House of evil
by digby
Like a lot of my fellow political junkies I've been enjoying House of Cards' new season. (I'm not done watching yet ...) But one thing that's driven me nuts is the fact that Underwood is selling total Third Way bilge as the Democratic wish list. Not that there isn't some basis in fact there --- after all, elements of President Obama's Grand Bargain came right out of a Third Way wet dream.
Richard Eskow points out that one of the founders of Third Way is a consultant on HOC which probably explains how this happened:
[W]ho knew that the show itself – not the characters, but the show – had a hidden agenda? It’s already taken on teachers. Now comes the anti-“entitlement” tirade from Frank Underwood in Episode One of the new season. Frank, despite his evil ways and means, has an ambitious dream, which is introduced during a lengthy scene in which he lectures his staff, and the audience, on some highly misleading “facts.”
How did that happen? How did the “AmericaWorks” fictional plot point come to be built on real-world lies?
Here’s a clue: Episode One’s credits list Jim Kessler as a consultant. Kessler is, as his IMDB biography notes, the co-founder of Third Way. That’s a Wall Street-funded, so-called “centrist” Democratic organization with a mission: to promote neoliberal economics and make the world safe (at least financially) for its wealthy patrons.
Third Way has consistently misrepresented the financial condition of Social Security, misdirected the public debate about Medicare, and generally promoted the socially liberal but fiscally conservative worldview of its patrons.
Kessler and co-founder Jon Cowan carefully tiptoed their way through the minefield of public opinion for years, pretending to be technocrats rather than de facto lobbyists for powerful interests. They finally lost their balance last year. When confronted with the rise of Elizabeth Warren and the populist wing of the Democratic Party, they lashed out at Sen. Warren with an intemperate Wall Street Journal op-ed.
Frank’s a Democrat, like all Third Way members, and his rant is filled with exactly the kind of misinformation and manipulation that we’ve come to expect from that corporatist crowd. “Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, every entitlement program that is sucking us dry,” says Underwood in his rant, “I want it on the table.”
“Sucking us dry”? That’s economic gibberish.
“We obviously have to get back to some basics,” Underwood says in his rant, “remind ourselves of some of the facts that are before us …” (emphasis ours.)
Underwood continues: “This (the number $32,781, displayed on a flip chart) is what the average senior gets in one year from entitlements …This money is a job we could be giving to a single mother or a student just out of school. Now at the moment, 44 cents of every tax dollar goes to pay for these programs. By 2030, it’ll be over half, 62 cents.”
“Entitlements are bankrupting us,” he concludes.
Except that they’re not. Social Security accounts for 24 percent of the federal budget, but it is forbidden by law from adding to the overall deficit. What’s more, its trust fund is currently holding $2.8 trillion dollars in reserves. The statement is meaningless.
Eskow details many other examples of Frank Underwood's Third Way cant in House of Cards.
But here's the thing. The man proposing all these Third Way solutions is a homicidal sociopath. I'm going to guess that Kessler didn't mean to associate his pet agenda with a character who will be remembered as the most malignant fictional politician in TV history but that's what he's done. And it's very believable.
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