Monday, August 23, 2021

Well, no--of course not.

The president won't fire anyone for the Afghanistan disaster.

The first reason is that the ruling class does not get shitcanned or prosecuted for things that would have mere mortals spending years trying to rebuild their lives afterwards.

Not even the well-heeled can get away with (supposedly) lying to the Baals of Washington. See, e.g., Martha Stewart.

But the made men sure can--for a recent example, see John Brennan. 

And, winding back a few years earlier, note the refusal of Caesar to prosecute anyone for blowing up the economy in 2008.

Grotesque incompetence that has a body count is no bar to continued employment when you're an Oligarch.

The second reason you don't fire an oligarch is that he will spend years trying to undermine you afterwards. And he will have an audience of courtier media giddy to lap up leaks. No matter what a foaming incompetent and phony the record demonstrates he is.

Tactically, it makes sense in the short term. In the long term, it is another handful of termites flung at the load-bearing posts of legitimacy.



2 comments:

  1. And, winding back a few years earlier, note the refusal of Caesar to prosecute anyone for blowing up the economy in 2008.

    I don't think bad business decisions are commonly treated as crimes. A crime would be misrepresenting the nature of a financial product in the course of peddling it. The Financial Products Unit of AIG was peddling credit default swaps on mortgage backed securities without having examined in any care the composition of the mortgage pools underlying the securities. I think some of the creatures peddling collateralized debt obligations were also conning people.

    Note, the government has been dilatory and weak in the past in this respect. It took 12 years for the feds to win a conviction of the conman who ran First Jersey Securities, and an additional run of years to attach his concealed personal assets.

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  2. When conservatives are in charge, government is always weak when it comes to "entrepreneurs" and such. I'm a skeptic on aspects of Sen Warren's approach, but there's no doubt a firebrand like her would get more action than coddled and bribed up Republicans and milquetoast Dems.

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Be reasonably civil. Ire alloyed with reason is fine. But slagging the host gets you the banhammer.

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