This week, while in Davos for the World Economic Forum, I watched President Obama deliver what was a great State of the Union speech... for 2009. Proposing the establishment of a financial crimes unit in January 2012 is like waiting three years before sending firemen to the scene of an inferno. The speech was full of good proposals that will never happen in a year dominated by electioneering. The president's pre-speech embrace with Gabby Giffords took me back to last January, and that horrific Saturday in Tucson -- a tragedy that led to widespread agreement that what we needed as a country was, as Pima County's Sheriff Clarence Dupnik put it at the time, "a little soul searching." Unfortunately, in the year since then, our collective soul has gone largely unsearched -- and the gulf between our leaders' rhetoric and the reality millions are struggling with everyday has continued to widen.
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Well?
Sounds like a good place to start reform. We know that's unlikely though. Look who the wealtheist members of Congress are.
This week there was the criticism that Obama should have given given this state of the union speech three years ago. The truth is obvious. There is never going to be any credit given to the president from this editor regardless of what he does. But what is more apparent is that there is never going to be an indictment of conservatives for putting party ahead of country and sabotaging efforts to help America recover. In my opinion, this is unrelenting bias, and I find it disturbing and disheartening.
Until campaign finance reform is put in place and Citizens United is overturned, political leaders will have corporate entanglements. That's how the game is played.
As a pragmatist, I do not expect my president to be perfect. I do expect him or her to work for the good of this nation and its people, and this president has met that standard. The very first law he passed was the Lily Ledbetter Act. If you don't know what that is, look it up. That case was ignored by the corporate owned, corporate dominated Roberts Supreme Court.
If you want to return control of representative democracy to the people, then work for Fair Elections Now, a bill sponsored by a Republican, or Move to Amend, the grass roots movement to revoke the corrupt SCOTUS ruling that corporations are people and money is speech. This country is on the verge of a plutocracy, and you'd do better to vent your spleen against those who are working to install it. You can look no further than Grover Norquist, the Chamber of Commerce, ALEC, and Koch Industries.
Finally, a thread about our real issues.
Thank you Arianna*
Such is the case with this article
Arianna heard something that should have been said in 2009 and will not come to fruition this year .
I heard a President begging Congress for equality between what the 1% receives and the public receives . A pay check income is taxed at 3X that of capital gains income .
I heard a President begging Congress to end their investing in Corporations they make laws to regulate for the sake of the public . What corporations and what the public wants are the exact opposites .
I heard a President begging Congress to end their criminal insider trading . Something others have been jailed for .
I heard a President begging Congress to send him bills to improve the economic welfare of the general public .
What I saw was "a cat that ate the canary" grin on the face of John Mc until the President mentioned insider trading .
Members of Congress pay themselves $174,000.00/year for the rest of their lives . The corporate investing and insider trading , with impunity , enhances that salary enormously at an extreme expense to the general public .
There isn't a chance that Congress will curtail their greed , but laws against the public wishes and the inequality in taxation is tyrannical .
Then he picks the SEC and the Justice Dept to catch the crooks. They should have been going after the crooks 3 years ago. But, they haven't. Their record has been anemic at best. Eric Holder says "this time we really mean it." Oh boy.
Has Obama given them additional resources to catch and prosecute the fraudsters? Not to my knowledge.
Obama's so late to the fire that it's really embarrassing. He's pointing out the fact that he waited too long to appoint this task force.
And, while he's at it, how about establishing a workable mortgage modification program that pays the mortgage servicers enough money to incentivize them to work on modifications instead of foreclosures. Anyone familiar with the system would have realized immediately that Obama's "HAMP" program would never work because the servicers didn't get enough money.
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Disagree. It is like taking out the sniper and taking the victims to the hospital before starting the investigation.
This should have been started under the Bush administration. This crisis started long before 2008 when it came to a head. It was ignored due to a person's belief on how free markets should work. Yes, this President dragged his feet on this one, but it is being done now.
still in the henhouse.
What metric in Arianna's article is appropriate to analyze the performance of this president?
That's when I personally realized sadly, he really wasn't a leader for all the people...or even the many.
A little "less pomp" and "more circumstance" from the leadership establishment please!!!
Not a day late!
Love, Jackie D
faved So true!
almost everything that has not been done,
or done too poorly to be effective. Dream on.