Robert mentioned Jerry Brown’s new TV ad. It’s likely not going to make the crowds go wild or anything like that, but it shows the formation of an economic plan and a campaign strategy.
As for Whitman’s plan, it looks like she has some champions for her in the ring: Wall Street.
At a fundraiser she held in New York, Whitman said she met with people who “have suffered the financial reforms that are going to crimp our ability to raise capital, and they want California to turn the corner.” … Now the financial industry has lined up behind her gubernatorial campaign.
According to a Bee estimate, investment banks and firms, private investors, financial advisers, venture capitalists and even the chairman of the Federal Reserve in San Francisco have poured $4.7 million into her effort, more than a fifth of total outside contributions she’s received. Whitman has also given her campaign $104 million of her own money.(SacBee)
Her plan to rally California is to, umm, let Wall Street run amok? Turn back the clock on the reforms in the financial markets? Under Whitman, governance will apparently be done by the best hedge fund managers that money can buy.
It is no small fact that of the little money she has raised, much of it has been from Wall Street interests. Her campaign is geared towards the long-term benefit of those who have been made rich by the excesses of the last decade, and to continuing the false expectations of bubble economies. The end result can hardly be a surprise for anybody: continuing and growing disparities between the ultra wealthy and the middle class.
Wall Street Whitman indeed.
Whitman sounds exactly like Fox News, which never tires of whining about how difficult life is for corporations. Or the conservative economists who, to this day (astonishingly!), insist the “real” problem with our economy — and the reason for the recession — is too much regulation of business.
It makes me wonder when we are going to stop turning to economists and pollsters and start asking psychiatrists and pathologists how it is that people can actually think this way despite all the evidence to the contrary provided by reality. It’s hard to think of it as anything but denial — not unlike the former Iraqi minister of information who vehemently yet cheerfully denied there were any foreign armies in his country while viewers watched American tanks driving by in the background. At least he had a certain charm when he said it.
Thanks for the link to the Wall Street Whitman site. I hadn’t seen that.
Easily recognizable to union members. The Wall Street Whitman site is brilliant.
The hard part is pulling focus from the effect of corporate attacks on workers and redirect it to the cause – Meg and her Goldman Sachs buddies. Everyone’s pretty focused on the pain they’re already in.
That why Miles Kurland is such a gift with his work on the CalLaborFed website. We have visual tools galore.