[Peace-discuss] Revolutionary victory

[C. G. Estabrook]

["Our leading media outlets are capable of understanding political debates only 
by stuffing them into melodramatic, trite and often distracting 'right v. left' 
storylines" -- what our AWAREist colleague Wayne Johnson regularly deplores on 
our UPTV programs (and his own) as the "failed right/left paradigm."  Obama, who 
largely neutralized the antiwar movement in this country, may also have finally 
brought that to an end in US politics.  Brother, can you paradigm?  --CGE]

	Friday, Nov 20, 2009 04:21 PST
	The Washington establishment suffers a serious defeat
	By Glenn Greenwald

Something quite amazing happened yesterday in Congress:  the House Finance 
Committee -- in a truly bipartisan and even trans-ideological vote -- defied the 
banking industry, the Federal Reserve, the Democratic leadership, and mainstream 
Beltway opinion in order to pass an amendment, sponsored by GOP Rep. Ron Paul 
and Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, mandating a genuine and probing audit of the 
Fed.  The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim has the best account of what took place, 
noting:

     "In an unprecedented defeat for the Federal Reserve, an amendment to audit 
the multi-trillion dollar institution was approved by the House Finance 
Committee with an overwhelming and bipartisan 43-26 vote on Thursday afternoon 
despite harried last-minute lobbying from top Fed officials and the surprise 
opposition of Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who had previously been a supporter."

Grim details how key Committee Democrats such as Frank -- who spent the year 
claiming to support an audit of the Fed in the face of rising anger over its 
secret and bank-subservient policies -- suddenly introduced their own amendment 
(sponsored by Democratic Rep. Melvin Watt) that would have essentially gutted 
the Paul/Grayson provisions.  Banking industry and Fed officials, as well as the 
Democratic leadership, then got behind that alternative provision as a means of 
pretending to support transparency while protecting the Fed from any genuine 
examination.  Notwithstanding the pressure exerted on Committee Democrats to 
support that watered-down "audit" bill, Grayson convinced 15 of his colleagues 
to join with Republicans to provide overwhelming support for the Paul/Grayson 
amendment.  As Grim notes:

     "[Frank] urged a no vote, yet 15 Democrats bucked him, voting with Paul. 
Key to winning Democratic support was a letter posted early Thursday from labor 
leaders and progressive economists. The letter, organized by the liberal blog 
FireDogLake.com, called for a rejection of the Watt substitute and support for Paul.

     "Grayson was able to show Democratic colleagues that the liberal base was 
behind them.

     "'Today was Waterloo for Fed secrecy,' a victorious Grayson said afterwards."

The bill still faces substantial hurdles in becoming law, of course, but 
yesterday's vote has made that outcome quite possible, and it's worth noting 
several important points highlighted by what happened here:

(1) Our leading media outlets are capable of understanding political debates 
only by stuffing them into melodramatic, trite and often distracting "right v. 
left" storylines.  While some debates fit comfortably into that framework, many 
do not.  Anger over the Wall Street bailouts, the control by the banking 
industry of Congress, and the impenetrable secrecy with which the Fed conducts 
itself resonates across the political spectrum, as the truly bipartisan and 
trans-ideological vote yesterday reflects.  Populist anger over elite-favoring 
economic policies has long been brewing on both the Right and Left (and in 
between), but neither political party can capitalize on it because they're both 
dependent upon and subservient to the same elite interests which benefit from 
those policies.

For that reason, many of the most consequential political conflicts are shaped 
far more by an "insider v. outsider" dichotomy than by a "GOP v. Democrat" or 
"Left v. Right" split.  The pillaging of America's economic security by 
financial elites, with the eager assistance of the government officials who they 
own and who serve them, is the prime example of such a conflict.   The political 
system as a whole -- both parties' leadership -- is owned and controlled by a 
handful of key industry interests, and anger over the fact is found across the 
political spectrum.  Yesterday's vote is a very rare example where the true 
nature of political power was expressed and the petty distractions and 
artificial fault lines overcome.

(2) As Grim expertly describes, the effort to defeat the Paul/Grayson amendment 
came from all of the typical Washington power centers using all of the 
establishment's typical manipulative tools:

     "The playbook in Washington often goes like this: When a measure that 
threatens the establishment builds enough momentum that it must be dealt with, 
it is labeled as 'unserious.' The Washington Post editorial board, true to the 
script, called Paul's measure 'an unserious answer to a serious question.'

     "And it particularly rankles the center that a pair of 'wingnuts' [Paul and 
Grayson] are behind a successful effort to challenge the prevailing order.

     "Step Two is for a 'serious' compromise to be offered. In this case, it was 
Watt's amendment. But by the time the vote was called Thursday afternoon, 
committee members had seen through his measure, recognizing that it was not a 
compromise effort to bring real transparency to the Fed but an attempt to 
further shut the doors."

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.

(3) Beyond the specifics, a genuine audit of the Fed would be a major blow to 
the way Washington typically works.  The Fed is one of those permanent power 
centers in this country that exert great power with very little accountability 
and almost no transparency (like much of the intelligence and defense 
community).  The power they exert has exploded within the last year as a result 
of the financial crisis, yet they continue to operate in a completely opaque 
manner and with virtually no limits.  Its officials have been trained to view 
their unfettered power as an innate entitlement, and they express contempt for 
any efforts to limit or even monitor what they do.

In other words, the Fed is a typical Washington institution that operates 
un-democratically and in virtually total secrecy, and a Congressionally-mandated 
audit that they (and much of the DC establishment) desperately oppose would be a 
serious step towards changing the dynamic of how things function.  At the very 
least, it would provide an important template for defeating the interests which, 
in Washington, almost never lose.  At least yesterday, those interests did lose 
-- resoundingly -- and the importance of that should not be overlooked.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/11/20/transparency/index.html