"America's corporate and political elites now form a regime of their own and they're privatizing democracy. All the benefits - the tax cuts, policies and rewards flow in one direction: up."
- Bill Moyers - Link to Analysis/Podcasts
There is no doubt that President Obama walked into a shyte storm on day one of his presidency. He was elected to counteract and counterbalance the eight years of Bush republican political dominance and be the new broom to sweep out the Bush appointed corporate shills infesting the cabinet level posts of almost every government department. That was my hope. However... with his appointment of Timothy Geithner to the Treasury and Lawrence Summers as Director of the National Economic Council at the outset of his presidency, my hopefulness was shaken. That tremor of doubt became a major rumbling of discontent and disbelief when Robert Gates was reappointed as Secretary of Defense.
The two major reasons I voted for Obama were to salvage America's economy and to stop the wars. Wasn't eight years of hell enough? Are we to let the engineers of America's economic destruction keep digging into the financial system until they come up with an even bigger shaft to shove us into?
Will we continue to believe the bloody lie that war on islamist countries will end terror? Why are we bombing terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. The terrorists that harmed us have/had visas - welcome to an open country! We should be sending troops to the State Department and the CIA to force people to do their jobs. Why issue visas and not enforce an efficient system to keep track of them? Terrorist attacks are all about visas not about body scans and jihads.
So, hope for reform of the united corporations of America is dimming. Hope for an end to America as the biggest and stupidest bully on the block is dying hard. Hope is rapidly transforming into a nightmare vision of the Wall Street rapists stripping us of every last shred of decency and then disposing of our flabby political will down a mine shaft filled with decomposing government regulations. There is no government, president, congress, or political party that can protect citizens from the contempt of the corporate and political elite. The only tool of any use to citizens is information and the corporate elite are ahead of us on that one since they own the public media.
The past year has shown that ordinary Americans cannot live with these disgraceful "titans of industry." Who wants to be subjected to their disrespect and manipulations while they gouge bonuses out of bailout money for their failures, jump us with usurious bank charges, hold back taxpayer money earmarked for taxpayers, and even more degrading, bribe our elected politicians (regardless of party) affilitation with bailout-provided campaign contributions. We either join them - everybody get rich ala Clinton's gogo 1990s or beat em - drive em offshore with crippling taxes and shun their asses.
