It’s becoming clear that people who voted last fall for Obama didn’t know their man. Enthusiasts saw a svelte, well- spoken, passionate campaigner who organized a hard- to- stop grassroots political campaign.
Big business saw a winner. Obama and the Democrats beat the previously unassailable Republicans at fundraising. Obama could reach individual donors, but he was a real hit with moneyed interest groups.
The key to understanding Obama lay in observing his Senate and Illinois Statehouse records. While an excellent campaigner, Obama the statesman was merely ‘present’ for his 10- year pre- presidential career.
But he did not explain why he wasn’t simply voting “no.”
There is no body of Obama legislation, no ‘Obama Act’ no great public initiative … even a small public initiative. The healthcare reform that was cast as Obama’s signature never was much of an comprehensive roadmap at all, rather it was from the start an open forum within which the aims of competing interests could cancel each other out. Nothing much of anything useful … can be
accomplished out of such a ‘non- strategy’.
At least the Clinton Healthcare Plan was a plan.
Obama, ‘The Man Who Wasn’t There’, or worse … a stalking horse for Big Business. Unlike Bush, the current White House occupant is is more deft. He promotes the Commercial- Industrial Complex’s agenda with style.
Currently, Americans see Obama unraveling of his flagship policy program. Bob Herbert sez:
The hope of a government-run insurance option is all but gone. So there will be no effective alternative for consumers in the market for health coverage, which means no competitive pressure for private insurers to rein in premiums and other charges. (Forget about the nonprofit cooperatives. That’s like sending peewee footballers up against the Super Bowl champs.)
Insurance companies are delighted with the way “reform” is unfolding. Think of it: The government is planning to require most uninsured Americans to buy health coverage. Millions of young and healthy individuals will be herded into the industry’s welcoming arms. This is the population the insurers drool over.
Wow … how did the public option ‘get defeated’? Where was the debate? Congress is in recess. I have to hand it to Obama, he’s clever. He surrendered without a fight! “The hope of a government-run insurance option is all but gone.” What IS Obama’s agenda?
I personally didn’t vote for Obama or support him, I thought he was a bum. America is on the road to disillusionment. I am not. America is faced with the possibility of a political future including Sarah Palin. What an outcome! Things could be much worse, in similar straits, Weimar Germany appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor. Palin looks good in a skirt, but she’s no Hitler. She’s far less capable.
Whatever outcome is the most destructive to the greatest number is the most likely.
Obama’s economic policy is handouts to the corrupt bankers and stock swindlers; tens of trillions committed to the elites at the expense of the middle class. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are still being fought with no real ends in sight. Guantanamo is still open for business with a new location ‘to be determined’. There is no energy policy to speak of.
The post- Reagan policy scheme has been to ‘starve the beast’; create money obstacles to carrying forward government programs outside of defense spending. The multi- trillion dollar Obama stimulus is certainly having this effect; it raises the amounts the government needs to service exponentially expanding government debt. As the middle class morphs into another poverty category, the stimulus redirects funds more toward the wealthy.
In deflationary periods such as we are immersed in currently, economics is a zero- sum game. One group gains advantage/income a the expense of another.