Redefining “Swine” Flu
Goldman Sachs and other banksters wrangled swine flu vaccines ahead of most medical workers and high risk patients. Nice.
Do not hold your breath waiting for a Congressional investigation or a New York Times or Newsweek expose of how this happened and who is responsible. Much like when we endured the ridiculously laudatory coverage of the death of the corrupt and not especially pro-American Benazir Bhutto, whose Ivy League matriculation and socializing with the American elite decades ago ensured her enduring American political support, plenty of MSM senior editors went to school with these guys. And the congressional staffers with their sons.
The Greco-Roman historian Polybius is instructive on this matter. He writes in his The Histories :
Rise and Fall of Aristocratic Rule
15 But as soon as the people got leaders, they cooperated with them against the dynasty for the reasons I have mentioned; and then kingship and despotism were alike entirely abolished, and aristocracy once more began to revive and start afresh. For in their immediate gratitude to those who had deposed the despots, the people employed them as leaders, and entrusted their interests to them; who, looking upon this charge at first as a great privilege, made the public advantage their chief concern, and conducted all kinds of business, public or private, with diligence and caution.
16 But when the sons of these men received the same position of authority from their fathers-having had no experience of misfortunes, and none at all of civil equality and freedom of speech, but having been bred up from the first under the shadow of their fathers’ authority and lofty position-some of them gave themselves up with passion to avarice and unscrupulous love of money, others to drinking and the boundless debaucheries which accompanies it, and others to the violation of women or the forcible appropriation of boys; and so they turned an aristocracy into an oligarchy. But it was not long before they roused in the minds of the people the same feelings as before; and their fall therefore was very like the disaster which befell the tyrants.
The Oligarchy of Good Feelings is here.
ADDENDUM:
Dan of TDAXP has sharp commentary and additional links on this disgusting story of insider corruption.
Of course, we should not be surprised. Recall during the Anthrax terror attacks how Senators, staffers and connected Beltway bandits who were not exposed to Anthrax, hoarded Cipro for themselves while the postal workers who had been endangered by bioterrorism received nothing? The mail guys were only peons of course. Not like they went to Harvard Business School or Yale Law or anything….
UPDATE:
Fabius Maximus takes issue with how the media, and by extension, myself as well, have characterized this issue:
More media madness: rich fat bankers get flu vaccine while children die!
It is a good counterpoint and worth reading – though I still find the damage control effort of the public health official cited by FM to not be terribly convincing, the program would at least seem to be legal. Whether scarce vaccines should be distributed this way is another issue.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
[…] Update: Zenpundit discusses this in the context of oligarchy and aristocracy. […]
November 6th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
These guys have no idea how thin the ice is.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
The more rigid and unresponsive the system is, the more violent the political environment will become. Since it is necessary to make a rigid system to maintain an oligarchy, the Ivy League set certainly do not understand how thin ice actually is.
Regards,
TDL
November 6th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
These guys could be shut down before it got to the violence stage. Obama has shown that the government can just walk in and take over a business. Populist outrage could lead to something like that for these jokers. I hope it never gets to the angry mob stage.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
I am hoping for countervailing political forces as well. The violent stage is not exactly what I would want to see either, especially since I live in the city (why I am so committed to living in Chicago given my hard right politics is beyond me) and would prefer not to move to ‘burbs (not that they would be isolated from violence.)
Regards,
TDL
November 6th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
The duplicity of rhetoric versus reality is so plain, even an NBC affiliate in Chicago questioned the president’s attitude at the Ft Hood presser yesterday. The entire media/leftist movement is in the tank (save most of Fox and talk radio/blogs) for increasing the influence and debt of the national government. W/respect to violence, I have no doubt the left would attempt to set up a scenario where their "template" would play out—pictures to match their rhetoric. Pictures are power. It is instructive that yesterday’s event in DC resulted in the arrest of leftists protesting Joe Lieberman and Code Pink nitwits storming Nanny Peolosi’s office.My deepest fear is that yesterday’s carnage at Ft Hood is a harbinger of things to come—imagine how intrusive the national government would become if IEDs and suicide killers began to appear in our midst—all in the name of security. Given the choice between more government or the crazies, I’ll take my chances with the crazies—as I’ve availed myself thoroughly of my Second Amendment Rights.Very instructive post. Zen, your site is becoming a habit!
November 7th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Someone does not know how thin the ice is. Whether it is the Oligarchs (who are about to crack thru) or we (who do not realize how powerful they are), is still to be determined.Fabius Maximus’ post is certainly contrarian, but he doesn’t actually demonstrate anything. Nurses who are interacting with swine flu patients are still not being vaccinated (I know at least three of them), while well-connected Oligarchs are. Nothing in his post contradicts this.
November 7th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Agreed. Goldman Sachs and Citbank alone have more doses of vaccine in hand than do health officials in my county(!) which has had to cease vaccination efforts for swine flu. I have to say our high risk population alone probably exceeds the total number of employees who work for either company
November 7th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Let me be brutal. Even if FM’s post is right, I want Goldman Sachs’ pregnant women to get the vaccine after health care providers and others at risk. Their babies are not worth more than the babies of other people who don’t work for well-connected companies. They got to the front of the line because they are well-connected. Their babies should face the same public health risk that everyone else has to, and if that means more of them die, that is the same hazard everyone else has to face. .I have zero hysteria. I have a very clear picture of how this is playing out. Obama’s friends get medicine first, others — even front-line healthcare providers — wait in line or get nothing. There is no confusion or hysteria here at all.
November 8th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
I don’t see why pregnant women at Goldman Sachs should have priority over pregnant women to line up in the cold to attend a county vaccination clinic.If we are going to ration this part of our health care, why should bankers receive priority?
November 9th, 2009 at 4:01 am
Tinder is accumulating around the edges in ways not seen since the thirties. The system was somewhat more flexible in that time. It could stretch a ways before it reached the revolutionary breaking point. A great theater actor like FDR could deploy it in interesting ways to entertain the teeming masses until something turned up. The system has far less slack now and is far more rigid. With more wrong moves on the part of the powers that be, (and so far they seem to be prone to them), the whole thing could snap. Rotation of elites is peaceful as long as the elites agree to be rotated. Yet rotation of elites will come, no matter how many impediments gather to slow it. If resisted, it will come red in tooth and claw instead of white in lace and lilies. Woe unto the banksters.
November 9th, 2009 at 6:23 am
"Rotation of elites is peaceful as long as the elites agree to be rotated"
.
Some of the recently appointed "czars" do not fall into that category. They are evincing views more attuned to being commissars intending on taking up permanent residence.
November 9th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
This hard left blogger agrees with you completely. The blind arrogance of the banksters and the craven complicity of the government in enabling them seems almost guaranteed to lead to social unrest.
November 9th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
[…] Sachs, after looting billions from the Treasury and getting H1N1 “Pig” Flu vaccine before nurses and hospitals, now announces that God is on its side He said modern banking performed a vital function and […]
November 10th, 2009 at 11:11 am
[…] Goldman’s (other banks are included) is getting swine flu vaccine ahead of medical staff. I guess that is because it is doing God’s work, unlike the […]
November 10th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Mr. Fouche, Your "tinder" remark is prescient and precise. I have an extensive group of friends/associates in the "Middle America" area who are heating up over the bailout bonus bubbas, the "priviledged", and the apparent lack of common sense in labeling the Ft Hood massacre a terrorist attack. And, as HR Haldeman once said, "once the toothpaste is out of the tube, you can’t put it back in…" (loose quote)The American People have an inherrent sense of fairness and they are seeing less and less as the days go on. The Tea Parties are a symptom of something that is potentially much more powerful and deadly.
November 11th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
What worries me the most is the Weimar Effect – A hollowed out and angry middle class is easy meat for the demagogue – the "Other" Muslims and Pinkos – Gays and Abortionists – Bring back the "Flag" and the Nations’ honor – The in group all laughed at Hitler – silly little corporal with a mustache – but he tapped into deep fears, anger and resentment – so could some other silly little man or woman for that matter – Palin as Joan of Arc???
November 11th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Follow up – the first foreign adventure – The New Rhineland of Canada. Now before you laugh too much – who is your #1 supplier of oil? Who has more oil locked into shale that needs a horrendous process to get it out – Canada. Other than oil, what will the US need more? Water. Who has it? Yup
A Palin America would have few scruples I fear of going here
November 11th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Hi Rob,
.
I think that a middle-class on a deep and sudden socioeconomic slide would be ripe for radical or fascistic demagogues. Aside from Hofstadter and Eric Hoffer’s take on this subject, there’s also fiction. A while back I read Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here. It is worth dusting off.
.
Re: shale oil extraction – I am not knowledgeable enough about relative costs. It would have to be a lot more cost effective than extracting oil from the seabed in the Gulf and off the pacific coast of Mexico. Not sure about water either, unless you mean the Great Lakes, as the state governments here are already wary of potential Federal efforts to tap them for the benefit of the Southwest. I suppose Canadian aquifers are large and largely untapped biut geology is outside my area of expertise.
November 11th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
When I said shale – should have said Tar sands – in theory have as much oil as Saudi BUT you will have to obliterate Alberta to get it
November 12th, 2009 at 5:55 am
If it’s inevitable that we slide into radical imperialism, I’d like to nominate Venezuela as the first chunk of <i>America Irredentia</i> to "remilitarize". Nice climate, lots of easily extracted oil, a highly efficient beauty pagent-industrial complex, and its let by a loud scumbag who’s made countless hours of footage that can be used to prod the newly fascist masses into fits of rage. Hugo will sell in Peoria.
I don’t think Hitler is a good example of winning power by swaying the masses. Hitler came to power as the result of backstage maneuvering by conservative elites that thought he was controllable. Hitler never won a plurality of the German electorate and his share of the vote was shrinking. His great gift was appealing to a broad consensus of elite opinion that felt screwed by Versailles, under siege from American consumer culture and money, disdainful of democracy, fearful of Communists, and nostalgic for a lost empire in the east and rulers with distinctive facial hair. While National Socialism had something of the revolt of the petite bourgeois about it, it was the parts of its platform that appealed to elites rather than the parts that appealed to the lumpenproletariat that bestowed the brass ring on Herr Schuklegruber.
November 12th, 2009 at 6:04 am
[…] zenpundit.com » Blog Archive » Redefining “Swine” Flu "16 But when the sons of these men received the same position of authority from their fathers-having had no experience of misfortunes, and none at all of civil equality and freedom of speech, but having been bred up from the first under the shadow of their fathers’ authority and lofty position-some of them gave themselves up with passion to avarice and unscrupulous love of money, others to drinking and the boundless debaucheries which accompanies it, and others to the violation of women or the forcible appropriation of boys; and so they turned an aristocracy into an oligarchy. But it was not long before they roused in the minds of the people the same feelings as before; and their fall therefore was very like the disaster which befell the tyrants." (tags: oligarchy public-policy financial-crisis bankers-should-start-avoiding-lampposts-right-about-now) […]
July 20th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
[…] an alien thing in American history. Something the ancient Greeks as well as the Founding Fathers would recognize as an “oligarchy“, a threat to democratic self-government and constitutional […]
August 31st, 2010 at 10:41 pm
was a great article.