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| Paulson/Obama |
No, but he gives a good speech. Paul Krugman, Nobel economist and
New York Times columnist asks, where is the guy who said "Yes, we can!" Simply put, he was
never there. After three years in office Barack Obama's political facade is crumbling. He is not the populist leader willing to take action against the cynicism and deal making of Washington, DC. He is actually "the black face of Wall Street". He did not picket with public employee supporters confronting the poorly disguised Koch brothers attempt to break their union in Wisconsin because he was too busy making
sweet budget deals with the 'tea party' radicals. He does not need the little guy to help his re-election campaign because he sold out to his Wall Street backers who are flush with cash from a decade of unfair taxation. The former constitutional law professor denies
Wikileaker Bradley Manning is being tortured by the Marines at Quantico, but 250 of his former law professor colleagues say he is wrong. He was going to try the Al Qaeda terrorists in the shadow of the World Trade Center memorial. He was going to close America's first gulag, Guantanamo. Bold policy positions based on principle that are now merely political ephemera.
Medicare and Medicaid? We
can't afford those popular programs anymore, but we can afford three simultaneous wars! Global warming? His solution appears to be building more vulnerable, risky nuclear power plants with taxpayer money, and sacrificing our public lands and seas to the oil plutocrats. So what he have here is a failure of will, of leadership, and above all, of moral conviction. Everything, as he likes to say, is "on the table", including America's middle class. A genuine albeit flawed Democratic president, Andrew Jackson, said the rich can take of themselves, while ordinary Americans need the protection of good government*. Obama should take his Nobel peace medal and pawn it, not that he needs the money because five will get you ten there is a
cushy job on Wall Street waiting for him.
*to see how Progressives would restore fiscal stability go to the Peoples' Budget issued by the House Progressive Caucus.
