He’s got it. Watch and share this.
Joe Weisenthal called it “epic.” Naked Capitalism is calling it “pretty remarkable.” The Atlantic called it a “Howard Beale moment.” This is a call to arms. We need this and a lot more of it.
Before he begins his major tirade, he introduces his panel this way:
“Really, we’re going to go through another financial crisis because our government can’t acknowledge the root cause, which is the fact that there is an extraction in trade, taxes and banking in this country that has been going on for a long time and covering it up by printing money is only a recipe to make it worse. Well, the government is showing no sign of dealing with any of it… Critics say the President failed to do enough following the S&P downgrade. That is petty and minor…”
The Republican and the Democratic strategists trot out the usual narratives their parties operate on, ignoring Ratigan’s main arguments. But Ratigan isn’t having it.
“A big deal? We have a $70 trillion debt. The President walk out a $4 trillion solution, which is just a way for the Democrats to avoid dealing with this until 2017. I’m tired of the Republicans who want to burn the place to the ground and Democrats who want to offer a plan that gets it through the second term of their presidency and screws me and my kids when it’s over!”
This is where Ratigan really gets going.
“We have to deal with the extraction that is at foot. It is the reason the financial markets are behaving the way they are behaving. It’s a mathematical fact. This is not some opinion. This is a mathematical fact. Tens of trillions of dollars are being extracted from the United States of America. Democrats are not doing it, Republicans are not doing it. An entire integrated system, financial system, trading system, taxing system that was created by both parties over a period of two decades is at work on our entire country right now.”
“I would like [President Obama] to go to the people of the United States of America and say, “You’re congress is bought. You’re congress is incapable of making legislation on health care, banking, trade or taxes, because if they do it, they will lose their political funding…. I won’t have a country that is run by a bought congress. I’m not going to work with a bought congress… I’m going to abandon the bought congress like Teddy Roosevelt did.
He goes on to insist that money must be taken out of politics before real change can begin. Even the out of focus people behind Ratigan are enthralled by the display. This speech is something special. It might even go down in history.
Ratigan’s rant is already being compared to the famous speech from the fictional Howard Beale in the movie Network. Here is the relevant clip. We think it’s a fair comparison.
