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Frank Rich: What Happened to Change We Can Believe In?

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Elmore Furth Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Oct-24-10 04:51 PM
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Frank Rich: What Happened to Change We Can Believe In?
Here is a real indictment of the 'no-drama-obama' style of leadership seen with the current administration.

He takes the Obama Administration to task for not aggressively pursuing the bad guys who caused the economic collapse. He specifically mentions: Angelo Mozilo, Dick Fuld and other executives at Lehman Brothers, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, financial institutions who peddled these predatory mortgages and all of the other 'bust malefactors.'

He deplores the disinformation and 'big lie' of the takeover of banks which was an utter fiction and the financial institutions have learned nothing in the few years since their contempt for fiscal and legal ethics, and the lack of a systematic investigation of the 2008 crash.



PRESIDENT Obama, the Rodney Dangerfield of 2010, gets no respect for averting another Great Depression, for saving 3.3 million jobs with stimulus spending, or for salvaging GM and Chrysler from the junkyard. And none of these good deeds, no matter how substantial, will go unpunished if the projected Democratic bloodbath materializes on Election Day. Some are even going unremembered. For Obama, the ultimate indignity is the Times/CBS News poll in September showing that only 8 percent of Americans know that he gave 95 percent of American taxpayers a tax cut.

The reasons for his failure to reap credit for any economic accomplishments are a catechism by now: the dark cloud cast by undiminished unemployment, the relentless disinformation campaign of his political opponents, and the White House’s surprising ineptitude at selling its own achievements. But the most relentless drag on a chief executive who promised change we can believe in is even more ominous. It’s the country’s fatalistic sense that the stacked economic order that gave us the Great Recession remains not just in place but more entrenched and powerful than ever.

No matter how much Obama talks about his “tough” new financial regulatory reforms or offers rote condemnations of Wall Street greed, few believe there’s been real change. That’s not just because so many have lost their jobs, their savings and their homes. It’s also because so many know that the loftiest perpetrators of this national devastation got get-out-of-jail-free cards, that too-big-to-fail banks have grown bigger and that the rich are still the only Americans getting richer.

This intractable status quo is being rubbed in our faces daily during the pre-election sprint by revelations of the latest banking industry outrage, its disregard for the rule of law as it cut every corner to process an avalanche of foreclosures. Clearly, these financial institutions have learned nothing in the few years since their contempt for fiscal and legal niceties led them to peddle these predatory mortgages (and the reckless financial “products” concocted from them) in the first place. And why should they have learned anything? They’ve often been rewarded, not punished, for bad behavior.



What Happened to Change We Can Believe In?
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Doctor_J Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Oct-24-10 05:00 PM
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1. Umm...Elmore?
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stray cat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Oct-24-10 05:40 PM
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2. The republicans I guarantee would be change you can believe in!
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