Billionaires Tapped by Obama to Perform in Trickle-Down Theater

The very same  corporate billionaires sitting on nearly two thirds of the nation's wealth, the plutocrats responsible for the biggest wealth disparity in American history, are now being asked to hang out at the White House and solve the unemployment problem.  President Obama convened the group for its first meeting on Thursday.  His opening remarks were an exercise in wishy-washiness - even for him.  Let's face it: his heart was just not in what he was saying to this biggest concentration of living, breathing  mega-wealth in purportedly human form seen in D.C. since....I dunno, last week?  Let his words speak for themselves:

"So my main purpose here today at this first meeting I think is to listen, to get a sense of where all of you think the economy is right now, what kinds of steps we need to be taking.  As I talked about during the State of the Union, we want to remove any barriers and any impediments that are preventing you from success and from growth.  At the same time, we want to put a challenge to America’s businesses that even as we're working with you to streamline regulations, to reform our tax system, to take other steps that have been sitting on the shelf for quite some time under both Democratic and Republican Presidents, we want to make sure that we're also putting a little pressure on you guys to figure out how do we make sure that the economy is working for everybody; how do we make sure that every child out there who’s willing to work hard is going to be able to succeed; how do we make certain that working families across the country are sharing in growing productivity and that we're not simply creating an economy in which one segment of it is doing very well, but the rest of the folks are out there treading water.

So, Jeff, again, I want to thank you for your extraordinary work.  I want to thank all of you for agreeing to participate.
Last point I'll make is that I'm not interested in photo ops and I'm not interested in more meetings.  I've got enough photo ops and enough meetings.  I have a surplus of that.  So I expect this to be a working group in which we are coming up with some concrete deliverables.  I don't think that we have to be trying to hit homeruns every time.  I think if we hit some singles and doubles, if we find some very specific things that this group can help us on and we can work on together, then we can build on that success, and in the aggregate, over time, this will have really made a difference at a critical juncture in our economy."



The Non-Photo Op Photo Op



Members of the White House Council on Jobs and Competiveness:  (comprised of 19 CEOs, two union leaders, two academics, one chief operating officer, one investment banker and one expert in entrepreneurship. Nineteen of the members are men, seven are women.)


Jeffrey Immelt, Chair

• Ursula M. Burns
• Steve Case
• Kenneth I. Chenault
• John Doerr
• Roger W. Ferguson
• Mark T. Gallogly
• Joseph T. Hansen
• Lewis Hay
• Gary Kelly
• Ellen Kullman
• A.G. Lafley
• Eric Lander
• Monica Lozano
• Jim McNerney
• Darlene Miller
• Paul Otellini
• Richard D. Parsons
• Antonio M. Perez
• Penny Pritzker
• Brian Roberts
• Matthew Rose
• Sheryl Sandberg
• Richard Trumka
• Laura D’Andrea Tyson
• Robert Wolf

Across town, the U.S. Conference of Mayors was convening to discuss the unemployment crisis at its own, separate summit - this one addressing work opportunities for low-income people, a demographic apparently not on the CEOs' agenda at the White House.  Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, who did not speak to the elite panel of CEOs, addressed the mayors' group, as did Education Secretary Arne Duncan.  Obama was a no-show.  I don't think he's had a meeting with, or about, real live unemployed, poverty-stricken people yet.  Correct me if I'm wrong.


**Update -- the mayors have been invited to the White House for a meet and greet with the President tomorrow (Feb. 26).

Jackboots for Obama

I received a vaguely creepy email a few days ago from one Jeremy Bird of Organizing for America, asking me to apply for a summer grassroots training program that "aims to put boots on the ground and help foster a new generation of leaders."

Participants will undergo an "intensive training program", the email cryptically went on, be assigned to a specific community, and recruit volunteers who will be organized "street by street, (to) knock on doors...do what it takes to support the President's agenda." (kind of sounds like the U.S. Military Academy's summer "Beast Barracks"  weeks of hellish, intensive training in the trenches, huh?)

"It takes hard work to build a movement around a cause," Bird added.  He didn't explain what the "cause" was, but we may safely assume it is the continued reign of Barack Obama.

It is baffling that Obama, who has sold himself out to corporations and filled his cabinet with Wall Street insiders, would even dream of again enlisting volunteers to knock on doors for him.  It worked out so well in 2008, because he was able to fool so many people into working the phones, parting with their hard-earned money $25 at a time, and believing his message of change.

This latest outreach to common "folks" smacks of an attempt to resurrect, or reinvent, an Obama Personality Cult.  The tone is decidedly militaristic - be a soldier for the cause, boots on the ground - although there is no mention of wearing a uniform of any kind.

The rewards of the job presumably include the off-chance of an actual meeting, someday, with the president. According to the email:

"Summer organizer Paras Patel had an unforgettable experience - meeting President Obama at an event in Detroit. 'He shook my hand and told me he was proud of me and appreciated the work I was doing.... Meeting the president was definitely a surprise and something I will never forget!' " 

The email concluded, "Successful movements have always been built and grown by ordinary people who take responsibility for organizing their fellow citizens to make their voices heard. We're looking for folks who are willing to work hard to support the President's agenda and lay new groundwork to carry this movement forward for years to come."

(there's that creepy "folks" word again....derived from the German fulka (people's army) and volk, with a German nationalistic context.  Beware of politicians using this word - they use it in an overfamiliar, condescending way to draw you in to their little cozy webs.)

Incidentally, there is no indication of any actual salary involved in marching for Obama, nor are we told why a sitting president is in need of a so-called movement, nor what agenda we are supposed to be supporting.  Are we expected to knock on people's doors and enthuse about the two-year pay freeze for federal employees? Are we supposed to propagandize for the continued spying on ordinary American citizens?  Do they honestly expect volunteers to approach strangers and cheerfully talk about the race for the top, Winning the Future, why we had to extend Bush tax cuts for the wealthy?  Are they willing to supply their unpaid lackeys with Kevlar vests and security details? 

I am afraid the Obama Army will be about as welcome at the front doors of America as the Jehovah's Witnesses. 

The Big Pain

The title alone should have warned us that the NY Times resident conservative, David Brooks, has finally fallen off the deep end. "Make Everybody Hurt" was not your usual Brooksian pseudo-intellectual pablum. It had a new twist: sadism.  Brooks, the outwardly mild-mannered, reasonable Republican, has stripped off the facade of politesse and revealed a wire hanger-wielding harridan just beneath the surface.


The protest movement in Wisconsin has finally caused David to snap. He accuses Democratic state senators of being "extra-legal obstructionists" for fleeing the state to save the teachers' union. And since the old Constitution doesn't go far enough, he is calling for an unwritten Austerity Constitution consisting of a set of practices that will cut, cut and cut again.  Night of the Long Knives, Night of a Thousand Cuts.  He calls the antics of demonstraters "amusingly Orwellian."  Only David Brooks and maybe the Koch Brothers would find Orwell a laugh riot.


Today's Brooks column provoked the usual outrage from readers.  Marie Burns outdid herself in a masterful job of Brooks slicing and dicing, taking each of his thought balloons and poking a fork in it. She accused him of getting his news from the Koch Brothers Gazette and being an insult to the readers of The Times.  "What happened to the David Brooks who wrote all that glowing stuff about the importance of education as a vehicle to American success?" she asks. "Maybe he took a sick day."


Brooks is supremely miffed that the governor has exempted cops and firefighters from the pain, conveniently failing to reveal that Gov. Walker spared them because they were contributors to his campaign. The limiting of torture to just the teaching profession is "unsustainable in the current tide of red ink." Actually,  David's thought processes are as unsustainable as Joan Crawford's red-lipsticked gash of an abusive mouth.


Finding fault with working people and labor unions for the current fiscal crises (manufactured largely by extending Bush tax cuts for the wealthy), blaming cops and teachers and firefighters for something the Wall Street banksters did, is very Mommie-Dearish.  Remember the scene from the movie when an intoxicated Joan Crawford wakes her sleeping little daughter to perform the notorious coat hanger beating?  She drags young Christina Crawford into the bathroom, deliberately trashes it, and then accuses the girl of making the mess.  Here's a quotes quiz.  Guess the sources - you get four picks: David Brooks, Joan Crawford, Republican governors, or Regular People:


"Tina, bring me the axe!"


"Clean up this mess!"


"Scrub, scrub, Christina. It's not! This floor is not clean! Look at it!  This floor is not clean! None of it...this floor is not clean. Nothing is clean. This whole place is a mess..."


"Ah....you lost again."


"Ah, nobody said life was fair. I'm bigger and faster and I'll always beat you."


"Why can't you give me the respect I'm entitled to? Why can't you treat me like I would be treated by any stranger on the street?"


"Jesus Christ!"


"Don't @$#% with me, fellas!"


"I'm not gonna play with you anymore. EVER!"


"I...am...not...one...of...your...FANS!!!"




Postscript: there are no right and wrong answers on this test, just as there are no right or wrong answers in this crapfest of ambiguity we call life.

Krugman's Attack of the Oligarchs

The following is a guest post written by Kate Madison of Depoe Bay, Oregon, in response to today's Paul Krugman column, "Wisconsin Power Play."

Scott Walker,the Tea Party governor of Wisconsin, is doing, as Naomi Klein, explains: "a classic example of "The Shock Doctrine" her excellent book about how politicians create a crisis (or take advantage of one--i.e, 9/11), then use that crisis as an excuse to push through horribly unpopular economic policies."

Let's face it, people! Democracy in America is in hospice, and not doing well at all. Ronald Reagan, our first oncologist, treated our economy with Milton Friedman's "free market" chemotherapy, and the rich got richer, but the cancer worsened. Our prognosis has gone downhill from there. Each succeeding President has promised a new, less toxic, form of chemo to address our festering economic cancer, but each has cooked up another "free market" concoction-- hidden in giveaways to corporations--with George W. Bush's almost lethal cocktail being the worst. The rich just kept getting richer, and the economy sicker. Then, in 2008, we got Barack Obama, the man of HOPE. He promised an entirely new form of chemotherapy to address the dying economy and bring our Democracy back to the land of the living. Sad to say, President Obama came down with a bad case of "corporate flu," a virus passed to him through Wall Street dollars. This blinded him to the reality of what needed to be done. So he too decided to use "free market" chemo and called in Larry Summers and Timothy Geither to administer the"new and better potion," assuring us this was different. Some of us pointed out that there were Nobel laureate economists, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, who had a different idea of a cure for our cancerous, fast failing economy, and an entirely different idea about chemotherapy. Obama said"no thanks," but graciously offered to do lunch sometime.  Then he extended the Bush tax cuts for the richest 2%.

The rest is history. EXCEPT--the people of Wisconsin understand what the chemo (now proposed by a Tea Party governor, which involves neutralizing their unions) would actually do to them. Wisconsin may be economically ill, but its citizens are not stupid, and they have their eyes wide open.  They know at the beginning of 2010 Wisconsin had a budget surplus which the governor gave  away in tax breaks (to corporations that had supported him), creating a deficit.   So....the people are writing their own story to resist the false panic that the psychopathic governor is telling them is "the only alternative."  They have rejected Walker's chemo, and are strengthening their collective immune system through mass demonstrations,  speaking up and refusing to turn their rights over to a quack. Free market chemotherapy is in reality a toxic, tired tea. And the people in Wisconsin are not going to drink it! Give it to the Tea Party zombies that Americans for Prosperity have bussed into Madison from out-of-state to try to stir up the protesters and confuse the rest of us.   Maybe it will put them back to sleep.

Wage Freeze Here, but Billions for Jobs Over There

At the same time that President Obama announced a two-year wage freeze for federal employees, he is asking for an additional $128 billion to hire 73,000 more security force cops in Afghanistan.  The idea is that propping up security in an unpolice-able state will let us start leaving this July, in time for the presidential campaign kickoff.


The wage freeze announcement coincided, of course, with the extension of  the Bush-era tax cuts for the rich. Federal employee union president John Gage called it "a slap at working people." The move was pure political theater, trimming the $1.3 trillion deficit by a mere 0.4 percent. The president pompously explained: "Small businesses and families are tightening their belts.  The government should be too." (and hint, wink, nod to the states - start doing your own union busting without guilt, the Prez has your back!)
One of the largest categories of federal employment is nursing.  A typical VA hospital nursing assistant, who turns paralyzed, brain-injured soldiers in bed to prevent decubitus ulcers, empties bedpans, and does what is commonly called "scut work," earns about $28,000 a year.  Factoring in cost of living increases, this federal worker is being slammed with a virtual pay cut.  This nursing assistant will still have to pay four percent more for groceries, as much as ten percent more for clothing and shoes for the kids, and who knows what outrageous gas prices this summer.  Compare this with the $175,000 salary of a member of Congress.  Before the gold-plated health coverage.


But hiring of "folks" (as Obama and most politicians annoyingly call people) goes on unabated in Afghanistan, where the typical security recruit can't read or write and staves off hunger by smoking opium, before during and after work.  Policemen (no female cops over there) have been photographed in their GI duds, smoking hash pipes.   Bribery, shakedowns and corruption are rampant.  There have even been murders by security forces of our own troops. Yet they can get paid by the billions with our taxpayer money and with Chinese loans while our own workers suffer.  They will get rewarded while our own government crushes unions and punishes decent human beings who only want to feed their families.


How about we just make Afghanistan the 51st State?  Maybe then there'd be some equity.  If we owned that hell-hole of an empire, we could just stop the pretense and treat them over there the same way we treat working people over here.  Like crap.

Michele, Michelle

Since Michele Bachmann thinks the founding fathers abolished slavery and that all members of Congress should pass a patriotism litmus test, nobody should be surprised that she's now mistaking a new tax deduction for breast pumps for the government actually buying the apparati.  You'd think that every lactating lefty in America is soaking the government for a gold-plated, jewel-encrusted Tiffany breast pump. Next thing you know, women will be wanting the Nanny State to endow them with nursing bras by the bushel from Nordstroms.  Might as well just call it the Wet Nurse State, eh Michele?

 Of course, the corporate media are all whipped up into a frenzy because Michele with one L took the opportunity to diss Michelle Obama's lobbying for the tax deduction as part of her anti-obesity campaign. It's been proven that breastfeeding is healthy for both mom and baby - the antibodies flow, mothers lose pregnancy weight faster, infants develop fewer of those fat cells that never go away - etc., etc., etc.  If it weren't for Chris Matthews giving La Bachmann almost constant negative attention as Loony Woman of the Century, I doubt we'd even know who she is.  She'd be just one more anonymous congressperson from Minnesota by way of the Coen Brothers' "Fargo."


And of course, Sarah Palin's joke about Michelle O. pushing for breast feeding because of the high price of milk was made-for-primetime infotainment.  It was second only to the massacres in Bahrain and the union demonstrations in Wisconsin in news coverage last night.  MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell devoted several minutes to manufactured outrage over BreastpumpGate.  Nothing like making a mountain out of an AA, male reporter guys!  I can't stand Sarah either, but she was making a snarky joke, and you took the bait!  Attention, attention, attention.


Of course, the real story should be why American business is so unfriendly to all mothers, breast-feeding or bottle-feeding. We are one of the few civilized nations on earth that doesn't provide extended, paid maternity leave.  In France, new mothers even get someone to come in to do laundry. And maybe if companies had on-site child care, mothers wouldn't even need breast pumps.  If asked, I am sure most of them would prefer to nurse their infants the old-fashioned way.

Is Obama Finally Taking a Stand for the People?

Commenter Eva has asked me to post on the union demonstrations in Wisconsin - now apparently spreading to Ohio - in light of an apparent "news blackout" of the protests.  As of 11:44 p.m. Thursday, the NY Times had no coverage of the events on its homepage.


According to "Politico," John Boehner, responding to a report that the Democratic National Committee was helping to organize the protests, asked President Obama to order his party to call it off.  Oh my!  The unions may be marching toward the district of the Grim Weeper!  Earlier Thursday, Obama remarked that the Wisconsin governor appeared to be violating the rights of unions to collectively bargain.  Thankfully, he did not call for a gradual road to union rights, or civility.  Dare we hope our President is going to be on the side of the working people?


The comments boards on Fox News and other right wing outlets are lighting up with outrage.  Apparently there is a full-fledged Communist takeover of the United States underway, complete with Hitler signs carried by teachers.  I am absolutely loving this.


As of this posting The Times has no comments boxes open on this particular topic.  Hopefully this will change.  For now, feel free to opine to your hearts content right here on my humble little blog.

Good night, and may we all have a bright tomorrow.