It's getting too late to give President Barack Obama a pass on the economy. Sure, he inherited an enormous mess from George W., who whistled "Dixie" while the banking system imploded. But it's time for Democrats to admit that their guy bears considerable responsibility for not turning things around.
He blindly followed President Bush's would-be remedy of throwing money at the banks and getting nothing in return for beleaguered homeowners. Sadly, Obama has proved to be nothing more than a Bill Clinton clone triangulating with the Wall Street lobbyists at the expense of ordinary folks.
That fatal arc of betrayal was captured by a headline in Tuesday's New York Times: "Soaring Poverty Casts Spotlight on 'Lost Decade.'" The Census Bureau reported that there are now 46.2 million Americans living below the official poverty line -- the highest number in the 52 years since that statistic was first measured -- and median household income has fallen back to the 1996 level. As Harvard economist Lawrence Katz summarized this dreary news: "This is truly a lost decade. We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we're looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s."
The late 1990s, it should be noted, is when President Clinton, working with Phil Gramm, the Republican head of the Senate Banking Committee, pushed through two critical pieces of legislation ending effective regulation of the banks. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act smashed the wall between high-flying Wall Street investment firms and the once staid commercial banks entrusted with the deposits and mortgages of America's innocent souls. The next year Clinton signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, banning any effective regulation of the rapidly expanded trade in the collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps that have since haunted the world's economy.
The collapse of those toxic securities led to the housing crisis and resulted in 15.1 percent of Americans now living in poverty, the same level as when Bill Clinton took office. But thanks to another one of Clinton's grand triangulation strategies, the one he called "welfare reform," the impoverished are now denied the safety net that existed before the Clinton presidency. Although 22 percent of U.S. children are now below the poverty line, the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program no longer exists.
Some of us who voted for Obama thought he was no Clinton, but he was and is, as was demonstrated in his first days in office when he appointed two key veterans of the Clinton Treasury Department, Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, to head up the Obama economic team. Geithner, as treasury secretary, is the point man for the administration's push to pass the so-called American Jobs Act, which the president hyped in his Sept. 8 speech to Congress and the nation. It was pure Clinton bull: I feel your pain while I help the super-rich pick your pocket.
Space permits only one example, that of General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, whom Obama selected to head his "Jobs Council of leaders from different industries who are developing a wide range of new ideas to help companies grow and create jobs." Was that some cruel joke? GE under Immelt has grown and created jobs, but they are abroad rather than in our own troubled country. As a result, by the end of last year, only 134,000 of GE's workforce of 304,000 were based in the United States; the remainder -- and 82 percent of the company's profit -- were sheltered abroad.
Ironically, GE's ability to avoid taxes was restricted by President Ronald Reagan, who had once been a spokesman for GE but was outraged by the company's use of tax loopholes. It remained for President Clinton to offer GE some new tax breaks. As a result of being able to shelter profit abroad last year, GE had profits of $14.2 billion but claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. Immelt was the elephant in the room when Obama said in his speech last week: "Our tax code should not give an advantage to companies that can afford the best-connected lobbyists. It should give an advantage to companies that invest and create jobs right here in the United States of America."
It has been a long time since GE was creating jobs here during its "better light bulb" days, and the last spurt of GE participation in the U.S. economy came through its unit GE Capital, which specialized in toxic mortgage lending that once produced more than half of the company's profits but ultimately led to a taxpayer bailout.
Someone who knows a great deal about that sort of scam is Elizabeth Warren, the consumer advocate and Harvard law professor pushed out of Obama's inner circle. In launching her campaign for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts this week, Warren posted a video that clearly defined the enemy:
"Washington is rigged for big corporations. A big company, like GE, pays nothing in taxes, and we're asking college students to take on even more debt to get an education?"
Obama in appointing Immelt last January praised him as a business leader who "understands what it takes for America to compete in the global economy." Apparently, what Immelt understands is that what it takes to satisfy corporate interests instead of national needs is conning a president into looking the other way while you send jobs abroad.
Joseph A. Palermo: A President Standing in Quicksand
One day I wish we would have an American President, not a republican or a democrat or a progressive or a conservative.
The assertion is made here that Elizabeth Warren was pushed out of Obama's inner circle. Actually, this is completely ass-backwards. In fact, as if facts in proper context matter anymore, Obama INVITED Warren INTO his inner circle.
This piece fails to inform readers, for unknown reasons, that Elizabeth Warren was prevented from assuming her post as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by the obstructionist Republican cult of economic failure, members of which sit on the congressional committee that refuses to confirm the nomination of a director - any director - for the CFPB because they do not agree with the Dodd-Frank law that established the consumer protection agency. They believe the nomination hearing itself is completely premature and will not consider the confirmation of any nominee until the law is changed - a law that was passed not long ago with bipartisan support, no less.
Without a director the CFPB is prevented from doing the work it was charged to do to protect consumers. Ironically, this is the kind of betrayal that needs to be exposed.
Many bloggers here talk about 'betrayal' so easily. Perhaps, that is due to their own general ease of betrayal of the facts in context of any given issue and their apparent effortless disdain for the truth.
I choose, instead, to identify myself as an Extreme Moderate, liberal in compassion and conservative in consideration. Elevate those at the bottom and the base of fear -- if in this group, the desperation and devastation; if not, the concern that I could be reduced to that -- disappears. Give those at the top incentive for production and penalty for speculation, for the first elevates the real "job creators" and the second punishes them for robbing the country of its resources -- human potential and productivity, monetary, and its historic, economic imperative.
The Extreme Moderate Party -- there's an idea there.
Fanned, Faved and Badged - for making me think!
Instead, his health care reform bill and the Dodd Frank financial reform bill, turned out to be half measures. Dodd Frank is especially disappointing. Our corrupt political system (now I believe political reform should be our top priority) is preventing even this weak reform from being implemented. Repubs feel free to water down even the most basic rules and protections, leaving our banking system in a dangerous, over-leveraged position. Dodd - Frank wasn't strong anyway, and we can't even implement that. In my opinion, a strong Democrat would be doing everything he could to get this bill implemented. Obama is not that.
Obama also did not ask for a big enough stimulus to jump start the economy, and bought into the bogus deficit argument, which gave Repubs all the ammunition they needed to change the subject to deficit reduction. I believe his policies prevented a complete collapse, but didn't do near enough to facilitate recovery. If he loses re-election, it will be because of these failures. Sad, because I think the Repub we will get will be much worse.
Apparently, stonewalling didn't work, it just slowed down the insanity. For all the money, what do we have? More debt, more unemployment, more disillusionment. If you weren't stonewalling before, you certainly should be now.
If your house was burning and the mayor and city council of your drought stricken city clashed about whether the fire department should cut back water consumption to the same extent as private homeowners, would you say it's insanity if the firefighters only had to cut back half as much?
If Obama had demanded and got a straight up or down vote on the Stimulus bill, he would have gotten a more effective and less insane one, and unemployment would b lower.
I'm getting old & senile can't determine who that is.There's a bunch of people wanting God to walk hand in hand with the political process, as long as He only walks with their brand. Being Presbyterian, a word too difficult for most of them to spell, I shouldn't expect favorable rulings.This church requires ministers to have a true college degree(correspondance doesn't count), in addition to"Being Called", that other brands say is the only requirement. I find Jimmy Swaggart dropped out of high school, Jim & Tammy Faye started to bible college, but left to spread the word. (College rarely pays students much, while spreading the word can be worth millions if you work it right.), Glenn Copeland enrolled in Oral Roberts U, but ended up being Oral's pilot, till he memorized enough money-making biblical phrases.I don't find that any of these people graduated from a university, but felt qualified to tell men, women, & children how they should live their lives. A degree isn't required to do this, but these folks got themselves in situations ,so that I wouldn't want them telling me, or my children a damned thing about christian living.The Catholic priests, & Presbyterian ministers I have listened to for years, have never tried to even hint at who I should vote for. I find that gratifying, & tend to believe they are better suited to what their interest & training, have prepared them for.
The question is: Why are the numbers not there? Why are Americans in large numbers voting against their own interests, or not voting at all? FDR said that the most important task for postwar America was to continue the political education of the American people. Let's!
I suggest that we start by highlighting the distinction between "Gemeinschaft" and "Gesellschaft." Look it up!
Then, let's demand "the right to work" amendment. If the corporations cannot provide work,
then clearly, it's the government's duty. And the jobs the government provides, jobs that are
needed, must enable workers to access decent housing, health care, education, and nutrition.
That is "the second Bill of Rights" FDR proposed in his Jan 11, 1944 State of The Union Message.
Bottom line, one of Obama's big dangers is the shallow minds in the democratic party that refuse to hold him accountable for ANYTHING and continue to sing the song that all is sunshine and roses, ignoring his plunging popularity. If you have a boat with a leak, or in this case multiple leaks, the worst thing you can do is not plug the leaks and deny that anything is wrong...
Yes, Obama was elected on a wave of voters demanding change, we got change, massive debt caused by out of control spending on the wrong things, a president who sold his soul to Wall Street, the drug companies and now labor unions and massive unemployment. 9-10% overall, California at 12% and rising and 20% in many black communities. And the delusional still want to pretend its "somebody else's fault". Face the truth, the sun is NOT shining on Obama and the pedals are falling off the rose. Continuing to make the same mistakes over and over again will NOT produce different results...
After all, as America and her allies worked to rebuild Europe and Japan after WWII, we didn't suddenly make all the losers' problems the fault of those trying to sweep up the mess the Axis powers created...
As long as the Bush policies remain in place, as long as we bleed red ink thanks to his and the GOP's tax cuts -- and remember, it's the GOP refusing to correct that -- the impact his policies remain his fault...his and his co-conspirators in the GOP...
We've been had.