Pete Domenici, sacred cow no more

Hinduism venerates the cow. In the American language, a sacred cow is someone immune from adverse criticism.

In New Mexico, the classic example is Republican Sen. Pete Domenici – long revered by the Albuquerque Journal. Or maybe not! For – though I didn’t believe it at first – the John Trever cartoon atop the Journal editorial page Sunday, Oct. 5 chastised our senior senator.
Having read the Journal for some 30 years, I examined the cartoon three times before accepting the evidence of my eyes. A mild reproof, yes, but a reproof. The Senator, pictured in a rowboat going over rapids labeled “Credit Crisis,” is asking the guy with the oars, “Did I mention that I saw this coming?”
In case you missed it, that question came from Domenici’s interview with Journal Washington Bureau reporter Michael Coleman published Sept. 28. The Senator said he saw the crisis coming, wished he’d voiced his concerns (about easy credit, mostly) earlier and long believed “we were on the wrong path.” Also, Domenici said, “I acknowledge I couldn’t do anything about it” and, “People are, to an extent, justified for being upset with Congress” for among other things, “letting the laws of our land on banking, for instance, get so out of line that things like this can happen.”
His recognition of banking regulation failure aside, Sen. Domenici still doesn’t get it.

Credit excesses aren’t the whole story. And he was no bystander. As longtime chair or ranking minority member of the Budget and Energy committees, Domenici was an architect of the business policies that are collapsing.
Specifically, with Reagan the U.S. elevated economic growth to its paramount goal. To that end we deregulated business, lowered taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals, subsidized trade, neutered anti-trust to enable concentration of corporate power, protected industries from competition and deferred energy reforms. We also sent into exile our capacity to produce things, along with the associated blue-collar jobs, and, then, white-collar jobs.
We excelled, however, in devising the arcane financial instruments everybody traded but few understood. Corporate profits swelled but prosperity neither flowed nor trickled down. Unsurprisingly, income inequality has risen to pre-Great Depression levels.
Tax policy, including the predictable cut in income taxes for the richest, nurtured that. (Yes, Virginia, classes exist and Santa loves rich kids more.) Quietly, we reduced the tax burden on those who invest compared to salaried workers. “I’m paying the lowest tax rate that I’ve ever paid in my life,” Warren Buffett told PBS interviewer Charlie Rose last week. “Now, that’s crazy.”
Last year, Buffett said he paid 17.7 percent on his 2006 taxable income of more than $46 million while his receptionist paid at about 30 percent.

Oh, and until recently, the Congress wouldn’t hike the minimum wage.
Domenici once opposed Reagan’s voodoo economics, it’s true, but that was back in the day. He’s long been complicit in what happened – destroying a tempered capitalism to unleash the “free market.”
Its shackles removed, that monster has not only pulled down the Temple here but – the tremors echoed by globalism – is cracking foundations around the world. Predictably again, Sen. Domenici pleads for a corporate bailout at taxpayers’ expense.
Mind you, our senator hasn’t acted alone – he’s cooperated with most Republicans and the Democrats’ corporate wing to impose a laissez-faire model that (as history demonstrates) enriches the top-most until it falls on the middle and bottom-dwellers. But the Senator’s faith in that unjust, unworkable economic system endures. “I am a pure capitalist…” he told Coleman.
I’ve no idea what that means, but the Senator’s naiveté about how business works glows brightly.
The Journal’s cartoon may be a signal that reverence for Saint Pete and his economic theology is ebbing. Let’s hope so – the state’s dominant press organ would benefit from abandoning the Hindu approach in favor of universal skepticism.