I bet you folks thought I might have forgotten to do Working Class Economist’s usual “Rich Asshole of the Month,” and, in fact, I nearly did. It turns out I was so fixated on the Supreme Court Justices who would surely vote down “Obamacare” that I didn’t quite have a pick after they didn’t do so. The five conservative justices of the Supreme Court, of course, make a great target because they are all incredibly rich and so often have their head stuck up their ass with hyper-partisan politics (stopping the Bush v. Gore recount, allowing corporations to be more free than people and donate unlimited funds to campaigns to once and for all kill our democracy).
But, now, I have to embrace an alternative type of asshole, and, luckily (or unluckily), another hyper-partisan case fell into my laps. You got to hand it to the reliable Republicans in the House of Representatives, you can always count on them to do the wrong thing.
So this week, they indulged in arguably their most hyper-partisan, disgustingly hateful display yet. For those that don’t know what the title of this article means—-and I’ve barely heard a word about it myself—-they voted to hold the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of congress for his virtually insignificant role in the A.T.F. operation Fast and Furious. The operation that wanted to trace U.S. guns to the head of the Mexican drug cartels, and accidentally lost some in route to them…making it part of the 99% of undercover sting operations in Mexico that don’t go exactly as planned.
Is this really a scandal? Is the “Fast and Furious” operation really anything other than police work as usual? To see where money, guns, and drugs go, sometimes you let some contraband finish its journey, so you can track it. Anyone remotely familiar with law enforcement knows this is pretty routine, and the extraordinary majority of the time, isn’t the subject of congressional investigations. If there is not a whiff of corruption (and NOBODY is saying that the ATF made any money doing this or kept any guns for themselves), typically, there’s no real scandal. And there’s NOT one here.
So to hold the current Attorney General (NOT the head of the ATF) in contempt of congress is one of the most ridiculous moves the Tea Party has ever made. 1. There has NEVER been a cabinet head held in contempt of congress in the history of this country. 2. There has NEVER been a black Attorney General in the history of this country. Do you really think that’s a coincidence? Because if you do, I’ve got a special “Tea Party sweatshirt” you might enjoy…sure, it looks like a straightjacket, but I promise you, it’s absolutely not a straight jacket just like Republicans today are absolutely not racists.