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What's so difficult to understand about that?
The corporate elites in this country saw Bush driving the country off a cliff, so they concocted an allegedly "post-racial" moderate Democrat to stabilize the system and obtain Democratic buy-in on issues like perpetual war, and a government as feeding trough, which has facilitated ongoing corporate predation. The same elites began to use the media to focus on distracting non-issues like Obama's birth certificate, Muslim mosques, and the like to divert attention away from the only real issue: the political economy of the garrison/predator state, ignoring the manner in which Obama has consolidated it with bipartisan buy-in. Likewise on domestic policy, we spent months focusing on death panels in health care, ignoring the more salient fact that the White House never wanted a public option in the health care bill, which explains why Rahm said so early last summer. Why? Because the big insurance companies did not want it, so Rahm did not want it. End of issue. Financial reform has been similarly disappointing. Any private investor who had put as much as the government has put into faltering banks would have far more supervision (board seats, probably regular operational reports) and would also have replaced the CEO, with an understanding that he could clean house if he saw fit. Getting a new CEO in is usually standard operating procedure with distressed organizations, but the Treasury and Fed have continued to write checks and frustrated any serious attempt to make inquiries. Cover-up has been the hallmark. Why else implement a financial reform bill without at least exploring the cause of the crisis in the first place? Look at the contrast with the treatment of GM and Chrysler, which were asked plenty of tough questions and required to submit turnaround plans that could be rejected or be revised under duress. Leaving aside the economic and political costs of the policies undertaken by President Obama, there is a much more profoundly corrosive social effect at work here. There is a pervasive sense that people who have played according to the rules are being persistently jobbed by this Administration - this has begun to perpetuate a feeling of "they've got theirs and now I want mine." It's hard to quantify the impact of this growing mentality, but it is the kind of phenomenon often manifests itself via widespread tax evasion and a corresponding loss of political legitimacy on the part of a government in other countries.
Likewise on domestic policy, we spent months focusing on death panels in health care, ignoring the more salient fact that the White House never wanted a public option in the health care bill, which explains why Rahm said so early last summer. Why? Because the big insurance companies did not want it, so Rahm did not want it. End of issue.
Financial reform has been similarly disappointing. Any private investor who had put as much as the government has put into faltering banks would have far more supervision (board seats, probably regular operational reports) and would also have replaced the CEO, with an understanding that he could clean house if he saw fit. Getting a new CEO in is usually standard operating procedure with distressed organizations, but the Treasury and Fed have continued to write checks and frustrated any serious attempt to make inquiries. Cover-up has been the hallmark. Why else implement a financial reform bill without at least exploring the cause of the crisis in the first place? Look at the contrast with the treatment of GM and Chrysler, which were asked plenty of tough questions and required to submit turnaround plans that could be rejected or be revised under duress.
Leaving aside the economic and political costs of the policies undertaken by President Obama, there is a much more profoundly corrosive social effect at work here. There is a pervasive sense that people who have played according to the rules are being persistently jobbed by this Administration - this has begun to perpetuate a feeling of "they've got theirs and now I want mine." It's hard to quantify the impact of this growing mentality, but it is the kind of phenomenon often manifests itself via widespread tax evasion and a corresponding loss of political legitimacy on the part of a government in other countries.
This will only change when enough people both refuse to vote for either corporatist party or any candidate that is not pledged to take down the current corporatist dominance and when there are such credible alternatives for whom to vote. This could be a Reform party pledged to change the existing system regardless of threatened consequences or it could be separate left, center and right wing parties who collectively are pledged to the same goal and who cooperate legislatively to accomplish that goal. The goal could be brought about by a blocking minority who would prevent the next big bailout and allow the current system to collapse. That may be the only way real change happens. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
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