What is the state of the union? You certainly couldn't tell from that platitudinous hogwash that the president dished out Tuesday evening. I had expected Barack Obama to be his eloquent self, appealing to our better nature, but instead he was mealy-mouthed in avoiding the tough choices that a leader should delineate in a time of trouble. He embraced clean air and a faster Internet while ignoring the depth of our economic pain and the Wall Street scoundrels who were responsible -- understandably so, since they so prominently populate the highest reaches of his administration. He had the effrontery to condemn "a parade of lobbyists" for rigging government after he appointed the top Washington representative of JPMorgan Chase to be his new chief of staff.
The speech was a distraction from what seriously ails us: an unabated mortgage crisis, stubbornly high unemployment and a debt that spiraled out of control while the government wasted trillions making the bankers whole. Instead the president conveyed the insular optimism of his fat-cat associates: "We are poised for progress. Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again." How convenient to ignore the fact that this bubble of prosperity, which has failed the tens of millions losing their homes and jobs, was floated by enormous government indebtedness now forcing deep cuts in social services including state financial aid for those better-educated students the president claims to be so concerned about.
His references to education provided a convenient scapegoat for the failure of the economy, rather than to blame the actions of the Wall Street hustlers to whom Obama is now sucking up. Yes, it is an obvious good to have better-educated students to compete with other economies, but that is hardly the issue of the moment when all of the world's economies are suffering grievous harm resulting from the irresponsible behavior of the best and the brightest here at home. It wasn't the students struggling at community colleges who came up with the financial gimmicks that produced the Great Recession, but rather the super-whiz-kid graduates of the top business and law schools.
What nonsense to insist that low public school test scores hobbled our economy when it was the highest-achieving graduates of our elite colleges who designed and sold the financial gimmicks that created this crisis. Indeed, some of the folks who once designed the phony mathematical formulas underwriting subprime mortgage-based derivatives won Nobel prizes for their effort. A pioneer in the securitization of mortgage debt, as well as exporting jobs abroad, was one Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of GE, whom Obama recently appointed to head his new job creation panel.
That the financial meltdown at the heart of our economic crisis was "avoidable" and not the result of long-run economic problems related to education and foreign competition is detailed in a sweeping report by the Democratic majority on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to be released as a 576-page book on Thursday. In a preview reported in the New York Times, the commission concluded: "The greatest tragedy would be to accept the refrain that no one could have seen this coming and thus nothing could have been done. If we accept this notion, it will happen again."
Just the warning that Obama has ignored by continually appointing the very people who engineered this crisis, mostly Clinton alums, to reverse its ongoing dire consequences. As the Times reports: "The decision in 2000 to shield the exotic financial instruments known as over-the-counter derivatives from regulation, made during the last year of President Bill Clinton's term, is called 'a key turning point in the march toward the financial crisis.'"
Obama appointed as his top economic adviser Lawrence Summers, who as Clinton's treasury secretary was the key architect of that "turning point," and Summers protégé Timothy Geithner as his own treasury secretary. The unanimous finding of the 10 Democrats on the commission is that Geithner, who had been president of the New York Fed before Obama appointed him, "could have clamped down" on excesses by Citigroup, the subprime mortgage leader that Geithner and the Fed bailed out along with other unworthy banking supplicants.
Profligate behavior has hobbled the economy while running up an enormous debt that Obama now uses as an excuse for a five-year freeze on discretionary domestic spending cuts, that small part of the budget that might actually help ordinary people. Speaking of our legacy of deficit spending, Obama stated, "... in the wake of the financial crisis, some of that was necessary to keep credit flowing, save jobs, and put money in people's pockets. But now that the worst of the recession is over, we have to confront the fact that our government spends more than it takes in."
Why now? It is an absurd demarcation to freeze spending when so many remain unemployed just because corporate profits, and therefore stock market valuations, seem firm. Ours is a union divided between those who agree with Obama that "the worst of the recession is over" and the far larger number in deep pain that this president is bent on ignoring.
Live Q & A now!
http://www.truthdig.com/q_a/item/robert_scheer_on_obamas_state_of_the_union_20110126/
"and a debt that spiraled out of control while the government wasted trillions making the bankers whole."
And lets not forget the trillions going into someones pocket for a war that just doesn't seem to have an
end. More swords being sold as "?", we really don't know as 'what', do we; and fewer plowshares,
being sold as 'unpatriotic'. Obviously, we value 'balls' over life. But we don't want to APPEAR as
'partisan', do we?
And after diving into bed with the insurance lobbyist a mere seven weeks into his presidency, obeying her demands to chuck the public option and institute her money-making "mandate," if he wanted her cooperation in getting his "historic" legislation through: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PwqSCJmbxk
What he offered in his address was more of the same hollow panaceas, noble sounding bromides, continued wars, more tax cuts for business and spending cuts for the rest of us.
His stomach for kowtowing to republicanÂs and the economic power elite may have been the model for the new Starbucks size.
Given another two years of moving toward and through the center, I expect that Obama may win the CPAC straw poll and be elected as a Republican in 2012.
more here: http://bobhiggins.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/can-giuliani-beat-obama-for-gop-nomination/
The democrats better find another candidate for 2012, and hurry!
No cuts? Excuse me. Coming in the back door by not raising Paid Benefits the piddly dollar a day per day they get was a tremendous cut. Rent, gas, utilities, food, everything went up. Now people have to move & can not even afford necessities. How cold & callous can you get?
Now the retirement villages are turning into the criminally & mentally insane, unstable, injured, handicapped & diseased. With no tenent help. Those who had retired into safe little villages are now getting mugged, robbed, intimidated & terrified with no one to help them
This is unacceptable & needs to be one of the 1st things addressed.
Yes 46,000 die per year without healthcare. But over 1000 die per day from misdiagnosis alone. That's 500,000 who die from the poor health care we have, not to mention wrong patient, wrong body party, even upside down dental xrays ruining ones mouth, teeth & life. Oh, and no one to hold
accountable.
Let them eat cake! Paid Benefits DO NOT FALL UNDER Entitlements!
He's "going to"? He "reassured?"
"Last year, granted, was terrible, but this year just you wait"?
At this point "hope" is insanity.
---and he darn well is going after Social Security.
Amazing.
Brief and eloquent.
This is just awful...it's the same old crap, decade after decade...no imagination...and when the repugklan 'raises its' misanthropic head'..Democrats scatter like flies. Is there anyone, any Democrat, that can right the ship..ANYONE!
He's not. As usual, Obama — the man of change — is fullacrap. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PwqSCJmbxk
Filibuster reform would be a timely preparation for the Republican Senate that will surely get elected in 2012.
I think a mistaken premise by some may be that a wholly Republican Congress would spare the president the embarrassment of what he did with an overwhelming popular mandate and an overwhelming Democratic majority. Ezra Klein, for one, demonstrated that they could have changed Senate rules at any time if they had wanted.
One mistake by some is to think that Democratic leadership was not in complete collusion with Republicans.
The other mistake is to believe that Obama can be embarrassed by anything. Historians debate "best" and "worst" about presidents endlessly. Obama will go down as the most cold blooded man ever to occupy the White House. Nixon was not his equal--even while he misbehaved, he still lived in fear of his Quaker mother's memory, and Cheney of course was not president, not officially.