President Barry O, continuing confused on his role wherein he apparently thinks he's president not of a nation but of a corporation that helps other corporations to screw consumers, has decided that with the economy everywhere but Wall Street in free fall and banks foreclosing on homes they don't own, the real problem is...too much govt regulation. (Via Blue Texan at FDL)
Everybody, it seems, wants to believe Obama isn't a corporate puppet sell-out. Bob Herbert, who has been very tough on Obama's willingness to give Wall Street anything it wants while refusing Main Street more than the absolute minimum of what it needs, "finally" hears what he's been wanting to hear for a long time.
There has been a feeling in some quarters (not mine, of course) that President Obama has been holding back. If that was true, it is true no longer, I'd say. In the last couple of days we've seen two pretty bold moves on his part, not that he expected anybody to notice.
It seems that for once - and I do mean once - my pessimism may have led me uncustomarily astray. It appears that the White House, Wall Street, and conservatives are actually going to lose the battle to make sure the Fed stays unaudited and therefore unaccountable in every way. According to both TPM and the NYT, Bernie Sanders' amendment is now expected to pass.
We predicted some time ago that, looking at the makeup of Obama's so-called Debt Commission and bearing in mind recent statements that "everybody was going to have to make sacrifices" (except the bankers, corporate executives, and coupon-clippers, of course, though he left that part out), it was going to turn out that, golly whiz, the biggest part of the national debt had been created not by the war he won't stop or the massive bail-outs of the rich that he engineered Bush-fashion but by those damn old people driving Lexuses. So sayeth Debt Commission Chair Alan Simpson.
The shocking news that the SEC was actually going to charge Goldman Sachs with criminal fraud, a move most of us had long ago given up expecting, was so well-received that it seems to have galvanized rank-and-file Democrats.
[H]ow good is the legislation on the table, the bill put together by Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut?
Not good enough. It's a good-faith effort to do what needs to be done, but it would create a system highly dependent on the wisdom and good intentions of government officials. And as the history of the last decade demonstrates, trusting in the quality of officials can be dangerous to the economy's health.
"Good faith effort"? That's pushing the benefit of the doubt past the breaking point. The admittedly minimal House bill was a "good faith effort" if your definition of "good faith" is an effort to just barely control the worst of Wall Street's usual financial scams, shenanigans, and skullduggery. Dodd's bill is a bad faith effort to make non-reform smell like reform, thus keeping Wall Street happy with him so his life-after-the-Senate will be a very comfortable one.
There are 3 huge bills in the pipeline now, and what they all have in common is that none of them - NOT ONE - is going to change much of anything. It's important to remember that.
"We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war."
Zinn
"[O]ur time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice."
Bono
"True religion will not let us fall asleep in the comfort of our freedom. Love thy neighbor is not a piece of advice, it's a command. ...
God, my friends, is with the poor and God is with us, if we are with them. This is not a burden, this is an adventure."
The Reverend Al Sharpton
Ray wasn't singing about what he knew, 'cause Ray had been blind since he was a child. He hadn't seen many purple mountains. He hadn't seen many fruited plains. He was singing about what he believed to be.
Mr. President, we love America, not because of all of us have seen the beauty all the time.
But we believed if we kept on working, if we kept on marching, if we kept on voting, if we kept on believing, we would make America beautiful for everybody.
Marx
''With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 percent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 percent will produce eagerness, 50 percent positive audacity; 100 percent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 percent, and there is not a crime which it will not scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged.''
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