Why did Huffington post failed economic advisor Larry "Jabba the Hutt" Summers?

I've long admired Arianna Huffington's writing and frequently visit Huffington Post for political news, opinion, humor, and more, so I was surprised to see a column on her website entitled "Relief for Middle Class Families" by President Obama's economic advisor, Larry Summers. If you know this guy's resume, he cares about the middle class the way Jeffrey Dahmer cared about people he ate.


When he worked for the Clinton administration, he backed or applauded every one of the middle class and even upper middle class killing initiatives of conservatives like deregulating Wall Street, and trade policies that not only managed to decimate our manufacturing base, but actually made people poorer in other countries too.

In the case of backing neo-liberal shock therapy for Russia, that not only made the Russians worse off than they were under communism and shortened their average life expectancy, he made the world a less safe place since Russia has since figured out that we were trying to make them a Third World nation.

And in spite of their economic problems, Russia does still have nukes.

Larry Summers is the lowest form of moral filth.

If a poor person robs a liquor store and kills someone, they might have at least been doing it out of economic desperation or because they were driven by a drug habit. People like Summers coolly and calmly plan the poverty and death of millions and even billions, not to survive themselves and feed their families, but to have bragging rights at the country club, the financial elite's equivalent of whipping it out to see who's is bigger. He and his friends could live comfortably for their rest of their lives on the wealth they have now, and so could their descendants for ten generations before one would have to think of getting a job.

Summers presence in the Obama administration, along with Robert Rubin, and failed regulator Tim Geithner, is an indictment of the failure of our democracy, and undermines the credibility of the Obama and administration and the Democratic congress when they talk about reforming Wall Street and Banking.

We do not fight rapists, child molesters, and serial killers by putting the criminals in charge of writing the laws to punish and prevent those crimes. If we did, we would rightly expect that the law would require the police to deliver their victims to the criminals, clean up the crime scene, and dispose of the bodies for them at taxpayer expense--sort of like what happened with health care reform.

Worse, their presence in the Obama administration and the continuation of much of the same policies makes me wonder if this or any president is actually in charge, or if they are helpless shopkeepers in Wall Street mafia bust out of America.

I am not opposed to Larry Summers expressing his opinions on Huffington Post. But he should pay a price: endure and answer the questions and follow up questions of the toughest critics of the policies he has advocated and the damage they have done to middle class (like Naomi Klein, Greg Palast, Elizabeth Warren, or David Sirota to name a few) and the most important question would be what he has EVER done in the past that would make us think he will protect and advance the interests of the middle class.

Then he submit to a polygraph, forensic accounting, and make restitution for his economic crimes against working and middle class people around the world.

Once all that has occurred, I would like to hear what he has to say about helping the middle class.

Until then, Arianna needs to hold the Obama administration accountable for putting these Wall Street economic terrorists in charge of our economy that they broke instead of giving them a forum to pretend like they care about their victims (while they are still eating our livers prepared by their private chefs).

ROOT OF RAGE: Is our democracy Wall Street's bitch?

The public anger over the bailouts and bonuses taken from bailouts and economic appointees whose loyalties clearly lie more with the corporate criminals than with us boils down to that one question: is our democracy Wall Street's bitch?

We have woken up to find that we are a lowly streetwalker with a particularly powerful and conscienceless pimp.

He demands more and more of our money, and when we tell him the little he let's us keep isn't enough to take our baby to the doctor or send our older kid to college, he says, "That aint my problem, bitch. Who told you to have kids? Besides, Daddy gotta pay off this new pimp tooth," as he shows you a diamond encrusted crown on his bicuspid. Then he beats us with his ivory pimp cane almost to death.

This shouldn't have surprised you since he has been nagging you to get your grandma to sign over her Social Security checks to him too, which you and grandma have fought off since that would leave her to die penniless in the gutter.

One day, the neighborhood cop pulls you aside. He says your pimp has gotten into some horrible gambling debts and will be killed if he can't pay them off. Your first thought is, "Good, I hope he is killed and I'll be free," but the cop says if he can't pay, the people he owes money too will kill all his girls and their children too, so you better work harder, dig up the money you've hidden from the pimp, and make your kids start walking the street too.

This is just too much to bear. You have wanted to stop walking the streets, but you didn't know how since you've worked for the same pimp your whole life as did your mother and grandmother. But this is too much. You get the other girls together, go to the police station, and tell the captain that his cop in your neighborhood is dirty and making threats on behalf of the pimp.

To your surprise and delight, he agrees, and appoints a new clean-cut cop to the beat. The first day you see him, you stop to ask him what he he is going to do about the pimp. He tells you he has given him a stern talking to and told him to cut back on gold pimp teeth, pinky rings, and velvet suits--but in the meantime, you better give him all your money or you and your children will be killed.

While you are still in shocked silence, the cop takes the roll of bills from your bra and turns to deliver it to the pimp.

You snap out of your stupor and follow him to the pimp club, where the pimp takes the money, and instead of paying someone back while cowering in fear, he laughs and buys a round of drinks for the other pimps, the new cop, and the old one.

The cop had a gun and the pimps had none. He could have arrested all the pimps or even shot them dead. He did not, which means he either works for the pimps or aspires to be one.

Up until the Bush administration, we all thought we lived in a democracy. Then when we saw our most cherished constitutional rights and democratic processes trampled all to make it easier for the rich to steal from us and other countries like Iraq, we wondered if we were losing it. Just as it we thought we were digging our way out, the rich put a gun to our head and say they want $700 billion dollars or they will destroy the world economy.

It was no surprise that the Bush administration did so.

What was surprising was that the incoming Obama administration appointed an economic team from the same criminals who extorted us and wrote the rules making it easier for them to extort, and now that they are in government again, they continue to do so.

As Eliot Spitzer pointed out, Obama's Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, as well as others moving back and forth between government and Wall Street, may have collude to funnel even more money to a handful of banks and investment companies.

It is clear that the goals of Obama's economic team are to make the pimp whole and placate the streetwalkers just enough so they get back to work.

That is not enough.

Obama needs to clean the pimps out of his administration, pick a couple of the biggest ones working the streets and give them a beating they will never forget. Strip their pinky rings, take their canes, and knock out the pimp teeth. Even strip them naked of their pimp clothes. Then either throw them in jail or make them get an honest job and pay restitution to their girls (us).

Then he must kill, jail, or beat all the remaining pimps until they get out of the business.

We need a marshall like Kurt Russel in Tombstone who policed the outlaw Cowboy Gang like this:

Wyatt Earp: All right, Clanton... you called down the thunder, well now you've got it! You see that?
[pulls open his coat, revealing a badge]
Wyatt Earp: It says United States Marshal!
Ike Clanton: [terrified, pleading] Wyatt, please, I...
Wyatt Earp: [referring to Stilwell, laying dead] Take a good look at him, Ike... 'cause that's how you're gonna end up!
[shoves Ike down roughly with his boot]
Wyatt Earp: The Cowboys are finished, you understand? I see a red sash, I kill the man wearin' it!
[lets Ike up to run for his life]
Wyatt Earp: So run, you cur... RUN! Tell all the other curs the law's comin'!
[shouts]
Wyatt Earp: You tell 'em I'M coming... and hell's coming with me, you hear?...
[louder]
Wyatt Earp: Hell's coming with me!

For the Obama adminstration, this means taking down the heads of Goldman Sachs, Citibank, Chase, JPMorgan, AIG, and any other firm that is used to telling our government what to do.

They need to be frog-marched in orange jumpsuits, taken to jail, held without bail and stripped of their assets, given a trial, then serve the rest of their natural lives in prison, to be beaten and raped like anyone else.

Then he must methodically dismember their businesses into a million pieces, so they can never treat America and our democracy like their bitch again.

The longer he waits to do this, the greater the hell he will have to rain down on them, or risk being replaced by a marshal who will.

Obama must fire Larry ''sanctity of bonuses'' Summers

Like many progressives, I was more than a little dismayed when the guys Obama picked to run his economic program were Wall Streeters who had worked for Bill Clinton but advocated and enacted many of the deregulatory and trade practices that gutted our economy.

But I hoped that those who said Obama needed insider technicians to affect change were right. Now after months of bailouts on terms the Bush administration could have written, that is no terms at all just a blank check, it is clear that the defenders of those choices were dead wrong.

The breaking point came this weekend when Larry Summers, Director of the National Economic Council, and former Clinton Treasury Secretary, said on This Week with George Stephanopoulos that the administration's hands were tied about blocking bonuses because of the sanctity of contracts.

As Glenn Greenwald pointed out, the administration eventually got around this sanctity when it came to allowing bankruptcy judges to renegotiate bad mortgages, had no trouble asking autoworkers to make contract concessions, and I would add that Obama's Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, had no problem ignoring contracts when he fired schools full of teachers at a time in Chicago, and his merit pay proposal, if enacted, would gut many contracts.

In spite of their loud protests about Wall Street bonuses, Obama's economic team isn't moving too fast to actually stop their payout or other abuses of taxpayer provided bailout money. Their creative solutions seem to be limited to writing blank checks to guys they were were working with and for just a few months ago.

Could it be that some contracts are more sacred than others?

Isn't it looking more and more like Summers, Rubin, and company are there not to reform Wall Street but to protect their buddies back at their firms from real change and punishment for the historic damage caused by greed?

Recently, a story said that the Obama administration is bracing for a populist backlash to all the bailouts. Instead of bracing for the backlash, he could prevent it by starting to take actions that show Wall Street is not being allowed to dictate their own punishment and reform.

He should not only fire Larry Summers, he should grab him by the collar, drag him out the front door of the White House and kick his ass off the porch.

If the rest of his economic team continues to bow and scrape to the various perfumed princes, trust fund babies, and sociopaths on Wall Street, they should be given the same shoe leather pink slip in short order.

The public needs to see some heads on pikes, and if Obama can't bring himself to do it to those on Wall Street, he could at least do it to their apologists in his own administration.