Paul Street

Flim-Flam Obama Man: The “New Democrat[ic]” President's Wall Street Loyalties Get Clearer Every Day

Flim-Flam Obama Man: The “New Democrat[ic]” President's Wall Street Loyalties Get Clearer Every Day

By Paul Street - March 27, 2009

"Beneath claims of allegiance to "free market" ideals and "private enterprise," the administration's "bank rescue" design - recently described by former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich as a continuation of "the most expensive tax-supported fiasco in history"- boils down to a traditional exercise in Wall Street welfare: socialism for the rich, market discipline and capitalism for the rest of us."

"It's time to put our differences aside. Will you be part of the solution?"
- Nightly Chevron commercial at the end of "The News Hour" on the "Public" Broadcasting System, March 12-March 25, 2009

Many on what passes for a left in the United States have been led to believe that Barack Obama is a "Mr. Smith-goes- to-Washington" character eager and ready to struggle against entrenched corporate and financial interests. A considerable number of so-called "left liberals" make curious bedfellows with right-wing noisemakers (including dangerous reactionary nut-jobs like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Bernard Goldberg) in fantasizing that a leftist has taken up residence in the White House. But, as Harper's Magazine president John R. MacArthur notes, this "is an absurd reading of Obama," who MacArthur rightly describes as "a moderate with far too much respect for the global financial class" and as "surely the unleft, unradical, president." ...

Continued...
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/20987

RSS