In all the mockery of Harold Ford, it’s easy to lose sight of this question: what the hell is Bank of America paying Harold Ford a million dollars for? He can’t even be working full time, not with his regular “Morning Joe” gig. He doesn’t seem all that smart or capable.
It’s true that lots of people make a million dollars a year at big banks. And I don’t know exactly what most of them do. I have one friend who makes about that much at a bank, but he’s been there for ten years, headed up two hugely successful large-scale projects, worked 90-hour weeks for a few years, had 200 people working under him, and so on (not that any of this justifies the salary in a sane world). I don’t know how typical that is — maybe most of the people making seven figures at banks don’t really do anything and have never done much of anything.
I’m left with the impression that Harold Ford is being paid for future services rendered, that he is being bribed to do the bank’s bidding should he ever become Senator or head of the DNC (remember, Carville was pushing him for that long ago) or something of that nature. I can’t see any other explanation.
geg6
I do believe your impression is correct, DougJ.
Mr Furious
There is no other explanation.
Tom Levenson
This is the time honored way in which well run businesses secure their interests. It’s a lot cheaper to bribe targets proactively than to have to pick ’em at retail prices issue by issue later.
See, e.g. Cheney, Richard and Halliburton.
cbear
That is quite curious. You wouldn’t think one guy would be able to blow that many people in a year.
Napoleon
You are exactly right Doug and now they are going to try and cash their check since to date they have not gotten anything out of their investment like certain other economic interest have as a result of Lieberman and Byah’s wifes jobs.
Lolis
Maybe Harold Ford, Jr., is a part of a secret plot to make New York Democrats realize Gillibrand is actually a good, progressive senator. Other than that, this makes no sense.
Robert Sneddon
Harold Ford is a hereditary member of the American political aristocracy and thus is required to obey the unwritten sumptuary laws. He NEEDS that million a year plus the other bennies and goodies he gets. Look at other fellow members of his clade such as Senator McCain — he was issued with a new rich spouse to support his gambling and wild-child lifestyle when he stopped pissing around as a Navy Captain and it was clear that he was never going to get his fourth ring no matter how hard his wealthy and well-connected family pushed the Navy establishment to do so. The Kerry-Heinz marriage was a similar example of the Rich People’s Marriage Service at work and there are plenty more examples where that came from — Schwarzenneger, Chelsea Clinton etc.
It’s their world. We just get to live in it to serve them.
The Tim Channel
Preconceptualized payola. Protection from a reintroduction of Glass-Stegall. Not like the banksters are worried. We’re not even prosecuting admitted war criminals who go on TV to brag about it.
Enjoy.
georgia pig
I’m shocked, I say, shocked, that there is bribery going on in this here whorehouse!
clone12
This does not justify multi-million dollar pays in and of itself, but If you work 90+ hours per week in a large city, your cost of living goes up geometrically- things we take for granted that we’d do for ourselves- grocery shopping, driving, commuting, waiting in line at the DMV etc etc all have to be outsourced and that gets pretty expensive, not to mention that in order to squeeze that workhour in, you have to live pretty close to your work, which means you’re paying a pretty high price for your housing.
I know this sounds somewhat glib to some poor guy working 2-3 jobs just to make ends meet, but if you’re working that kind of hours, I’m not going to begrudge you for getting paid that kind of amount.
Personally, I’m not sure I’d work that many hours purely because of money,
General Winfield Stuck
@Tom Levenson: Yes, and later there’s that whole quid-pro-quo long jumping to deal with.
John Dillinger
My favorite part is where Ford justifies the large salaries because of the risk-taking nature of the enterprise. Leaving aside Greenwald’s excellent takedown, what, exactly, has Ford risked of his?
Why oh why
Same reason Rahm Emanuel “earned” $18 million on Wall Street in a couple of years after he left the Clinton White House, without any background in finance.
Legalize
Spending $1million to own the Junior Senator from New York is a no-brainer.
Ted the Slacker
Here’s what Ford was supposed to have been doing:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aZjF2XoNZc88&refer=home
Personally, and as a Merrill alumn this is personal, hiring Harold Ford was a prime example of Stan O’Neal trying to emulate Goldman getting it assbackwards.
Goldman obviously perfected the art of sending their banking douchebags to work in politics. Merrill here perfected the art of getting a political douchebag to work in banking.
geg6
@clone12:
On the chance you aren’t being snarky here, I highly doubt that the husband of the daughter of the former Morgan Stanley chairman, Anson Beard, is having a hard time covering any of this whether or not he gets his cool million from Merrill.
asiangrrlMN
@geg6: Agree with you on Ford, which is the main thrust of this blog entry.
@Robert Sneddon: Damn you for beating me to it.
Ford is paid a cool mill because he is! Duh!
Cat Lady
Buying politicians is always way easier and WAY cheaper than producing something profitable people will pay for, or tolerating declining profits for shareholders and executives. This is classic rent seeking.
Oh, and the term “banker’s hours” didn’t come from nowhere.
ellaesther
I keep writing this and deleting it, writing it and deleting it, but I think I’ll just plunge into the fray. God save me….
I’m not impressed by Harold Ford. I don’t think I would want him to represent me, or even have coffee with me. I agree it seems fishy that he’s being paid a big piece of change for stuff that we can’t rightly understand. I’ll even agree that, as he is a politician, we should keep our collective eye on that.
But we don’t know that he is being pre-bribed. We plain and simple don’t know.
I have always hesitated to accept angry leaps to conclusion based in hunches and ideology (then what am I doing on the internet, you ask? Excellent question!) but just last week, I had it brought home to me how dangerous it is to speculate without a net:
I was “a reader” on Sullivan’s site, and a well-intended blogger who is working for a very important cause determined that the writer of that letter MUST be a shadowy, powerful friend from whom Sullivan was getting push back on his recently evolved thinking on Israel-Palestine, that “a reader” was an apologist for the Israeli occupation. On the face of it, given the blogger’s ideological leanings, his conclusions made sense, and commenter after commenter chimed in to agree.
But none of it was right. Not a single word, assumption, or conclusion. Not a friend, not powerful, not apologist. No, no, no. (And fairness demands that I say that I pointed this out to him, and he walked it back yesterday, which I found impressive).
So, this WHOLE LONG SCREED comes to say the following: It is sometimes more useful to say “This is fishy for these reasons, and we should keep our eye on it for these reasons, and I will be looking into it and getting back to you when I get more information,” or whatever along those lines, than to say “I am going to strap these two facts together and reach a conclusion and stick my landing RIGHT THERE.”
/end rant.
Daddy-O
While I agree with you that Harold Ford is doing little to earn his million dollar salary, I disagree with your assertion that in a sane world, even your friend would not be earning a million dollars a year.
A lot of people earn that much, and EARN it. It’s not easy. It’s difficult to put yourself in that position, to EARN that place, where you can make that much money.
Capitalism works–and corporatism is welfare for the wealthy. There are differences, and I would expect the site of a former Republican to at least accept that reality.
Zifnab
He’s a K-Street style asset. I’m sure Ford can turn a few ears in the House and maybe a few in the Senate. Having a well-placed lobbyist is worth $1 mil / year easy. They just insourced the work.
David in NY
@Daddy-O
“It’s difficult to put yourself in that position, to EARN that place, where you can make that much money.”
Yeah, I know. It was just too damn “difficult” to get the parents Harold did when they were divvying things up. Shit.
Michael D.
Off topic, but I just threw $50 to the Red Cross. Donate.
Michael D.
FYI, it may be hard to get through to their donation site, which I guess is a great thing.
PanAmerican
Lisa “Citigroup” Caputo is another one. I can’t imagine any other Citigroup employee going out into the public sphere, blathering that “hard working white people” garbage and not getting fired.
beltane
Very simple: BoA wants its very own, specially designated Senate seat, as if they didn’t already have enough influence in Congress. Harold Ford’s candidacy is a big FU to the people of New York, and makes a mockery of the whole idea of representative government. I hope the voters slap him down and slap him down hard.
clone12
geg6,
I’m not being snarky here. I’m also guessing that this cost-of-living consideration is not a consideration at all for someone like Anson Beard.
slag
Although I’m kind of with ellaesther on this, I have to ask: What exactly do you have against capitalism, DougJ? So, maybe the guy uses his political connections to earn himself some extra cash…isn’t he just capitalizing on his unique abilities? Free market, bitchez!
inkadu
@slag: I think you missed EllaEsther’s point, Slag, which is that it is irresponsible to pass judgement on people better than you.
eastriver
Yeah, but when can we start making the papier mache puppets? I have stacks of news paper just itching to fly into action.
Just say the word.
What’s the word?
POLITICAL STREET THEATER.
anon
Ok. You all are clueless. He gets paid that kind of money because he is a light-skinned Black man who doesn’t talk in dialect.
jayackroyd
If you work 90+ hours per week in a large city, your cost of living goes up geometrically- things we take for granted that we’d do for ourselves- grocery shopping, driving, commuting, waiting in line at the DMV etc etc all have to be outsourced and that gets pretty expensive, not to mention that in order to squeeze that workhour in, you have to live pretty close to your work, which means you’re paying a pretty high price for your housing.
First, nobody actually works a 90 hour week. But the people to whom you are referring get these services provided by the firm, for the most part, at much lower salary levels.
Like at one of the big NYC law firms. The firm provides dinner and car service at night to 6 figure associates. During Microsoft death marches, when people are working insane hours, the entire team is fed at night. It is quite common for firms to have inhouse dry cleaning windows. And, heck, during the day, the pastry cart and shoe shiner comes around.
If you work like this, you don’t buy groceries. You eat out or order in (or have a spouse). That’s true for many NYC household couples who work 50 hour weeks
And even if you did have to pay for all that stuff, the marginal difference doesn’t add up to a large fraction of a million dollars.
.
Legalize
I guess no one knows Ford’s motivations here, and no one knows why BoA is paying him a million bucks for seemingly no reason. But isn’t that the point? Sometimes when something smells like shit, it really is shit you’re smelling. I know of no reason to Give Ford or BoA the benefit of the doubt on any matter. This NYT story certainly doesn’t persuade me away from doubting Ford or BoA.
TR
@Legalize:
True, but all his campaign opponents have to do is run an ad noting he was paid a billion by Bank of America, and his support will evaporate.
Kris
Why are we even talking about this man? I do not know how many times I have to say this, black people hate Harold Ford Jr. Especially black women.
He will never win another election again.
bemused
Ford, ugh. Whenever I see him on tv, the words oily & slimy come to mind. He just reeks of something shady.
I don’t watch cable news that much but when I’ve heard the Coakly/Brown race discussed, I think of Brown posing for Cosmo centerfold when he was in his early 20’s. Am I cynical for thinking that if Brown was a Dem or Ind instead of an R, cable news would be all over this & flashing Brown’s nude photo every 15 minutes?
ellaesther
@inkadu: Holy crap where on earth do you get off saying that?
Brian J
According to this outfit in Tenneessee, the New York Post estimated that Harold Ford is paid $3 million by Merill Lynch.
I know don’t know why these guys get paid what they do or exactly what value they are to their firm. He has a J.D. from the University of Michigan, and it’s not uncommon to see people with law degrees to work in finance, but I imagine his connections in the political world didn’t exactly hurt him.
geg6
I think Josh has it right here:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/01/harold_ford_in_new_york.php#more?ref=fpblg
Remember that back in 2002, after Dick Gephardt retired from the House to run for President and the Dems actually lost seats, Nancy Pelosi, who was the logical person next in line and had all the key House constituencies lined up, ran for Minority Leader. And then Ford, completely out of blue and about as improbably as now with the NY senate race, decided to challenge her. And how’d it turn out? He got completely crushed. The final vote was Pelosi 177, Ford 29. This strikes me as exactly the same kind of exercise. Ford’s whole politics in Tennessee was based on pressing the outer edges of Democratic orthodoxies to gain crossover votes among Southern white Democrats and moderate Republicans. (And he came close to getting into the senate in 2006, which would have been great.) But those are the outer edges in Tennessee, a really conservative state. Those positions, combined with his effort to run away from those positions, are just going to make him look ridiculous in New York Democratic politics.
Eric U.
paying Ford $1mil is why someone invented the term “optics.” And in this case just because the optics are a little cloudy doesn’t mean you can’t tell they are covered in shit. This is wingnut welfare as fine art, because Ford is a tool of the Republicans with a fairly strong claim to being a Dem. And there is not a damn thing we can do about it.
Brian J
@geg6:
I don’t particularly have a problem with him running. It’s his right to do so if he wants and the right of his supporters to support him if they wish to do so. I guess that’s partly because I don’t expect him to succeed, but even if he did, nobody is forcing people to vote for him.
Jennifer
@geg6:
You underline the point I was going to make: the very best reason to oppose Ford is that he’s dumb.
Seriously, has anyone ever heard him say anything remotely intelligent? He goes on MSNBC and recites conventional-wisdom talking points – never has an original thought.
Here’s how dumb he is: he doesn’t even realize that he’s dumb. Which leads him to do stupid things like challenge Pelosi for the leadership, because he was too dumb to realize he had no chance.
Remember that study from a few years back that concluded that part of the reason that incompetent people are incompetent is that you need the same skills to recognize competency as you do to actually be competent? Harold Ford is exhibit A.
Brian J
@Lolis:
It doesn’t make sense. Why would someone like Ford be a good fit for New York? He probably wouldn’t. That’s why he won’t get anywhere.
geg6
@Brian J:
Oh, I hope to hell he runs and gets his ass handed to him. Nothing in this world could make me happier. I don’t know where you’d get the idea that I have a problem with him running. My problem with him is that he’s so stupid that he thinks all of New York is just as stupid as he is. I will be quite pleased when the citizens of New York prove that they aren’t.
And, by the way, I have no idea why the blockquote didn’t work right on my last post. FYWP.
moe99
I keep wondering if Ford perceives a run against Gillibrand to be on a par with Obama vs. Clinton in 08.
geg6
@moe99:
Have you ever actually listened to the guy? I have my doubts he “perceives” much of anything.
slag
@inkadu: I thought the point was that we shouldn’t necessarily leap to conclusions without having all the facts. A point that I, as a rule, tend to favor.
But a larger question is at play here (as it always is), and that is: What are the boundaries of capitalism (since Harold Ford calls himself a capitalist)? People throw that word around so much that I think it’s lost a lot of meaning in our culture. Does getting paid 1 mil by BofA just for being who you are qualify as capitalism? If not, why not? Clearly, these are academic questions since we don’t have all the facts of this particular situation, but I always look for these kinds of boundary questions as a means of refining my own thinking on an issue.
Brian J
@geg6:
I have no idea why I chose to say what I said in response to one of your messages.
moe99
@ geg6 Exactly my point. His conncection with reality is nonexistent.
JenJen
Glad you brought up that point about Carville pushing for Harold Ford to be DNC Chair… remember, that was in November of 2006, right after Howard Dean delivered impressive Democratic victories, nationwide.
Carville’s quote certainly made me scratch my head at the time, but now it seems more clear. It’s because Ford is one of them. Dean was never “their guy.”
This is not entirely fair, but ever since that disastrous Senate run in 2006 against Corker, my friends and I have referred to Harold Ford as “Call Me, Harold!” He was a horrible candidate then, and is actually worse now.
Glidwrith
@jayackroyd: Um, both of us work better than 50+ hours a week, we do buy groceries, we eat out only once per week, we’ve got two kids we’re raising and we don’t even break the 100K mark with our combined salaries. No in-house services, we do our own laundry, lunches are brown bag. I call bullshit on the justification of needing a million dollar salary.
jayackroyd
Glidwrith
I’m confused. My point is that the people who work long hours at large NYC firms for 6 and 7 figure salaries also get this stuff taken care of by the firm. The argument that their expenses go up exponentially isn’t true.
Yes, I did not factor kids into the equation. I was thinking of childless NYC couples when I made the remark about eating out or ordering in. Thanks for pointing that out.
NYC IS different. Paying someone to do your laundry, for example, is way more common here than other parts of the country, where they have washing machines in their houses. Paying someone 15 bucks to do your laundry, even pairing your socks, rather than paying five bucks and spending an hour and a half watching makes sense to a lot of people in surprisingly low income brackets.
Glidwrith
@jayackroyd: Sounds like we’re in basic agreement. I can’t help but need to rant a little bit, listening to how much the banksters need all their cash when everyone else is penny-pinching to stay afloat or not even managing that much. Back to work…/g
IndieTarheel
Ford is one of those guys who, when LITERALLY handed their own ass on a plate, will complain to the chef that it is undercooked.
__
In short, his situational awareness sucks.
ChrisB
@Jennifer: Absolutely right. Ford is Mr. Conventional Wisdom with Blue Dog talking points. Very much part of the Kabuki theater where he supposedly provides “balance” on a show like Morning Joe.
I heard someone say (can’t remember who) that the best thing about his candidacy is that it might open up the primary for a progressive candidate to the left of both him and Gillibrand who would not run against Gillibrand alone and that Ford’s presence in the primary might help the progressive win.
AhabTRuler
Glidwrith@53: Are you trying to say that people in NYC don’t have washing machines in their homes? Because NYC /=Manhattan, no matter how much self-important Manhattanites insist it is.
LanceThruster
I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you!
Phoebe
“A Cool Million” is also the name of a fabulous short novel by Nathanael West, a fact having nothing to do with this post. But kind of timely in a Tea Party way.
CalD
Ford always struck me as extremely intelligent and one of the smoothest talkers I’ve ever seen. He was solid gold as a spokesperson for Democrats during the Kerry campaign and came within like 3 points of winning his senate race I think. If you ask me (and I fully realize no one did), Democrats could really use a dozen or so front-persons of his caliber.
Dunno what he’s doing for Citi but he does have a doctorate in law, according to his Wikipedia page. It also says he worked for the Senate budget committee and at the commerce department before he was a US rep. Those are real jobs. Why you keep hatin’ on Harold?