Instead of sponsoring the hope and change he promised by confronting Wall Street, the pharmaceutical and health care monopolies, the military-industrial complex and big oil and gas, he has appeased them as if There is No Alternative.
If the Republican accusations are correct in accusing President Obama of steering America along the “European” course, it is not really socialism. It is neoliberal financial austerity, Greek style. His task over the next two months is to avoid using deficit spending to revive the economy....
Having appointed the Bowles-Simpson commission members who seek to shift the tax burden off business onto consumers, the President will pave the way for Bush-type privatization. In his first debate with Mitt Romney, Mr. Obama assured his audience that they were in agreement on the need to balance the budget (his euphemism for scaling back Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid). By christening this “the Great Bargain,” President Obama has refined Orwellian doublethink. It is as if George Orwell went to work on Madison Avenue.....
President Obama has broken nearly every campaign promise he made to voters – but not a single promise he made to his big campaign contributors!
That is the essence of being a politician today: to deliver one’s constituency of voters to the campaign contributors. In this respect Barack Obama is America’s version of Tony Blair; or alternatively, Margaret Thatcher and Neville Chamberlain rolled into one. We need a new word to describe this – something more than simply “irony.”
It’s not just Mr. Obama, of course. It’s the Democratic Party leadership. So here’s the litmus test to watch: On what committee and at what rank will the Senate put Elizabeth Warren?
Will she be named head of the Senate Banking Committee? Will she even be on it? Is she an embarrassment to Democratic fund-raisers on Wall Street – or window dressing to help give the impression that the Party really is other than crypto-Republican.
What inspired the Occupy Wall Street movement a year ago was a spontaneous protest against not only President Obama but also the Democratic Party for its lack of real effort to stem the right-wing tide. The Democrats did not rush to the OWS defense
