The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
The Obama/Clinton New-New Colossus reads:
Send us your elite banksters yearning to keep their wealth and immunity
Have them make large political contributions to my Party's teeming whores
I'll let you violate U.S. and foreign laws with impunity
Douse the lamp; show us the green and we'll secretly open the golden door
Blame it on Correa
But it was this passage from the NYT article that captures how far we have fallen under the leadership of Obama and the Clintons.
"The Isaas brothers consider themselves political exiles unfairly attacked by the Ecuadorean government and have garnered support on Capitol Hill, where sentiment against Ecuador's leftist president runs strong."
You see, key Democrats on Capitol Hill, Obama, and the Clintons share a common cause -- they hate Ecuador's President, Rafael Correa. Indeed, Correa is so bad that the New York Times would not even put his name in print in the article! Correa's unforgivable sin from the perspective of Obama, and Clintons, and some Democratic Party representatives in Congress is that he successfully implements policies favored by the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Correa did crack down on the banksters, but that is a small part of his policy package. Correa has three paramount policies, substantially increasing spending on education, health, and infrastructure. He has done so in a manner that greatly reduced unemployment, poverty, and inequality because those three programs focused on the people most in need.
One can understand why Correa and his successful implementation of traditional Democratic Party policies would make him anathema to the Rubin wing of the Democratic Party. But understanding why the Rubin wing of the Party hates Correa with such a passion that it feels proud about helping convicted banksters and immigration frauds get away with their crimes with impunity reveals the depth of the pathologies of Obama and the Clintons.
Concentrating increased government spending on education, health, and infrastructure is a policy recommended in that notoriously "leftist" screed -- the Washington Consensus. Unlike Obama and the Clintons (all lawyers), Correa is a skilled economist who did his dissertation on the Washington Consensus. The Washington Consensus urges that each of these increases in spending should be oriented towards helping those most in need -- the poor. Correa did so.
It is telling that the Rubin wing of the Democratic Party is, when it comes to applying the rule of law to the banksters and increasing spending on education, health, and infrastructure (with special emphasis on serving the needs of the poor), far to the right of the infamous Washington Consensus. Note that the Rubin wing of the Democratic Party does not simply disagree with Correa on the desirability of greatly increased spending on education, health, and infrastructure with a focus on providing those benefits where they are most needed. The Rubin wing is enraged at Correa for those (successful) "leftist" policies. The "leftist" budgetary priorities that Correa created and that enrage the Rubin wing were promulgated and became a "Consensus" in "Washington" under the notorious "leftists" Presidents Reagan and Bush (I). Similarly, it was under President Bush (I) that we had our greatest success in prosecuting the U.S. banksters. It was the Clinton administration that began the gutting of financial regulation and the large scale reassignment of FBI agents and AUSAs that substantially reduced prosecutions of banksters.
It is a measure of how far to the right that Obama and the Clintons have led the Rubin wing of the Democratic Party in these contexts that Correa's primary public policies -- which were once so mainstream in both major U.S. political parties that they were presented as "consensus" views even among conservative economists -- are now treated by the Rubinites as so "leftist" that their success enrages and terrifies Obama and the Clintons.
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