told that Beck is leading a cohort of "post-modern conservatives" that "distrusts" elites and "has much less use for" them than traditional right-wingers.

Um, keep dreaming.

There's really no anger about that in Beckland or Drudgeland right now. There's no anger about the Obama administration's apparent abandonment of efforts to crackdown on U.S. corporations' use of offshore tax havens. There's no anger about the likelihood that proposed re-regulation of the ffinancial industry will be weakened. And maybe there'll be a peep about the fact that the total earnings of Wall Street wheeler-dealers in 2009 will exceed those in 2007, but I doubt it.

What is Glenn Beck exercised about? Well, besides what he sees as America's apparent decline into bondage (of the non-sexual kind), which I talked about last night, he's exercised about the game "Six Degrees of Obama" that the White House supposedly plays. What the hell does that mean? Well, go a few minutes into the first video below (past the stuff about phoning the White House and his weight problem) and you'll see: what he means is that Obama fears telling you that he likes Chairman Mao, or Hugo Chavez, so he interposes people between himself and his idols -- people like Van Jones and Valerie Jarrett and John Podesta ... who is a stand-in for the evil Jew billionaire George Soros!!!!1!!1!!!

Yeah, right -- the Beck-inspired public is going to go from that to angry marches on Wall Street. In your dreams.





In the second part, the "Six Degrees" stuff involves ACORN and the Service Employees union and ... well, you know the drill. Anti-elite anger? Not here. He's upset about a possible tax on "Cadillac" health-care plans not because workers are being taxed, but because employers (in his view) are being forced to salaam before the Evil Government (how dare the government say employers can give workers "too much"!). He talks about himself as an employer (presumably the boss of his little media production company); that's when his alleged anti-elitism goes out the window, and every boss of any size company is a humble guy running a humble small business.

Beck and his fans can prove me wrong on this. But I'm telling you they won't.