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Talking To The Money

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By now, you’ve heard about it dozens of times.  Mitt Romney is taking heat for remarks he made at a private fundraiser in Boca about the 47 percent of Americans who won’t vote for him because they enjoy taking handouts from the government.  In response to the dustup, the Romney camp has focused on remarks made by Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign about people who “cling to their guns and religion”.  Obama’s discussion with “Joe the Plumber” about “spreading the wealth around” has been cited as another example of Obama’s favoritism of one population segment over another.  Nevertheless, as Brit Hume explained to Greta on Fox News, the Republicans’ focus on those remarks did not work during the 2008 campaign and there is no reason to believe that it will gain any more traction during the current election cycle.

Actually, there is a better example of Obama’s expression of contempt for a bloc of voters during a fundraiser, which is somewhat analogous the situation involving Romney in Boca.  During the mid-term election campaign in September of 2010, Obama managed to alienate a good number of his own supporters during an event at the home of the appropriately-named Rich Richman.  The event demonstrated how politicians – from either party – will speak more candidly and cynically about the “little people” when talking to their fat cat contributors.  Nevertheless, the Republicans will not likely exploit Obama’s remarks at the Rich-man event.  Of course, Obama supporters would be reminded that their candidate is not a significantly different alternative to Romney.  However, by the same token, Romney supporters would be reminded that their candidate does not offer a significantly distinct alternative to Obama.  As a result, the Republicans will never use it.

Let’s jump into the time machine and look back at how I discussed the Richman event on September 20, 2010:

President Obama recently spoke at a $30,000-per-plate fundraising event for the Democratic National Committee at the home of Richard and Ellen Richman.  (Think about that name for a second:  Rich Richman.)  Mr. Richman lives up to his surname and resides in the impressive Conyers Farm development in Greenwich, Connecticut.  Christopher Keating of the Capitolwatch blog at courant.com provided us with the President’s remarks, addressed to the well-heeled attendees:

.   .   .   Democrats, just congenitally, tend to get – to see the glass as half empty.   (Laughter.)  If we get an historic health care bill passed – oh, well, the public option wasn’t there.  If you get the financial reform bill passed –  then, well, I don’t know about this particularly derivatives rule, I’m not sure that I’m satisfied with that.  And gosh, we haven’t yet brought about world peace and – (laughter.)  I thought that was going to happen quicker.  (Laughter.) You know who you are.  (Laughter.)

The tactlessness of those remarks was not lost on Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com.  Mr. Greenwald transcended the perspective of an offended liberal to question what could possibly have been going on in the mind of the speaker:

What’s most striking about Obama’s comments is that there is no acceptance whatsoever of responsibility (I’ve failed in some critical areas; we could have/should have done better).  There’s not even any base-motivating vow to fight to fix these particular failures (we’ll keep fighting for a public option/to curb executive power abuses/to reduce lobbyist and corporate control of our political process).  Instead, he wants you to know that if you criticize him — or even question what he’s done (“well, I don’t know about this particular derivatives rule, I’m not sure that I’m satisfied with that”) – it’s your fault:  for being some sort of naive, fringe-leftist idiot who thought he would eliminate the Pentagon and bring about world peace in 18 months, and/or because you simply don’t sufficiently appreciate everything he’s done for you because you’re congenitally dissatisfied.

*    *    *

Sitting at a $30,000 per plate fundraising dinner and mocking liberal critics as irrational ingrates while wealthy Party donors laugh probably does wonders for bruised presidential egos, but it doesn’t seem to be a particularly effective way to motivate those who are so unmotivated.  Then again, Barack Obama isn’t actually up for election in November, so perhaps the former goal is more important to him than the latter.  It certainly seems that way from these comments.

Of course, liberals weren’t the only Obama supporters who felt betrayed by the President’s abandonment of his campaign promises.  In fact, Obama owed his 2008 victory to those independent voters who drank the “Hope and Change” Kool-Aid.

Glenn Greenwald devoted some space from his Salon piece to illustrate how President Obama seems to be continuing the agenda of President Bush.  I was reminded of the quote from former Attorney General John Ashcroft in an article written by Jane Mayer for The New Yorker.  When discussing how he expected the Obama Presidency would differ from the Presidency of his former boss, George W. Bush, Ashcroft said:

“How will he be different?  The main difference is going to be that he spells his name ‘O-b-a-m-a,’ not ‘B-u-s-h.’ ”

One important difference that Ashcroft failed to anticipate was that Bush knew better than to disparage his own base.

By the onset of the 2012 Presidential Campaign, many of Obama’s 2008 supporters had become ambivalent about their former hero.  As I pointed out on August 13, once Romney had named Paul “Marathon Man” Ryan as his running mate (rather than Ohio Senator Rob Portman), he provided Democrats with a bogeyman to portray a Romney Presidency as a threat  to middle-class Americans:

As the Democratic Party struggled to resurrect a fraction of the voter enthusiasm seen during the 2008 campaign, Mitt Romney came along and gave the Democrats exactly what they needed:  a bogeyman from the far-right wing of the Republican Party.  The 2012 campaign suddenly changed from a battle against an outsourcing, horse ballet elitist to a battle against a blue-eyed devil who wants to take away Medicare.  The Republican team of  White and Whiter had suddenly solved the problem of Democratic voter apathy.

Nevertheless, some degree of disillusionment experienced by Obama’s supporters continues.  Consider the final paragraph from a September 20 essay by Robert Reich:

And even if Obama is reelected, more hard work begins after Inauguration Day – when we must push him to be tougher on the Republicans than he was in his first term, and do what the nation needs.

In other words, it will be up to the voters  to make sure they aren’t betrayed by Obama as they were during his first term.

The Republican insistence on attempting to portray Obama as a “Socialist” rather than a disingenuous poseur has served no other purpose than to invite an eloquent smackdown from the namesake of the GOP’s Patron Saint.

Romney’s failure to win the Presidential Election will be more the result of ignored opportunities than the result of gaffes.


 

Seeing Through Obama

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Now that Mitt Romney has secured the Republican presidential nomination, commentators are focusing on the question of whether the candidate can motivate the conservative Republican base to vote for the “Massachusetts moderate” in November.

Meanwhile, it is becoming obvious that after three years in the White House, Barack Obama has managed to alienate the liberal base of the Democratic Party.  The Firedog Lake website has been among the most vocal, left-leaning blogs to regularly criticize the President.  The site’s publisher, Jane Hamsher, has picked up on Public Citizen’s campaign against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Obama is attempting to sneak past the public before November.  On April 27, Ms. Hamsher provided us with this warning:

The White House wants to fast track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) “free trade” agreement with Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam.  Japan is waiting in the wings, Canada and Mexico want in, Taiwan has announced its intention to meet membership requirements and China says it will “earnestly study” whether to seek entry into the agreement.

Basically, the TPP is NAFTA on steroids.  The White House wants to reach a deal prior to the election because they know all the apparatchiks feeding on the $1 billion in Obama campaign money flowing through the system will launch tribalistic attacks on anyone organizing against it (activists, labor unions, workers) for “helping Mitt Romney win” – thus facilitating its easy passage.

*   *   *

At an April 4 press conference in the Rose Garden, President Obama said that TPP “could be a real model for the world.”  Earlier this month the US limited the ability of public interest groups to have input into the process.  So much for the “most transparent administration ever.”

At her Naked Capitalism blog, Yves Smith introduced a video clip of Matt Stoller’s appearance on Cenk Uygur’s television program with the following anecdote:

Matt Stoller, in this video clip from an interview last week with Cenk Uygur (hat tip Doug Smith), sets forth what should be widely accepted truths about Obama:  that he’s an aggressive proponent of policies that favor the 1%.  Yet soi disant progressives continue to regard him as an advocate of their interests, when at best, all he does is pander to them.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a black woman after an Occupy Wall Street Alternative Banking Group meeting.  She was clearly active in New York City housing politics and knowledgeable about policy generally.  I started criticizing Obama’s role in the mortgage settlement.  She said:

I have trouble with members of my community.  I think Obama needs not to be President.  I think he needs to be impeached.  But no one in my community wants to hear that.  I tell them it’s like when your mother sees you going out with someone who is no good for you.

“Why don’t you leave him?  What does he do for you?”

“But Momma, I love him.”

“He knocked you down the stairs, took your keys, drove your car to Florida, ran up big bills on your credit card, and Lord only knows what else he did when he was hiding from you.”

“But Momma, I still love him.”

Her story applies equally well to the oxymoron of the Establishment Left in America. Obama is not only not their friend, but he abuses them, yet they manage to forgive all and come back for more.

In an article published by The Nation, Naomi Klein pulled the rose-colored glasses off the faces of many Obama fans with this review of the President’s performance so far:

After nine months in office, Obama has a clear track record as a global player.  Again and again, US negotiators have chosen not to strengthen international laws and protocols but rather to weaken them, often leading other rich countries in a race to the bottom.

After discussing Obama’s failure to take a leading role to promote global efforts to combat pollution, or to promote human rights, Ms. Klein moved on to highlight Obama’s subservience to the financial oligarchy:

And then there are the G-20 summits, Obama’s highest-profile multilateral engagements.  When one was held in London in April, it seemed for a moment that there might be some kind of coordinated attempt to rein in transnational financial speculators and tax dodgers.  Sarkozy even pledged to walk out of the summit if it failed to produce serious regulatory commitments.  But the Obama administration had no interest in genuine multilateralism, advocating instead for countries to come up with their own plans (or not) and hope for the best – much like its reckless climate-change plan.  Sarkozy, needless to say, did not walk anywhere but to the photo session to have his picture taken with Obama.

Of course, Obama has made some good moves on the world stage – not siding with the coup government in Honduras, supporting a UN Women’s Agency… But a clear pattern has emerged:  in areas where other wealthy nations were teetering between principled action and negligence, US interventions have tilted them toward negligence.  If this is the new era of multilateralism, it is no prize.

While watching Saturday evening’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, I was particularly impressed by Jimmy Kimmel’s face-to-face confrontation with President Obama concerning the administration’s crackdown on medical marijuana clinics.  One of Obama’s most outspoken critics from the left – Constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald – pulled no punches while upbraiding the President for yet another broken campaign promise:

President Obama gave an interview to Rolling Stone‘s Jann Wenner this week and was asked about his administration’s aggressive crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries, including ones located in states where medical marijuana is legal and which are licensed by the state; this policy is directly contrary to Obama’s campaign pledge to not “use Justice Department resources to try and circumvent state laws about medical marijuana.”  Here’s part of the President’s answer:

I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana – and the reason is, because it’s against federal law.  I can’t nullify congressional law.  I can’t ask the Justice Department to say, “Ignore completely a federal law that’s on the books” . . . .

The only tension that’s come up – and this gets hyped up a lot – is a murky area where you have large-scale, commercial operations that may supply medical marijuana users, but in some cases may also be supplying recreational users.  In that situation, we put the Justice Department in a very difficult place if we’re telling them, “This is supposed to be against the law, but we want you to turn the other way.”  That’s not something we’re going to do. 

Aside from the fact that Obama’s claim about the law is outright false – as Jon Walker conclusively documents, the law vests the Executive Branch with precisely the discretion he falsely claims he does not have to decide how drugs are classified – it’s just extraordinary that Obama is affirming the “principle” that he can’t have the DOJ “turn the other way” in the face of lawbreaking.

*   *   *

The same person who directed the DOJ to shield torturers and illegal government eavesdroppers from criminal investigation, and who voted to retroactively immunize the nation’s largest telecom giants when they got caught enabling criminal spying on Americans, and whose DOJ has failed to indict a single Wall Street executive in connection with the 2008 financial crisis or mortgage fraud scandal, suddenly discovers the imperatives of The Rule of Law when it comes to those, in accordance with state law, providing medical marijuana to sick people with a prescription.

It’s becoming obvious that Mitt Romney is not the only candidate who will have to worry about whether his party’s “base” will bother to stand in line at the polls in November, to vote for a candidate who does not find it necessary to accommodate the will of the voters who elect him.


 

Too Smart For The Democrats

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This was bound to happen.  Now that the Occupy Wall Street protest has become a big deal, the Democrats are trying to claim it as their own franchise.  Fortunately, the protesters aren’t interested.  My October 6 posting focused on the hypocrisy of the pseudo-populist Democrats, who – as of that time – had failed to express any support for this new movement:

The Occupy Wall Street protest has exposed the politicians – who have always claimed to be populists – for what they really are:  tools of the plutocracy.  Conspicuously absent from the Wall Street occupation have been nearly all Democrats – despite their party’s efforts to portray itself as the champion of Main Street in its battle against the tyranny of the megabanks.  As has always been the case, the Democrats won’t really do anything that could disrupt the flow of bribes campaign contributions they receive from our nation’s financial elites.

The party-crashing Democrats are now attempting to advance their status from interlopers to hosts.  At the Occupy Wall Street website, this question was posted with an invitation for comments:

“Are you cool with the Democrats taking ownership of OWS?”

Not surprisingly, the responses were overwhelmingly negative.  Here are a few examples:

WorkingClassAntiHero (Manchester, NH):

Anyone thinking about this thing in the old terms of left, right, Democrat, Republican, etc…is either not paying attention or isn’t really involved.

IndpendentTX:

There needs to be more visible demonstration that this is not a Democrat movement but a movement by a non-partisan group against the corporate political machine.  More signs protesting Democrats people!

Also make more signs that clearly state that both parties can get lost.  They’re BOTH part of the problem.

1zouzouna:

We no longer accept the idea of political ownership.  It is the corporate media wolves trying to define us as Republicrat’s, because they want to deny there is a Revolution happening here and all over the globe.  They so desperately need to define us because they are scared shitless of us.  They pretend to not comprehend our agenda, they keep saying we don’t know what we want.  They only see in Republicrat terms.  Both parties Rep. and Dem. alike have had a direct hand in passing legislation that has aided in this ponzi scheme whereby we, the 99% have been robbed of our wealth and savings and dignity.  This is a global societal movement/revolution, which I am proud to be witnessing and participating in.  Together with all our brothers and sisters of the world we will effect global change so we can all enjoy our right to abundance.

Glenn Greenwald of Salon did a thorough job of trashing the notion that Occupy Wall Street could be turned into a Democratic Party movement:

Can the Occupy Wall Street protests be transformed into a get-out-the-vote organ of Obama 2012 and the Democratic Party?  To determine if this is likely, let’s review a few relevant facts.

In March, 2008, The Los Angeles Times published an article with the headline “Democrats are darlings of Wall St, which reported that both Obama and Clinton “are benefiting handsomely from Wall Street donations, easily surpassing Republican John McCain in campaign contributions.”   In June, 2008, Reuters published an article entitled “Wall Street puts its money behind Obama”; it detailed that Obama had almost twice as much in contributions from “the securities and investment industry” and that “Democrats garnered 57 percent of the contributions from” that industry.  When the financial collapse exploded, then-candidate Obama became an outspoken supporter of the Wall Street bailout.

After Obama’s election, the Democratic Party controlled the White House, the Senate and the House for the first two years, and the White House and Senate for the ten months after that.  During this time, unemployment and home foreclosures were painfully high, while Wall Street and corporate profits exploded, along with income inequality.  In July, 2009, The New York Times dubbed JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon “Obama’s favorite banker” because of his close relationship with, and heavy influence on, leading Democrats, including the President.  In February, 2010, President Obama defended Dimon’s $17 million bonus and the $9 million bonus to Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein – both of whose firms received substantial taxpayer bailouts – as fair and reasonable.

*   *   *

Would it not be a bit odd for a protest movement to “Occupy Wall Street” while simultaneously devoting itself to keeping Wall Street’s most lavishly funded politician in power?

At Washington’s Blog, we were informed about an attempt by the Democratic-aligned MoveOn organization to wrest control of Occupy Wall Street:

David DeGraw – one of the primary Wall Street protest organizers – just sent me the following email:

Top MoveOn leaders / executives are all over national television speaking for the movement.  fully appreciate the help and support of MoveOn, but the MSM is clearly using them as the spokespeople for OWS.  This is an blatant attempt to fracture the 99% into a Democratic Party organization.  The leadership of MoveON are Democratic Party operatives.  they are divide and conquer pawns.  For years they ignored Wall Street protests to keep complete focus on the Republicans, in favor of Goldman’s Obama and Wall Street’s Democratic leadership.

If anyone at Move On or Daily Kos would like to have a public debate about these comments, we invite it.

Please help us stop this divide and conquer attempt.

DeGraw – who is wholly non-partisan [like the writers at Washington’s Blog] – tells me that there are many political views represented, and that Occupy Wall Street is very diverse with opinions across the political spectrum (and see this.)

This mirrors what some of the original organizers of various “Occupy” protests in other cities have said as well:  MoveOn attempted to take credit for the events.

As I noted last week:

Everyone’s trying to cash in on the courage and conviction of the Wall Street protesters.

People are trying to associate Occupy Wall Street with their pet projects, in the same way that advertisers try to associate the goodwill of the Super Bowl, NBA playoffs, World Series or Olympics with their product.

But I hear from OWS organizers that the protesters come from totally diverse political affiliations.  Many protesters support Ron Paul, many like Obama, others are for other parties or candidates or don’t vote at all.

The protesters themselves are having none of it, tweeting today:

We don’t want to be the democratic tea party or liberal tea party. We want to be our own movement separate of any political affiliation.

Just as President Obama disregarded the opportunity to turn the economy around in 2009, his party scoffed at the opportunity to rehabilitate its tattered reputation in the wake of its failure to enact meaningful financial reform legislation.  The efforts by Democrats to jump the OWS train at this point are transparently specious.  They aren’t fooling anyone.


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Secret Phone Call

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I’ve been reading a great number of articles by commentators who have expressed outrage concerning President Obama’s shocking capitulation in the negotiations involving the debt ceiling bill.  Despite the Democratic Party’s tactic of blaming the “Tea Party terrorists” for the all cuts – no revenue, pro-billionaire legislation, a few pundits have seen through this fog to point out that Obama actually got the bill he secretly wanted all along.  Glenn Greenwald presented a solid case for this theory at Salon.

Polling guru Nate Silver wrote two items on August 1, in which he analyzed the Congressional voting and demonstrated that President Obama – despite having been afforded the opportunity to include provisions in the bill to make it more economically stimulative and less onerous for those experiencing the greatest hardship from the economic crisis – decided to leave some available provisions “on the table”.

Nate Silver initially made this observation:

Fiscal austerity at a time of economic distress, and on largely Republican terms, is not what Democrats thought they were getting when they elected Mr. Obama in 2008.  Mr. Obama might have done more to make short-term stimulus – like further reductions to the payroll tax, which would not have violated the Republicans’ ostensible goals – the  price for long-term austerity.

Although it is impossible to prove one way or the other, I am not persuaded by the notion that Mr. Obama could not have delivered a better result to Democrats had he done more to stand his ground.  Despite the dissent in the Republican caucus, which had originally seemed like a tactical victory for Democrats, the compromise wound up looking more like Mr. Boehner’s original bill than Mr. Reid’s.

Later that evening, Mr. Silver provided an analysis, which exposed Obama’s abandonment of the objectives he was elected to promote:

These results seem to suggest that Mr. Obama left something on the table.  That is, Mr. Obama could have shifted the deal tangibly toward the left and still gotten a bill through without too much of a problem.  For instance, even if all members of the Tea Party Caucus had voted against the bill, it would still have passed 237-to-193, and that’s with 95 Democrats voting against it.

Specifically, it seems likely that Mr. Obama could have gotten an extension of the payroll tax cut included in the bill, or unemployment benefits, either of which would have had a stimulative effect.

*   *   *

With that payroll tax cut, the deal becomes a much easier sell to Democrats – and perhaps also to swing voters, particularly given that nobody spent much time during this debate talking about jobs.  Plus, it would have improved growth in 2012 and, depending on how literally you take the economic models, improved Mr. Obama’s re-election chances.

As many observers have noted, the plutocracy has been able to accomplish much more with Obama in the White House, than what would have been achievable with a Republican President.  This latest example of a bipartisan effort to trample “the little people” has reinforced my belief that the fake “two-party system” is a sideshow – designed to obfuscate the insidious activities of the Republi-Cratic Corporatist Party.

What follows is the transcript of an imaginary telephone conversation between President Obama and Roger Ailes of Fox News:

Obama:  Hi Rodge!

Ailes:  Hi Barry!  Congratulations on the debt ceiling bill!  Great work!

Obama:  Thanks.  I won’t have to renew the Bush tax cuts again until after the election.  That’s a relief!  Unfortunately, we’re getting some bad polling numbers now.  Problems with the base.  I need you guys to lean on the “liberal” stuff a little harder.  Both O’Reilly and Hannity have been doing OK on it – but I just wish they would get back to some more of the “socialist” accusations.  That would really help rehabilitate my cred with my estranged base.

Ailes:       The “socialist” shtick was more Beck’s routine – but I’ll get them on it.

Obama:   I found some old pictures of myself with Bill Ayers that you guys might want to use    . . .

Ailes:       Ayers is sooooo 2008!  We need something new.  We need to get you to Syria for a meeting with Bashar al-Assad.  When you shake hands with him – make sure you bow!  We can get a lot of mileage here from that!

Obama:   No!  That will piss off too many liberals – especially the Jews.  I’m trying to keep the smart people in my corner!

Ailes:       OK.  OK.  We just really need to get you on some sort of apology tour or something.  You could start traveling around to abortion clinics and promising them some federal aid  .  .  .

Obama:   Great one, Rodge!  I love that!

Ailes:       I’ll plant some of our protesters along the way – the ones who’ve already been cleared by the Secret Service.

Obama:   Yeah!  Bring back that guy with the fake assault rifle!  He was a trip!

Ailes:       I have someone better.  This guy has been posing as a “Tea Party activist” at “town meetings”.  He’s a great new talent!

Obama:   We could set up another “Joe the Plumber”-type of confrontation with that guy!

Ailes:       Definately!  I’ll have my people put a script together.  That story will have some legs that will carry us all the way to the election!  . . .  Speaking of legs – I’m getting some good numbers in on Bachmann!

Obama:   How’s our girl doing?

Ailes:       Great!  She’s really gonna’ kick some ass in Iowa!

Obama:   I saw her on with Sean the other day.  She’s doing a great job!  Are you guys going to start a scandal involving Mitt?

Ailes:       I need to maintain plausible deniability about what Rupert’s operatives are up to.  You know  .  .  .

Obama:   Gotcha!  ‘Nuff said!

Ailes:       Well, I’ll let you get back to work.  You must have loads of angry campaign donors trying to bend your ear right about now  . . .

Obama:   Yeah  . . .  But that’s not where the real money is.

Ailes:       Amen!


 

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Giving Centrism A Bad Name

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It seems as though every time some venal politician breaches a campaign promise while attempting to grab a payoff from a lobbyist, the excuse is always the same:  “I’ve decided to tack toward the center on this issue.”  “The Center” has become stigmatized as the dwelling place of those politicians who lack a moral compass.

I get particularly annoyed by those who persist in characterizing Barack Obama as a “centrist”, who is mimicking Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” strategy.  During his campaign and throughout the early days of his Presidency, Obama successfully posed as a centrist.  Nevertheless, his track record now demonstrates a policy of what Marshall Auerback described as “gutting the Democratic Party of its core social legacy.”   I particularly enjoyed reading the comments to Auerback’s above-quoted piece about Obama entitled, “Worse Than Hoover”.  Most of the commentators expressed the opinion that Auerback went way too easy on Obama.  Here are some examples:

Sandra:

We have to stop comparing Obama to these iconic American figures. Obama is an opportunistic corporatist. There is no there there.

Rex:

I’m beginning to wonder if we are still giving Obummer too much credit.  Common view seems to be trending toward he’s a manipulative scumbag.

Wasabi:

He’s very useful to the plutocracy.  A Repub president could never persuade Dems to cut SS, Medicare, and Medicaid and all sorts of other essential programs.

Z:

He got the glory and the thrill of winning the election to become the 1st black president and I suspect that’s all the narcissio-path ever really wanted as far as the presidency is concerned.  He certainly doesn’t look like he’s enjoying himself right now.  I think he’s ready to cash out and is trying to create a scenario where he becomes an untenable candidate.  He also wants to maintain his celebrity appeal so he’s going to try to posture as the adult of adults that was just too good for dc …

Steelhead23:

From a more technocratic perspective, I tend to see Obama as a consummate politician – able to inspire – but sadly lacking in intellectual curiosity and overflowing with ego, thus unable to quench his ignorance.  This leaves him extremely susceptible to “experts” whom he parrots with enthusiasm.  It was experts who helped him pick his advisers and now his expert advisers are misleading him and making him complicit in this quest toward neo-feudalism.

Keep in mind that those comments were not posted at Fox News or some right-wing website.  They were posted at Naked Capitalism, where the publisher – Yves Smith – offered a comment of her own in reaction to Marshall Auerback’s “Worse Than Hoover” posting.

Yves Smith:

Obama is an authoritarian narcissist, an ugly combination.

He also seems unaware of the limits of his knowledge.  That can render many otherwise intelligent people stupid in their decisions and actions in their blind spots.

Obama’s foremost critic from the Left is Glenn Greenwald of Salon.  Mr. Greenwald has frequently opined that “… Obama wants to be attacked by liberals because of the perception that it politically benefits him by making him look centrist, non-partisan and independent . . .   It’s not merely that he lacks a fear of liberal dissatisfaction; it’s that he affirmatively craves it.”  Greenwald emphasized the foolishness of following such a course:

But that’s a dangerous strategy.  U.S. presidential elections are very closely decided affairs, and alienating the Left even to some degree can be lethal for a national Democratic campaign; shouldn’t the 2000 election, along with 2010, have cemented that lesson forever?

I doubt that Obama is attempting to follow anything similar to Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” strategy.  If Obama had been attempting such a plan, it has already backfired to an embarrassing degree, causing irreparable damage to the incumbent’s reelection prospects.  Barack Obama has lost his credibility – and in the eyes of the electorate, there is no greater failing.

To get an appreciation for how much damage Obama has caused to his own “brand”, consider this article written by Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs for the Huffington Post:

Thus, at every crucial opportunity, Obama has failed to stand up for the poor and middle class.  He refused to tax the banks and hedge funds properly on their outlandish profits; he refused to limit in a serious way the bankers’ mega-bonuses even when the bonuses were financed by taxpayer bailouts; and he even refused to stand up against extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich last December, though 60 percent of the electorate repeatedly and consistently demanded that the Bush tax cuts at the top should be ended.  It’s not hard to understand why.  Obama and Democratic Party politicians rely on Wall Street and the super-rich for campaign contributions the same way that the Republicans rely on oil and coal.  In America today, only the rich have political power.

*   *   *

America is more militarily engaged under Obama than even under Bush.  Amazing but true.

*   *   *

The stimulus legislation, pushed by Obama at the start of his term on the basis of antiquated economic theories, wasted the public’s money and also did something much worse.  It discredited the vital role of public spending in solving real and long-term problems.  Rather than thinking ahead and planning for long-term solutions, he simply spent money on short-term schemes.

Obama’s embrace of “shovel-ready” infrastructure, for example, left America with an economy based on shovels while China’s long-term strategy has given that country an economy based on 21st-century Maglev trains.  Now that the resort to mega-deficits has run its course, Obama is on the verge of abandoning the poor and middle class, by agreeing with the plutocrats in Congress to cut spending on Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and discretionary civilian spending, while protecting the military and the low tax rates on the rich (if not lowering those top tax rates further according to the secret machinations of the Gang of Six, now endorsed by the president!)

*   *   *

America needs a third-party movement to break the hammerlock of the financial elites.  Until that happens, the political class and the media conglomerates will continue to spew lies, American militarism will continue to destabilize a growing swath of the world, and the country will continue its economic decline.

The urgent need for a third-party movement was also the subject of this recent piece at The Economic Populist:

If the country had a legitimate third party to vote for, the Democrats and Republicans would be in serious trouble.  Of course, the political system is geared to prevent third parties from emerging, so the country flounders about, looking for leadership from pusillanimous Democrats or ideological Republicans who consider raising taxes a mortal sin.  The voters are probably a few steps away from concluding what is meant to be hidden but by now should be obvious:  American democracy doesn’t exist, and the political system in Washington is beyond repair.  What is worse: there are people and organizations who like things just the way they are and will fight any attempts at reform.

*   *   *

None of this suggests that Barack Obama is even considering abandoning his servitude to corporate interests.  He’s merrily going along from one fundraiser to the next, raising millions of dollars each week from hedge fund managers and corporate lobbyists, so that he can get reelected as a “centrist” and bipartisan deal maker.  This is based on his reading of what The People want – an end to the divisiveness in Washington – but Obama is fundamentally misreading the problem in Washington.  It isn’t the rancor, name-calling, and petulance that is constantly on display which worries the American people.  It is the backroom deals, the hidden bailouts, the tax evasions, the deregulation initiatives, the lack of prosecution for criminal behavior, that is more than frustrating Americans, because the beneficiaries of all this are wealthy people and corporations who have shifted power and money to themselves.  Voters want this system overthrown – even the Tea Party voters, who keep searching for Republicans who will finally say no to corporate money.

In the mean time, we are stuck witnessing America’s demise.  If you think that Obama’s critics from the Left are the only people voicing a dispirited attitude about our country’s future, be sure to read this essay at Counterpunch, “An Economy Destroyed”, written by Paul Craig Roberts – Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the Reagan Administration and the co-creator of Reaganomics:

Recently, the bond rating agencies that gave junk derivatives triple-A ratings threatened to downgrade US Treasury bonds if the White House and Congress did not reach a deficit reduction deal and debt ceiling increase.  The downgrade threat is not credible, and neither is the default threat.  Both are make-believe crises that are being hyped in order to force cutbacks in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

*   *   *

The US economy is driven by consumer demand, but with 22.3 per cent unemployment, stagnant and declining wages and salaries, and consumer debt burdens so high that consumers cannot borrow to spend, there is nothing to drive the economy.

Washington’s response to this dilemma is to increase the austerity!  Cutting back Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, forcing down wages by destroying unions and offshoring jobs (which results in a labor surplus and lower wages), and driving up the prices of food and energy by depreciating the dollar further erodes consumer purchasing power.  The Federal Reserve can print money to rescue the crooked financial institutions, but it cannot rescue the American consumer.

As a final point, confront the fact that you are even lied to about “deficit reduction.”  Even if Obama gets his $4 trillion “deficit reduction” over the next decade, it does not mean that the current national debt will be $4 trillion less than it currently is.  The “reduction” merely means that the growth in the national debt will be $4 trillion less than otherwise.  Regardless of any “deficit reduction,” the national debt ten years from now will be much higher than it presently is.

The longer you think about it – the more obvious it becomes:  We really need to sweep all of those bastards out of Washington as quickly as possible and replace them with intelligent, honest individuals who are willing to represent this country’s human inhabitants – rather than its corporations, lobbies and “special interests”.


 

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John Ashcroft Was Right

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Many commentators have expressed surprise about the extensive criticism directed against President Obama by liberals.  During the new President’s third month in office, I pointed out how he had become the “Disappointer-In-Chief” – when he began to elicit groans from the likes of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.  President Obama has continued on that trajectory ever since.  More recently, Obama’s mishandling of the economic crisis resulted in a great cover story for New York Magazine by Frank Rich, entitled, “Obama’s Original Sin”.  Although Frank Rich may have been a bit restrained in his criticism of Obama, Marshall Auerback didn’t pull any punches in an essay he wrote for the New Economic Perspectives website entitled, “Barack Obama:  America’s First Tea Party President”:

Cutting public spending at this juncture is the last thing the US government should be doing.  Yet this President is pushing for the largest possible cuts that he can on the Federal government debt.  He is out-Hoovering the GOP on this issue.  He is providing “leadership” of the sort which is infuriating his base, but should endear him to the Tea Party.  This is “the big thing” for Barack Obama, as opposed to maximizing the potential of his fellow Americans by seeking to eliminate the scourge of unemployment.  Instead, his big idea is to become the president who did what George Bush could not, or did not, dare to do:  cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.  What more could the Tea Party possibly want?

Glenn Greenwald of Salon has been a persistent critic of President Obama for quite a while.  Back in September of 2010, I referenced one of Glenn Greenwald’s exceptive essays about Obama with this thought:

Glenn Greenwald devoted some space from his Salon piece to illustrate how President Obama seems to be continuing the agenda of President Bush.  I was reminded of the quote from former Attorney General John Ashcroft in an article written by Jane Mayer for The New Yorker.  When discussing how he expected the Obama Presidency would differ from the Presidency of his former boss, George W. Bush, Ashcroft said:

“How will he be different?  The main difference is going to be that he spells his name ‘O-b-a-m-a,’ not ‘B-u-s-h.’ ”

John Ashcroft’s prescient remark could not have been more accurate.  Who else could have foreseen that the Obama Presidency would eventually be correlated with that of President George W. Bush?  Although it may have seemed like a preposterous notion at the time, it’s now beginning to make more sense, thanks to a very interesting piece I read at the Truthdig website entitled, “If McCain Had Won” by Fred Branfman.  Branfman began with a list of “catastrophes” we would have seen from a McCain administration, followed by this comment:

Nothing reveals the true state of American politics today more, however, than the fact that Democratic President Barack Obama has undertaken all of these actions and, even more significantly, left the Democratic Party far weaker than it would have been had McCain been elected.

More important, the sentence immediately following that remark deserves special attention because it forms the crux of Branfman’s analysis:

Few issues are more important than seeing behind the screen of a myth-making mass media, and understanding what this demonstrates about how power in America really works – and what needs to be done to change it.

From there, Branfman went on to explain how and why McCain would have made the same decisions and enacted the same policies as Obama.  Beyond that, Branfman explained why Obama ended up doing things exactly as McCain would have:

Furious debate rages among Obama’s Democratic critics today on why he has largely governed on the big issues as John McCain would have done. Some believe he retains his principles but has been forced to compromise by political realities. Others are convinced he was a manipulative politico who lacked any real convictions in the first place.

But there is a far more likely – and disturbing – possibility.  Based on those who knew him and his books, there is little reason to doubt that the pre-presidential Obama was a college professor-type who shared the belief system of his liberalish set …

*   *   *

Upon taking office, however, Obama – whatever his belief system at that point – found that he was unable to accomplish these goals for one basic reason:  The president of the United States is far less powerful than media myth portrays.  Domestic power really is in the hands of economic elites and their lobbyists, and foreign policy really is controlled by U.S. executive branch national security managers and a “military-industrial complex.”

The ugly truth strikes again!  The seemingly “all-powerful” President of the United States is nothing more than a tool of the plutocracy.  It doesn’t matter whether the White House is occupied by a Democrat or a Republican – the policies (domestic, foreign, economic, etc.) will always be the same – because the people calling the shots are always the same plutocrats who control those “too big to fail” banks, the military industry and big pharma.  As Branfman put it:

.   .   .   anyone who becomes president has little choice but to serve the institutional interests of a profoundly amoral and violent executive branch and the corporations behind them.

Perhaps in response to the oft-cited criticism that “if you’re not part of the solution – you’re part of the problem”, Fred Branfman has offered us a proposal that could send us on the way to changing this intolerable status quo:

But however important the 2012 election, far more energy needs to be devoted to building mass organizations that challenge elite power and develop the kinds of policies – including massive investment in a “clean energy economic revolution,” a carbon tax and other tough measures to stave off climate change, regulating and breaking up the financial sector, cost-effective entitlements like single-payer health insurance, and public financing of primary and general elections – which alone can save America and its democracy in the painful decade to come.

Wait a minute!  Didn’t Obama already promise us all of that stuff?

Perhaps the only way to achieve those goals is by voting for Independent political candidates, who are not beholden to the Republi-cratic Corporatist Party or its financiers.  When the mainstream media go out of their way to pretend as though a particular candidate does not exist – you might want to give serious consideration to voting for that person.  When the media try to “disappear” a candidate by “hiding” that person “in plain sight”, they could be inadvertently providing the best type of endorsement imaginable.

The same level of energy that brought Obama to the White House could be used to bring us our first Independent President.  All we need is a candidate.


 

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Tool-Trashing Time

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I never liked Joe “The Tool” Lieberman.  If you run that name (nickname included) on the search bar at the upper-right corner of this page, you will find a total of 13 previous entries wherein I discussed him in uncomplimentary terms.  What bugs me most about Lieberman is that so many people consider him as the personification of centrism.  I believe that Lieberman gives centrism a bad name because he is simply an opportunist.    The guy doesn’t really appear to stand for anything in particular – he is simply a tool for whatever lobbyist or other interest group is willing to play his quid pro quo game.  After Lieberman lost the Democratic Primary for his Senate seat in 2006, he chose to run as an Independent and in the process, he betrayed those individuals who contributed to his election campaign, believing that Lieberman would champion the causes he advanced before he had to sell his soul to Bush and Cheney in order to save his political hide.  It was only because Ned Lamont (the man who defeated him in the Democratic Primary) came down with a bad case of  The Smug – spending more time vacationing than campaigning for the November election – that Lieberman managed to win a fourth term as junior Senator from Connecticut.

Needless to say, Emily Bazelon’s recent article for Slate, “Good Riddance, Joe Lieberman – Why I loathe my Connecticut Senator” was a real treat.  It was nice to see that a good number of people were as thrilled as I to hear that The Tool was calling it quits.  While discussing the celebratory outpouring of enthusiasm by anti-Lieberman-ites Ms. Bazelon mentioned this:

Another friend, Judy Chevalier, burned up her iPad tonight when I asked her to enumerate why she hates Joe Lieberman.  She ticked off a half-dozen reasons and then said, “The thing is, I did not come up with most of these myself.  They come from many rounds of playing the peculiar Connecticut liberal cocktail party game ‘I hated Joe Lieberman before you hated Joe Lieberman.’ ”  Longtime Lieberman haters, she says, look all the way back to 1993, when Lieberman led a hedge-fund-friendly charge in the Senate against the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which at the time wanted to close the accounting loophole that let corporations duck the recording of stock options on their balance sheets.

As an aside, the first half of that passage was characterized as “the money quote” by the Red State blog and other far-right commentators, anxious to avenge Sarah Palin since her “crosshairs” SarahPac campaign ad was criticized after the attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords.  The magic word, “hate” gave the hard right the opportunity to argue that “liberals hate politicians, too”.  Actually, the real “money quote” can be found by clicking on the highlighted language discussing the fight over the Financial Accounting Standards Board rules:

Corporate America aligned with the accounting industry to fight the FASB proposal, with the result that in 1994, the Senate, led by Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), passed a non-binding resolution condemning the proposal by a vote of 88-to-9.

“It wasn’t an accounting debate,” says Jim Leisenring, the vice chairman of FASB from 1988 to 2000.  “We switched from talking about, ‘Have we accurately measured the option?’ or, ‘Have we expensed the option on the proper date?’ to things like, ‘Western civilization will not exist without stock options,’ or, ‘There won’t be jobs anymore for people without stock options.’ … People tried to take the argument away from the accounting to be just plainly a political argument.”

Does that rhetoric sound familiar?

After his 2006 victory, Lieberman continued to betray the people of Connecticut by abandoning his duties in the Senate to follow John McCain all along the 2008 campaign trail (including McCain’s trip to Afganistan) in the hope of securing a place for himself in the would-be McCain administration.  The Tool knew he would never win a fifth term in the Senate.  His only hope was to latch on to McCain’s pantsleg and hang on for dear life.  In the wake of that fiasco, The Tool’s approval rating continued to slide and by October of 2010, it was down to 31 percent.  A fifth term in the Senate was definitely out of the question.  His campaign war chest could be put to better uses – such as buying “friendships” before beginning a new career as a lobbyist.

Despite Lieberman’s crucial effort in the repeal of the military’s “don’t ask – don’t tell” policy, it is interesting to observe how many gay people are willing to overlook that good deed while celebrating Lieberman’s retirement.  A review of the comments at the joemygod blog exposes these reactions:

Good riddance.  DADT capped an otherwise awful career as a spoiler.

*   *   *

Thanks for DADT, but not terribly sorry you’re leaving the Senate.  And I really didn’t want the anxiety of watching a 3-way race in CT, which might have sent a wingnut from the Right to the Senate.

*   *   *

good riddance to the man who killed the public option to satisfy his insurance industry friends in Connecticut. a terrible person

So much for that legacy thing   .   .   .

Daniela Altimari of The Hartford Courant’s CapitolWatch blog, revealed a wide spectrum of reactions to Lieberman’s announcement.  As one might expect, the remarks from politicians were painfully cordial, polite and not worth our time here.  I’ll provide you with two of the more interesting quotes:

“Joe Lieberman took millions from insurance companies, Wall Street banks, and other corporate interests – and then did their dirty work in Congress, including killing the public option.  As a result, Lieberman’s poll numbers were disastrous in Connecticut.  His decision to quit in the face of assured defeat is a huge victory for the progressive movement and all Americans who want Democrats to put regular families ahead of corporate interests.”

—  Keauna Gregory, Progressive Change Campaign Committee

*   *   *

“Of all the horrible things Joe Lieberman has done in his hideous career, depriving everyone of the joy at seeing him lose is near the top”

—  Glenn Greenwald of Salon (via Twitter)

The Connecticut Mirror provided these reactions:

“It’s the first thing he’s done in 10 years to make Connecticut Democrats completely happy.”

—  Bill Curry, former state comptroller, as quoted in The New York Times

*   *   *

“He couldn’t leave the Senate fast enough as far as I’m concerned. He’s not only driving Democrats nuts down here, but he’s become a right-wing extremist on everything except the environment and gay rights.”

—  Ralph Nader, as quoted in The Hartford Courant

*   *   *

“He will leave behind a long list of achievements, from helping to consolidate the nation’s intelligence gathering services in a way that appears to make it more difficult to gather intelligence, to threatening to filibuster the health care reform act until it had been watered down to suit his own high principles.  You will find it all in my upcoming book, ‘Everything Bad Is Joe Lieberman’s Fault.’ ”

—  Gail Collins, writing in The New York Times

As we approach The Tool’s final days in the Senate, I will be looking forward to similar tributes.


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Where Obama Went Wrong

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September 27, 2010

One could write an 800-page book on this subject.  During the past week, we’ve been bombarded with explanations from across the political spectrum, concerning how President Obama has gone from wildly-popular cult hero to radioactive force on the 2010 campaign trail.  For many Democrats facing re-election bids in November, the presence of Obama at one of their campaign rallies could be reminiscent of the appearance of William Macy’s character from the movie, The Cooler.  Wikipedia’s discussion of the film provided this definition:

In gambling parlance, a “cooler” is an unlucky individual whose presence at the tables results in a streak of bad luck for the other players.

Barack Obama was elected on a wave of emotion, under the banners of  “Hope” and “Change”.  These days, the emotion consensus has turned against Obama as voters feel more hopeless as a result of Obama’s failure to change anything.  His ardent supporters feel as though they have been duped.  Instead of having been tricked into voting for a “secret Muslim”, they feel they have elected a “secret Republican”.  At the Salon.com website, Glenn Greenwald has documented no less than fifteen examples of Obama’s continuation of the policies of George W. Bush, in breach of his own campaign promises.

One key area of well-deserved outrage against President Obama’s performance concerns the economy.  The disappointment about this issue was widely articulated in December of 2009, as I pointed out here.  At that time, Matt Taibbi had written an essay for Rolling Stone entitled, “Obama’s Big Sellout”, which inspired such commentators as Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns to write this and this.  Beyond the justified criticism, polling by Pew Research has revealed that 46% of Democrats and 50% of Republicans incorrectly believe that the TARP bank bailout was signed into law by Barack Obama rather than George W. Bush.  President Obama invited this confusion with his nomination of “Turbo” Tim Geithner to the position of Treasury Secretary.  As President of the Federal Reserve of New York, Geithner oversaw the $13 billion gift Goldman Sachs received by way of Maiden Lane III.

The emotional battleground of the 2010 elections provided some fun for conservative pundit, Peggy Noonan this week as a result of the highly-publicized moment at the CNBC town hall meeting on September 20.  Velma Hart’s question to the President was emblematic of the plight experienced by many 2008 Obama supporters.  Noonan’s article, “The Enraged vs. The Exhausted” characterized the 2010 elections as a battle between those two emotional factions.  The “Velma Moment” exposed Obama’s political vulnerability as an aloof leader, lacking the ability to emotionally connect with his supporters:

The president looked relieved when she stood.  Perhaps he thought she might lob a sympathetic question that would allow him to hit a reply out of the park.  Instead, and in the nicest possible way, Velma Hart lobbed a hand grenade.

“I’m a mother. I’m a wife.  I’m an American veteran, and I’m one of your middle-class Americans.  And quite frankly I’m exhausted.  I’m exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are.”  She said, “The financial recession has taken an enormous toll on my family.”  She said, “My husband and I have joked for years that we thought we were well beyond the hot-dogs-and-beans era of our lives.  But, quite frankly, it is starting to knock on our door and ring true that that might be where we are headed.”

What a testimony.  And this is the president’s base.  He got that look public figures adopt when they know they just took one right in the chops on national TV and cannot show their dismay.  He could have responded with an engagement and conviction equal to the moment.  But this was our president  — calm, detached, even-keeled to the point of insensate.  He offered a recital of his administration’s achievements: tuition assistance, health care.  It seemed so off point.  Like his first two years.

Kirsten Powers of The Daily Beast provided the best analysis of how the “Velma Moment” illustrated Obama’s lack of empathy.  Where Bill Clinton is The Sorcerer, Barack Obama is The Apprentice:

Does Barack Obama suffer from an “empathy deficit?” Ironically, it was Obama who used the phrase in a 2008 speech when he diagnosed the United States as suffering from the disorder.  In a plea for unity, candidate Obama said lack of empathy was “the essential deficit that exists in this country.”  He defined it as “an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother’s keeper; we are our sister’s keeper; that, in the words of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny.”

*   *   *

And at a 2008 rally in Westerville, Ohio, Obama said, “One of the values that I think men in particular have to pass on is the value of empathy.  Not sympathy, empathy.  And what that means is standing in somebody else’s shoes, being able to look through their eyes.  You know, sometimes we get so caught up in ‘us’ that it’s hard to see that there are other people and that your behavior has an impact on them.”

Yes, President Obama, sometimes that does happen.  Take a look in the mirror.  Nothing brought this problem into relief like the two Obama supporters who confronted the president at a recent town hall meeting expressing total despair over their economic situation and hopelessness about the future.  Rather than expressing empathy, Obama seemed annoyed and proceeded with one of his unhelpful lectures.

*   *   *

One former Emoter-in-Chief, Bill Clinton, told Politico last week, “[Obama’s] being criticized for being too disengaged, for not caring.  So he needs to turn into it.  I may be one of the few people that think it’s not bad that that lady said she was getting tired of defending him.  He needs to hear it.  You need to hear. Embrace people’s anger, including their disappointment at you.  And just ask ‘em to not let the anger cloud their judgment.  Let it concentrate their judgment.  And then make your case.”

Then the kicker:  “[Obama has] got to realize that, in the end, it’s not about him. It’s about the American people, and they’re hurting.”

The American people are hurting because their President sold them out immediately after he was elected.  When faced with the choice of bailing out the zombie banks or putting those banks through temporary receivership (the “Swedish approach” – wherein the bank shareholders and bondholders would take financial “haircuts”) Obama chose to bail out the banks at taxpayer expense.  So here we are  . . .  in a Japanese-style “lost decade”.  In case you don’t remember the debate from early 2009 – peruse this February 10, 2009 posting from the Calculated Risk website.  After reading that, try not to cry after looking at this recent piece by Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture entitled, “We Should Have Gone Swedish  . . .” :

The result of the Swedish method?  They spent 4% of GDP ($18.3 billion in today’s dollars), to rescue their banks.  That is far less than the $trillions we have spent — somewhere between 15-20% of GDP.

Final cost to the Swedes?  Less than 2% of G.D.P.  (Some officials believe it was closer to zero, depending on how certain rates of return are calculated).

In the US, the final tally is years away from being calculated — and its likely to be many times what Sweden paid in GDP % terms.

It has become apparent that the story of  “Where Obama Went Wrong” began during the first month of his Presidency.  Whoever undertakes the task of writing that book will be busy for a long time.




Disappointer-In-Chief Keeps On Disappointing

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September 20, 2010

Many prognosticators have voiced their expectations that disappointment in the Obama Presidency will destroy the campaigns of Democratic candidates in the 2010 elections.  The rationale is that disappointed former supporters of Obama will be feeling too apathetic to vote in November, while the energized supporters of Tea Party candidates will turn out in huge numbers.  Beyond that, many pundits believe that Obama is actually having a “radioactive” effect on those campaigns where he intercedes.  Discussions of this subject eventually result in speculation that President Obama will not seek a second term.  After all …  he couldn’t possibly intend on running for re-election after what he has done to his supporters.  Consider the way Mr. Obama speaks about his supporters and there are only two explanations.  The first explanation is based on the theory that Obama is arrogant and unconcerned – taking his constituency for granted.  The second theory is that he is unconcerned about what his supporters think of his performance because he has no intention of seeking a second term.

President Obama recently spoke at a $30,000-per-plate fundraising event for the Democratic National Committee at the home of Richard and Ellen Richman.  (Think about that name for a second:  Rich Richman.)  Mr. Richman lives up to his surname and resides in the impressive Conyers Farm development in Greenwich, Connecticut.  Christopher Keating of the Capitolwatch blog at courant.com provided us with the President’s remarks, addressed to the well-heeled attendees:

.   .   .   Democrats, just congenitally, tend to get — to see the glass as half empty.   (Laughter.)  If we get an historic health care bill passed — oh, well, the public option wasn’t there.  If you get the financial reform bill passed — then, well, I don’t know about this particularly derivatives rule, I’m not sure that I’m satisfied with that.  And gosh, we haven’t yet brought about world peace and — (laughter.)  I thought that was going to happen quicker.  (Laughter.) You know who you are.  (Laughter.)

The tactlessness of those remarks was not lost on Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com.  Mr. Greenwald transcended the perspective of an offended liberal to question what could possibly have been going on in the mind of the speaker:

What’s most striking about Obama’s comments is that there is no acceptance whatsoever of responsibility (I’ve failed in some critical areas; we could have/should have done better).  There’s not even any base-motivating vow to fight to fix these particular failures (we’ll keep fighting for a public option/to curb executive power abuses/to reduce lobbyist and corporate control of our political process).  Instead, he wants you to know that if you criticize him — or even question what he’s done (“well, I don’t know about this particular derivatives rule, I’m not sure that I’m satisfied with that”) – it’s your fault:  for being some sort of naive, fringe-leftist idiot who thought he would eliminate the Pentagon and bring about world peace in 18 months, and/or because you simply don’t sufficiently appreciate everything he’s done for you because you’re congenitally dissatisfied.

*    *    *

Sitting at a $30,000 per plate fundraising dinner and mocking liberal critics as irrational ingrates while wealthy Party donors laugh probably does wonders for bruised presidential egos, but it doesn’t seem to be a particularly effective way to motivate those who are so unmotivated.  Then again, Barack Obama isn’t actually up for election in November, so perhaps the former goal is more important to him than the latter.  It certainly seems that way from these comments.

Of course, liberals weren’t the only Obama supporters who felt betrayed by the President’s abandonment of his campaign promises.  In fact, Obama owed his 2008 victory to those independent voters who drank the “Hope and Change” Kool-Aid.

Glenn Greenwald devoted some space from his Salon piece to illustrate how President Obama seems to be continuing the agenda of President Bush.  I was reminded of the quote from former Attorney General John Ashcroft in an article written by Jane Mayer for The New Yorker.  When discussing how he expected the Obama Presidency would differ from the Presidency of his former boss, George W. Bush, Ashcroft said:

“How will he be different?  The main difference is going to be that he spells his name ‘O-b-a-m-a,’ not ‘B-u-s-h.’ ”

One important difference that Ashcroft failed to anticipate was that Bush knew better than to disparage his own base.  The likely reason for this distinction could have been Bush’s intention to run for a second term.



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The War On YOU

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July 26, 2010

The fifth annual conclave of the Netroots Nation (a group of liberal bloggers) took place in Las Vegas last week.  Among the stories emerging from that event was the plea that progressive bloggers “quit beating up on Obama”.  I found this very amusing.  After Obama betrayed his supporters by pushing through a faux healthcare “reform” bill, which lacked the promised “public option” and turned out to be a giveaway to big pharma and the health insurance industry – the new President turned the long-overdue, financial “reform” bill into yet another hoax.

As I pointed out on July 12, Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute documented the extent to which Obama’s Treasury Department undermined the financial reform bill at every step.  On the following day, Rich Miller of Bloomberg News examined the results of a Bloomberg National Poll, which measured the public’s reaction to the financial reform bill.  Almost eighty percent of those who responded were of the opinion that the new bill would do little or nothing to prevent or mitigate another financial crisis.  Beyond that, 47 percent shared the view that the bill would do more to protect the financial industry than consumers.  Both healthcare and financial “reform” legislation turned out to be “bait and switch” scams used by the Obama administration against its own supporters.  After that double-double-cross, the liberal blogosphere was being told to “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain”.

Despite the partisan efforts by Democrats to blame our nation’s economic decline exclusively on the Bush administration, reading between the lines of a recent essay by Senator Bernie Sanders provides some insight on how the problem he discusses has festered during the Obama administration:

The 400 richest families in America, who saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion during the Bush years, have now accumulated $1.27 trillion in wealth.  Four hundred families!  During the last fifteen years, while these enormously rich people became much richer their effective tax rates were slashed almost in half.  While the highest-paid 400 Americans had an average income of $345 million in 2007, as a result of Bush tax policy they now pay an effective tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest on record.

Let me get this straight  .  .  .   Is Senator Sanders telling us that it took the 400 families the entire eight Bush years just to pick up $400 billion and that once Obama came to the White House, those families were able to pick up another $827 billion in less than two years?  In fairness, Senator Sanders made a great argument to reinstate what I call, “the tax on dead millionaires”.  He began by discussing  the harsh reality experienced by mere mortals:

And while the Great Wall Street Recession has devastated the middle class, the truth is that working families have been experiencing a decline for decades.

Nevertheless, to understand how the middle class has been destroyed by those 400 families, their corporate alter egos and the lobbyists they employ, one need not rely on the words of a Senator, who is an “avowed socialist” (a real one – not just someone called a socialist by partisan blowhards).  Consider, for example, a great essay by Phil Davis, avowed capitalist and self-described “serial entrepreneur”.  The title of the piece might sound familiar:  “It’s the End of the World As We Know It”.  Mr. Davis discussed the latest battle in the war against Social Security and the current efforts to raise the retirement age to 70:

So, what is this all about?  It’s about forcing 5M people a year who reach the age 65 to remain in the work-force.  The top 0.01% have already taken your money, they have already put you in debt, they have already bankrupted the government as well so it has no choice but to do their bidding.  Now the top 0.01% want to make even MORE profits by paying American workers even LESS money.  If they raise the retirement age to 70 to “balance” Social Security – that will guarantee that another 25M people remain in the workforce (less the ones that drop dead on the job – saving the bother of paying them severance).

Those who believe that President Obama would never let this happen need look no further than a recent posting by Glenn Greenwald (a liberal Constitutional lawyer – just like our President) at Salon.com:

It is absolutely beyond the Republicans’ power to cut Social Security, even if they retake the House and Senate in November, since Obama will continue to wield veto power.  The real impetus for Social Security cuts is from the “Deficit Commission” which Obama created in January by Executive Order, then stacked with people (including its bipartisan co-Chairs) who have long favored slashing the program, and whose recommendations now enjoy the right of an up-or-down vote in Congress after the November election, thanks to the recent maneuvering by Nancy Pelosi.  The desire to cut Social Security is fully bipartisan (otherwise it couldn’t happen) and pushed by the billionaire class that controls the Government.

Despite the efforts to characterize Social Security as an “entitlement program” – it’s not.  It’s something you have already paid for – as documented by your income tax returns and W-2 forms.  Pay close attention and watch how our one-party system, controlled by the Republi-cratic Corporatist Party  steals that money away from you.  Both Phil Davis and Glenn Greenwald have each just given you a big “heads-up”.  What are you going to do about it?