{"id":541990,"date":"2010-04-22T23:37:41","date_gmt":"2010-04-23T03:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/business\/archive\/2010\/04\/the-double-down\/39401\/"},"modified":"2010-04-22T23:37:41","modified_gmt":"2010-04-23T03:37:41","slug":"the-double-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/541990","title":{"rendered":"The Double Down"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The new ad for the KFC&#8217;s &#8220;Double Down&#8221; &#8212; a &#8220;sandwich&#8221; of two pieces of fried chicken flanking bacon, cheese and thousand island dressing &#8212; ends with the slogan &#8220;UNTHINK!&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Goldman Sachs couldn&#8217;t have said it any better. &nbsp;Thinking about slimming down the power of the financial sector? &nbsp;UNTHINK! &nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Thinking about trying to prevent another global economic heart attack? &nbsp;UNTHINK!<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>On a day when President Obama is trying to encourage the investment banks to &#8220;join us&#8221; on planet Earth, Goldman and the others are busy clogging the arteries of government with their own version of &#8220;double down&#8221;: massive amounts of cash to prevent any financial reform. &nbsp;UNTHINK!<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Goldman, CitiCorp, Bank of America, JP Morgan and John Mack&#8217;s Morgan Stanley &#8212; along with the Chamber of Commerce &#8212; have all doubled down on their their bets, er, contributions to Congress and Congressional PACs in anticipation of possible legislation regarding derivatives and &#8211; gasp &#8211; consumer protections. &nbsp;Texas Senator John Cornyn has been camped out in New York trying to fill the coffers of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>All of this bears an eerie similarity to events described in my film, &#8220;Casino Jack and the United States of Money,&#8221; about Jack Abramoff, lobbying and the influence of money in Washington, D.C. With this blog, we are releasing the first in a series of &#8220;flash forward&#8221; videos on the enduring value of the Abramoff story. &nbsp;Though he was a piker in comparison to the lobbyists from PharMa or Wall Street, Jack&#8217;s tale lives on through the growing role of money in our democracy. &nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Want to reform Wall Street? &nbsp;UNTHINK!<\/p>\n<p><object id=\"flashObj\" classid=\"clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=9,0,47,0\" width=\"486\" height=\"412\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/c.brightcove.com\/services\/viewer\/federated_f9\/42950271001?isVid=1\" \/><param name=\"bgcolor\" value=\"#FFFFFF\" \/><param name=\"flashVars\" value=\"@videoPlayer=79543879001&amp;playerID=42950271001&amp;domain=embed&amp;dynamicStreaming=true\" \/><param name=\"base\" value=\"http:\/\/admin.brightcove.com\" \/><param name=\"seamlesstabbing\" value=\"false\" \/><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"swLiveConnect\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\" \/><embed src=\"http:\/\/c.brightcove.com\/services\/viewer\/federated_f9\/42950271001?isVid=1\" bgcolor=\"#FFFFFF\" flashvars=\"@videoPlayer=79543879001&amp;playerID=42950271001&amp;domain=embed&amp;dynamicStreaming=true\" base=\"http:\/\/admin.brightcove.com\" name=\"flashObj\" seamlesstabbing=\"false\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" swliveconnect=\"true\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" pluginspage=\"http:\/\/www.macromedia.com\/shockwave\/download\/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash\" width=\"486\" height=\"412\"><\/object><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; 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color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:1e2b0803029f6e160bc7cf24ecb9b7eb:uaGCI0BZsdifMabUCwXyWTQ5vbgFc6WTE0%2FLOciOxYTUE8PoWogr4Y1vxObLh08DsWleLclbiNkUJA%3D%3D'><img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/facebook.gif'\/><\/a><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/click.phdo?s=d0c11724a826424731056fcd9da01ca6&#038;p=1\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: 0;\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/img.phdo?s=d0c11724a826424731056fcd9da01ca6&#038;p=1\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" style=\"display:none\" src=\"http:\/\/ib.adnxs.com\/seg?add=24595&#038;t=2\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/AtlanticBusinessChannel\/~4\/8jR7Q6VZeuE\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The new ad for the KFC&#8217;s &#8220;Double Down&#8221; &#8212; a &#8220;sandwich&#8221; of two pieces of fried chicken flanking bacon, cheese and thousand island dressing &#8212; ends with the slogan &#8220;UNTHINK!&#8221;&nbsp; Goldman Sachs couldn&#8217;t have said it any better. &nbsp;Thinking about slimming down the power of the financial sector? &nbsp;UNTHINK! &nbsp; Thinking about trying to prevent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6868,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-541990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6868"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541990\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}