Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, ....The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand-- William Butler Yeats
President Obama traveled to Wall Street on the anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers that triggered the worst financial debacle since the Great Depression. His purpose was to challenge Wall Street's barons, telling them:
"We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess..where too many were motivated only bvy the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses"
Those days are over, the president said. It's time for comprehensive legislation. Taxpayers won't cover your bets or your bonuses. And we know once more the threat that financial wildings can pose to the nation.
The president invoked country and the common good. "Instead of learning the lessons...of the crisis, [some in the financial industry] are choosing to ignore them. They do so not just at their own peril, but our nation's." Obama called on Wall Street to act on its own, to overhaul pay systems, to level with consumers, to join with him in defining reform, but his tone was almost wistful. As he knows all too well, for much of Wall Street, patriotism is for suckers. And in Washington, private interests are rolling over the common good.
In the wake of the worst economic downturn since the 1930s, the president has called for fundamental reforms vital to the country's future. Put aside whether he's been too bold or too timid, whether he has pushed hard enough or too hard, there isn't any question he is calling the nation to its senses.
Our health care system is broken and unsustainable. Comprehensive reform is unavoidable. We can't continue to rely on fossil fuels; sustainable energy is a security imperative, not a choice. We need to shackle Wall Street, to shrink the size and excess profits of finance, and force it away from its addiction to gambling and back to the essential business of investing in the real economy. We have to reduce the crony capitalist subsidies that get squandered on agribusiness and Cold War weapons systems and top end tax cuts, and use that money to invest in education, in a modern infrastructure, in research and development vital to a vibrant high road economy.
This really shouldn't be controversial. Yes, disagreements about how to get this done are to be expected, but the status quo is simply indefensible. Despite all the fantasies of the rabid right, Obama is moderate by temperament, creative at compromise. He is, as one of his White House staff described him, a "raging minimalist." He really does believe you put everyone around a table, have a "civil conversation," find areas of agreement and move forward. He does believe that everyone -- from billionaire hedge fund operators to insurance company CEOS to conservative legislators -- will in a crisis put the country first.
But he and his reform program are getting mugged. He's taken on the most powerful private interests in America -- Big Oil, Wall Street, the insurance and drug lobbies -- and they are winning. Republicans, despite the shattering of their conservative shibboleths, have chosen, with lockstep unity, obstruction over compromise. And too many Democrats have shown themselves more beholden to the private interests that pay for their campaigns than the public interest the president of their own party invokes.
We are witnessing a harrowing test of our democracy. America is a big, bustling and entrepreneurial country. We pursue our own passions and pursuits, are jealous of our freedoms, and begrudge governmental intrusions. But in a crisis -- faced with depression or war, our history tells us, many become one. We join together for the common good.
Well, it is hard to imagine a greater crisis than the one this country has faced over the last years. A middle class that has suffered a lost decade. Two wars. The Great Recession. Gilded Age inequality. Catastrophic climate change accelerating faster than most predictions.
Yet, we haven't come together. Wall Street lobbies against reform. Derivative traders will ante up hundreds of millions to block regulation of credit default swaps. Goldman Sachs is back to computerized gambling and billions in bonuses. The insurance companies are spending over a million and half a day against comprehensive health care reform.
The president's preemptive compromises only feed their appetites. He offers polluters a good portion of the revenue generated by "cap and trade." They lobby to weaken the cap.
He bails out banks rather than taking them over and reorganizing them. They lobby against his financial reforms. He doesn't try to push for Medicare for All, accepting the role of employment based private insurance. He's accused of a government takeover of health care.
The teabaggers were in Washington this weekend. Despite their racial furies and right-wing fantasies, they shouldn't be dismissed. Many are working people, losing ground in an economy that isn't working for them. They are angry at a government that seems to take their taxes to bail out billionaire bankers, while they are left to swim or sink. They have every good reason to believe Washington caters to the wealthy and the connected, and not to them. And it is all too easy to deflect that anger to "them" -- illegal immigrants, poor minorities, foreign aid recipients.
This is the test for Democrats. With the White House and majorities in both houses of Congress, Democrats have to produce. If they are too cautious or too compromised, they will feed what could be an ugly populist backlash.
Take health care reform. Senator Max Baucus has produced a draft for the Finance Committee -- making concessions as far anyone can see not for Republican votes, but for insurance lobby approval. He's produced that lobby's dream bill, mandating coverage for everyone without subsidies to make it affordable. His bill would drive people to take the high deductible, low coverage plans that are the industry's cash cows. It is hard to imagine a greater disservice to the country or to the party. Take young Americans who vote Democratic in large numbers, force them to buy health insurance that they don't want and can't afford, make them pay for policies that don't cover their health care costs -- and reap the whirlwind that you deserve.
These next months are the reckoning. The president and the Congress will step up to the reforms the country needs -- or they will fail the nation in a time of peril. For citizens, now is the time to get engaged. The only way legislators in both parties will rise above partisan politics and private interests is if their constituents allow them no choice.
Middle income Americans lost income over the last decade, for the first time since we began keeping records. Financial speculation drove the economy off the cliff. Catastrophic climate change is already melting the ice caps. We cannot afford another lost decade. If reason cannot prevail, angry people will increasingly look for a strong man to get something done. And that could make the teabaggers look like a tea party.
Tim McLoughlin: The Narrows: A Double Life in Brooklyn
The Brooklyn we drove through back then from our apartment in Sunset Park to the theater, around the corner from my mother's family on 17th Street, was a diorama of post-war, working class urban life.
Phillip Martin: ATM "Beating" Victim: Echo of the Charles Stuart Case
The fact that Ms. Todd felt she could get away with telling yet another false story about a black boogie man, suggests that some in this country have not gotten the memo.
After almost 230 years of mostly successful operation, the Constitution is in sore need of an overhaul and that's why we need a Constitutional Convention to re-draw the document to restore democracy and power to the people, and disempower the corporatocracy, oligarchy, and political nomenclatura that runs the country now!
are denoted as that by themselves...
they are too self-involved to do much more than look down upon others...
a REVELATION will be lost on them.
This is not how I normally talk
(roses and sunshine are my forté)
but we must recognise a lack of reaction as being just that...
a blindness at Best.
As this story unfolds, I'd hope that Christians will heed the call to pray for those caught in the net of this investigation, as in "Pray for Theresa. Pray for Bertha. Pray for Every ACORN Advocate." at http://firebreathingchristian.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/pray-for-theresa-pray-for-bertha-pray-for-every-acorn-advocate/
Thanks and keep fighting the good fight!
Today, there is a hundred times more wealth in the hands of the middleamerican then in banks. That common man can bring down a bank or the government if it has leadership..that is what is lacking in both parties..leadership...that is why the world now looks at the USA as another England.......
The O'man is not a leader..he is ( as was Bush) a talking head for the very corporations he says he is going to control...he has no new ideas because they would harm the status of Washington and its money masters..he is pushing health care because it takes the eyes of the sheep and lemmings from the financial institutions, China, the UN and two wars..While the talking heads of the media are ranting the core of Americans are seeing that nothing has changed except the color of the White House.
The USA of the future has to have a dream, control out pour of wealth from this nation and produce the majority of what we need here on the North American Continent. That means a violent revolution, not of the people but of business and government. The bullets will be votes, the force will be for America...
But was was most distressing was her confirming what so many of us already think. Our members of congress cater to donors, period. If you go to Washington to visit your rep, do you think you could take them to lunch? Of course not. They give you a few minutes, a photo op, a pat on the head, then they're off to lunch with a lobbyist.
When you call to weigh in as a constituent, they always take your call, sound interested, ask for your zip code and such, but the reason they do that is not to base their vote on your opinion but to use it as an excuse if they have to vote against a particular donor's interest. "Hey, my constituents are on me about this". Unless they need you for an excuse, you don't count because you don't have enough money.
We have truly lost our will to be unquestionably heard.
I hope that it is not the case with healthcare reform-which we need-as the momentum for change clouds the debating and development process. I wished that we would learn from that situation of how not to 'rush' into a situation without a full and thoughtful process and of being prepared for possible scenarios that does not reflect assumptions, projections, or promises. At the end of the day, the average 'American' will be left with the consequences, good or bad, from this process and as such we all should be deliberating seriously of how it will affect the nation.....
It never mattered. The media paid hardly any attention. And Bush et al couldn't have cared less.
But... I would still be out there now if there were rallies for health care reform, protests against the escalation in Afghanistan, protests demanding real investigations and prosecutions of those responsible for torture, rallies for gay rights, etc, anywhere near me.
Although I know the media would still hardly pay any attention. And I fear this administration couldn't care less either... We would simply be dismissed as "the left of the left".
I will not laugh as this dream implodes.
I will not cry.
I will, however, enjoy watching the right wing melt...
William Butler Yeats”
Cometh the hour,
Dinosaurs 0. Small furry animals 1.