GustavBahler wrote:The article has clickable links as well as the rest of it.

http://www.salon.com/2012/10/27/the_progressive_case_against_obama/?source=newsletter

A few days ago, I participated in a debate with the legendary antiwar dissident Daniel Ellsberg on Huffington Post live on the merits of the Obama administration, and what progressives should do on Election Day. Ellsberg had written a blog post arguing that, though Obama deserves tremendous criticism, voters in swing states ought to vote for him, lest they operate as dupes for a far more malevolent Republican Party. This attitude is relatively pervasive among Democrats, and it deserves a genuine response. As the election is fast approaching, this piece is an attempt at laying out the progressive case for why one should not vote for Barack Obama for reelection, even if you are in a swing state.

There are many good arguments against Obama, even if the Republicans cannot seem to muster any. The civil liberties/antiwar case was made eloquently a few weeks ago by libertarian Conor Friedersdorf, who wrote a well-cited blog post on why he could not, in good conscience, vote for Obama. While his arguments have tremendous merit, there is an equally powerful case against Obama on the grounds of economic and social equity. That case needs to be made. For those who don’t know me, here is a brief, relevant background:  I have a long history in Democratic and liberal politics. I have worked for several Democratic candidates and affiliated groups, I have personally raised millions of dollars for Democrats online, I was an early advisor to Actblue (which has processed over $300 million to Democratic candidates). I have worked in Congress (mostly on the Dodd-Frank financial reform package), and I was a producer at MSNBC. Furthermore, I aggressively opposed Nader-style challenges until 2008.

So why oppose Obama? Simply, it is the shape of the society Obama is crafting that I oppose, and I intend to hold him responsible, such as I can, for his actions in creating it. Many Democrats are disappointed in Obama. Some feel he’s a good president with a bad Congress. Some feel he’s a good man, trying to do the right thing, but not bold enough. Others think it’s just the system, that anyone would do what he did. I will get to each of these sentiments, and pragmatic questions around the election, but I think it’s important to be grounded in policy outcomes. Not, what did Obama try to do, in his heart of hearts? But what kind of America has he actually delivered? And the chart below answers the question. This chart reflects the progressive case against Obama.

The above is a chart of corporate profits against the main store of savings for most Americans who have savings — home equity. Notice that after the crisis, after the Obama inflection point, corporate profits recovered dramatically and surpassed previous highs, whereas home equity levels have remained static. That $5-7 trillion of lost savings did not come back, whereas financial assets and corporate profits did. Also notice that this is unprecedented in postwar history. Home equity levels and corporate profits have simply never diverged in this way; what was good for GM had always, until recently, been good, if not for America, for the balance sheet of homeowners. Obama’s policies severed this link, completely.

This split represents more than money. It represents a new kind of politics, one where Obama, and yes, he did this, officially enshrined rights for the elite in our constitutional order and removed rights from everyone else (see “The Housing Crash and the End of American Citizenship” in the Fordham Urban Law Journal for a more complete discussion of the problem). The bailouts and the associated Federal Reserve actions were not primarily shifts of funds to bankers; they were a guarantee that property rights for a certain class of creditors were immune from challenge or market forces. The foreclosure crisis, with its rampant criminality, predatory lending, and document forgeries, represents the flip side. Property rights for debtors simply increasingly exist solely at the pleasure of the powerful. The lack of prosecution of Wall Street executives, the ability of banks to borrow at 0 percent from the Federal Reserve while most of us face credit card rates of 15-30 percent, and the bailouts are all part of the re-creation of the American system of law around Obama’s oligarchy.

The policy continuity with Bush is a stark contrast to what Obama offered as a candidate. Look at the broken promises from the 2008 Democratic platform: a higher minimum wage, a ban on the replacement of striking workers, seven days of paid sick leave, a more diverse media ownership structure, renegotiation of NAFTA, letting bankruptcy judges write down mortgage debt, a ban on illegal wiretaps, an end to national security letters, stopping the war on whistle-blowers, passing the Employee Free Choice Act, restoring habeas corpus, and labor protections in the FAA bill. Each of these pledges would have tilted bargaining leverage to debtors, to labor, or to political dissidents. So Obama promised them to distinguish himself from Bush, and then went back on his word because these promises didn’t fit with the larger policy arc of shifting American society toward his vision. For sure, Obama believes he is doing the right thing, that his policies are what’s best for society. He is a conservative technocrat, running a policy architecture to ensure that conservative technocrats like him run the complex machinery of the state and reap private rewards from doing so. Radical political and economic inequality is the result. None of these policy shifts, with the exception of TARP, is that important in and of themselves, but together they add up to declining living standards.

While life has never been fair, the chart above shows that, since World War II, this level of official legal, political and economic inequity for the broad mass of the public is new (though obviously for subgroups, like African-Americans, it was not new). It is as if America’s traditional racial segregationist tendencies have been reorganized, and the tools and tactics of that system have been repurposed for a multicultural elite colonizing a multicultural population. The data bears this out: Under Bush, economic inequality was bad, as 65 cents of every dollar of income growth went to the top 1 percent. Under Obama, however, that number is 93 cents out of every dollar. That’s right, under Barack Obama there is more economic inequality than under George W. Bush. And if you look at the chart above, most of this shift happened in 2009-2010, when Democrats controlled Congress. This was not, in other words, the doing of the mean Republican Congress. And it’s not strictly a result of the financial crisis; after all, corporate profits did crash, like housing values did, but they also recovered, while housing values have not.

This is the shape of the system Obama has designed. It is intentional, it is the modern American order, and it has a certain equilibrium, the kind we identify in Middle Eastern resource extraction based economies. We are even seeing, as I showed in an earlier post, a transition of the American economic order toward a petro-state. By some accounts, America will be the largest producer of hydrocarbons in the world, bigger than Saudi Arabia. This is just not an America that any of us should want to live in. It is a country whose economic basis is oligarchy, whose political system is authoritarianism, and whose political culture is murderous toward the rest of the world and suicidal in our aggressive lack of attention to climate change.

Many will claim that Obama was stymied by a Republican Congress. But the primary policy framework Obama put in place – the bailouts, took place during the transition and the immediate months after the election, when Obama had enormous leverage over the Bush administration and then a dominant Democratic Party in Congress. In fact, during the transition itself, Bush’s Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson offered a deal to Barney Frank, to force banks to write down mortgages and stem foreclosures if Barney would speed up the release of TARP money. Paulson demanded, as a condition of the deal, that Obama sign off on it. Barney said fine, but to his surprise, the incoming president vetoed the deal. Yup, you heard that right — the Bush administration was willing to write down mortgages in response to Democratic pressure, but it was Obama who said no, we want a foreclosure crisis. And with Neil Barofsky’s book ”Bailout,” we see why. Tim Geithner said, in private meetings, that the foreclosure mitigation programs were not meant to mitigate foreclosures, but to spread out pain for the banks, the famous “foam the runway” comment. This central lie is key to the entire Obama economic strategy. It is not that Obama was stymied by Congress, or was up against a system, or faced a massive crisis, which led to the shape of the economy we see today. Rather, Obama had a handshake deal to help the middle class offered to him by Paulson, and Obama said no. He was not constrained by anything but his own policy instincts. And the reflation of corporate profits and financial assets and death of the middle class were the predictable results.

The rest of Obama’s policy framework looks very different when you wake up from the dream state pushed by cable news. Obama’s history of personal use of illegal narcotics, combined with his escalation of the war on medical marijuana (despite declining support for the drug war in the Democratic caucus), shows both a personal hypocrisy and destructive cynicism that we should decry in anyone, let alone an important policymaker who helps keep a half a million people in jail for participating in a legitimate economy outlawed by the drug warrior industry. But it makes sense once you realize that his policy architecture coheres with a Romney-like philosophy that there is one set of rules for the little people, and another for the important people. It’s why the administration quietly pushed Chinese investment in American infrastructure, seeks to privatize public education, removed labor protections from the FAA authorization bill, and inserted a provision into the stimulus bill ensuring AIG bonuses would be paid, and then lied about it to avoid blame. Wall Street speculator who rigged markets are simply smart and savvy businessmen, as Obama called Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon, whereas the millions who fell prey to their predatory lending schemes are irresponsible borrowers. And it’s why Obama is explicitly targeting entitlements, insurance programs for which Americans paid. Obama wants to preserve these programs for the “most vulnerable,” but that’s still a taking. Did not every American pay into Social Security and Medicare? They did, but as with the foreclosure crisis, property rights (which are essential legal rights) of the rest of us are irrelevant. While Romney is explicit about 47 percent of the country being worthless, Obama just acts as if they are charity cases. In neither case does either candidate treat the mass of the public as fellow citizens.

I read 3/4 of this, up to why vote for a third party...Is this political satire??..If not it's naivete laced with a lack of understanding of economics...On what planet does corporate profits runs parallel to housing prices???...So the Banks should take a full bath on mortgages which actually means the government would because we would have to bail them out...And would mean tax payer footing the bill for people being wreck-less...So kids under 17 should be able to have abortions and we should pay for it huh???...

The are really good arguments out there on why there needs to be more political parties, this isn't one of them...

holfresh wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:The article has clickable links as well as the rest of it.

http://www.salon.com/2012/10/27/the_progressive_case_against_obama/?source=newsletter

A few days ago, I participated in a debate with the legendary antiwar dissident Daniel Ellsberg on Huffington Post live on the merits of the Obama administration, and what progressives should do on Election Day. Ellsberg had written a blog post arguing that, though Obama deserves tremendous criticism, voters in swing states ought to vote for him, lest they operate as dupes for a far more malevolent Republican Party. This attitude is relatively pervasive among Democrats, and it deserves a genuine response. As the election is fast approaching, this piece is an attempt at laying out the progressive case for why one should not vote for Barack Obama for reelection, even if you are in a swing state.

There are many good arguments against Obama, even if the Republicans cannot seem to muster any. The civil liberties/antiwar case was made eloquently a few weeks ago by libertarian Conor Friedersdorf, who wrote a well-cited blog post on why he could not, in good conscience, vote for Obama. While his arguments have tremendous merit, there is an equally powerful case against Obama on the grounds of economic and social equity. That case needs to be made. For those who don’t know me, here is a brief, relevant background:  I have a long history in Democratic and liberal politics. I have worked for several Democratic candidates and affiliated groups, I have personally raised millions of dollars for Democrats online, I was an early advisor to Actblue (which has processed over $300 million to Democratic candidates). I have worked in Congress (mostly on the Dodd-Frank financial reform package), and I was a producer at MSNBC. Furthermore, I aggressively opposed Nader-style challenges until 2008.

So why oppose Obama? Simply, it is the shape of the society Obama is crafting that I oppose, and I intend to hold him responsible, such as I can, for his actions in creating it. Many Democrats are disappointed in Obama. Some feel he’s a good president with a bad Congress. Some feel he’s a good man, trying to do the right thing, but not bold enough. Others think it’s just the system, that anyone would do what he did. I will get to each of these sentiments, and pragmatic questions around the election, but I think it’s important to be grounded in policy outcomes. Not, what did Obama try to do, in his heart of hearts? But what kind of America has he actually delivered? And the chart below answers the question. This chart reflects the progressive case against Obama.

The above is a chart of corporate profits against the main store of savings for most Americans who have savings — home equity. Notice that after the crisis, after the Obama inflection point, corporate profits recovered dramatically and surpassed previous highs, whereas home equity levels have remained static. That $5-7 trillion of lost savings did not come back, whereas financial assets and corporate profits did. Also notice that this is unprecedented in postwar history. Home equity levels and corporate profits have simply never diverged in this way; what was good for GM had always, until recently, been good, if not for America, for the balance sheet of homeowners. Obama’s policies severed this link, completely.

This split represents more than money. It represents a new kind of politics, one where Obama, and yes, he did this, officially enshrined rights for the elite in our constitutional order and removed rights from everyone else (see “The Housing Crash and the End of American Citizenship” in the Fordham Urban Law Journal for a more complete discussion of the problem). The bailouts and the associated Federal Reserve actions were not primarily shifts of funds to bankers; they were a guarantee that property rights for a certain class of creditors were immune from challenge or market forces. The foreclosure crisis, with its rampant criminality, predatory lending, and document forgeries, represents the flip side. Property rights for debtors simply increasingly exist solely at the pleasure of the powerful. The lack of prosecution of Wall Street executives, the ability of banks to borrow at 0 percent from the Federal Reserve while most of us face credit card rates of 15-30 percent, and the bailouts are all part of the re-creation of the American system of law around Obama’s oligarchy.

The policy continuity with Bush is a stark contrast to what Obama offered as a candidate. Look at the broken promises from the 2008 Democratic platform: a higher minimum wage, a ban on the replacement of striking workers, seven days of paid sick leave, a more diverse media ownership structure, renegotiation of NAFTA, letting bankruptcy judges write down mortgage debt, a ban on illegal wiretaps, an end to national security letters, stopping the war on whistle-blowers, passing the Employee Free Choice Act, restoring habeas corpus, and labor protections in the FAA bill. Each of these pledges would have tilted bargaining leverage to debtors, to labor, or to political dissidents. So Obama promised them to distinguish himself from Bush, and then went back on his word because these promises didn’t fit with the larger policy arc of shifting American society toward his vision. For sure, Obama believes he is doing the right thing, that his policies are what’s best for society. He is a conservative technocrat, running a policy architecture to ensure that conservative technocrats like him run the complex machinery of the state and reap private rewards from doing so. Radical political and economic inequality is the result. None of these policy shifts, with the exception of TARP, is that important in and of themselves, but together they add up to declining living standards.

While life has never been fair, the chart above shows that, since World War II, this level of official legal, political and economic inequity for the broad mass of the public is new (though obviously for subgroups, like African-Americans, it was not new). It is as if America’s traditional racial segregationist tendencies have been reorganized, and the tools and tactics of that system have been repurposed for a multicultural elite colonizing a multicultural population. The data bears this out: Under Bush, economic inequality was bad, as 65 cents of every dollar of income growth went to the top 1 percent. Under Obama, however, that number is 93 cents out of every dollar. That’s right, under Barack Obama there is more economic inequality than under George W. Bush. And if you look at the chart above, most of this shift happened in 2009-2010, when Democrats controlled Congress. This was not, in other words, the doing of the mean Republican Congress. And it’s not strictly a result of the financial crisis; after all, corporate profits did crash, like housing values did, but they also recovered, while housing values have not.

This is the shape of the system Obama has designed. It is intentional, it is the modern American order, and it has a certain equilibrium, the kind we identify in Middle Eastern resource extraction based economies. We are even seeing, as I showed in an earlier post, a transition of the American economic order toward a petro-state. By some accounts, America will be the largest producer of hydrocarbons in the world, bigger than Saudi Arabia. This is just not an America that any of us should want to live in. It is a country whose economic basis is oligarchy, whose political system is authoritarianism, and whose political culture is murderous toward the rest of the world and suicidal in our aggressive lack of attention to climate change.

Many will claim that Obama was stymied by a Republican Congress. But the primary policy framework Obama put in place – the bailouts, took place during the transition and the immediate months after the election, when Obama had enormous leverage over the Bush administration and then a dominant Democratic Party in Congress. In fact, during the transition itself, Bush’s Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson offered a deal to Barney Frank, to force banks to write down mortgages and stem foreclosures if Barney would speed up the release of TARP money. Paulson demanded, as a condition of the deal, that Obama sign off on it. Barney said fine, but to his surprise, the incoming president vetoed the deal. Yup, you heard that right — the Bush administration was willing to write down mortgages in response to Democratic pressure, but it was Obama who said no, we want a foreclosure crisis. And with Neil Barofsky’s book ”Bailout,” we see why. Tim Geithner said, in private meetings, that the foreclosure mitigation programs were not meant to mitigate foreclosures, but to spread out pain for the banks, the famous “foam the runway” comment. This central lie is key to the entire Obama economic strategy. It is not that Obama was stymied by Congress, or was up against a system, or faced a massive crisis, which led to the shape of the economy we see today. Rather, Obama had a handshake deal to help the middle class offered to him by Paulson, and Obama said no. He was not constrained by anything but his own policy instincts. And the reflation of corporate profits and financial assets and death of the middle class were the predictable results.

The rest of Obama’s policy framework looks very different when you wake up from the dream state pushed by cable news. Obama’s history of personal use of illegal narcotics, combined with his escalation of the war on medical marijuana (despite declining support for the drug war in the Democratic caucus), shows both a personal hypocrisy and destructive cynicism that we should decry in anyone, let alone an important policymaker who helps keep a half a million people in jail for participating in a legitimate economy outlawed by the drug warrior industry. But it makes sense once you realize that his policy architecture coheres with a Romney-like philosophy that there is one set of rules for the little people, and another for the important people. It’s why the administration quietly pushed Chinese investment in American infrastructure, seeks to privatize public education, removed labor protections from the FAA authorization bill, and inserted a provision into the stimulus bill ensuring AIG bonuses would be paid, and then lied about it to avoid blame. Wall Street speculator who rigged markets are simply smart and savvy businessmen, as Obama called Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon, whereas the millions who fell prey to their predatory lending schemes are irresponsible borrowers. And it’s why Obama is explicitly targeting entitlements, insurance programs for which Americans paid. Obama wants to preserve these programs for the “most vulnerable,” but that’s still a taking. Did not every American pay into Social Security and Medicare? They did, but as with the foreclosure crisis, property rights (which are essential legal rights) of the rest of us are irrelevant. While Romney is explicit about 47 percent of the country being worthless, Obama just acts as if they are charity cases. In neither case does either candidate treat the mass of the public as fellow citizens.

I read 3/4 of this, up to why vote for a third party...Is this political satire??..If not it's naivete laced with a lack of understanding of economics...On what planet does corporate profits runs parallel to housing prices???...So the Banks should take a full bath on mortgages which actually means the government would because we would have to bail them out...And would mean tax payer footing the bill for people being wreck-less...So kids under 17 should be able to have abortions and we should pay for it huh???...It has to be satire...

Interesting response. The banks participated in rampant criminal and unethical behavior which led to this crisis and were made whole but giving the middle class some help is out of the question? Those too big too fail banks are larger than ever. You gloss over the fact that inequality is worse under Obama.

As I pointed out in another post, prosecutions of corporate criminals is at a more than 20 year low. No major figure has been charged. The loan modification program was engineered to protect the banks, not the middle class. And yes, some of those banks should have either been nationalized, broken up, or allowed to fail. As for home equity being "tied" to corporate profits until recently thry went hand in hand. The thrust of his argument was that when corporate America did well, so did everyone else, thats a fact. And its no longer the case. Obama vetoed a plan which could have stemmed the tide of foreclosures, not Bush.

You don't want the middle class to be able to write down their mortgages but you fully support the no strings attached bailout? Interesting. You don't complain about the zero interest loans but its ok for consumers not to have the same benefit? Banks are not putting this money back into the economy. One of the things they are doing is buying T-bills, in essence the taxpayer is paying banks interest on money we lent them. And you have no problem with any of this? Why because its a democrat doing these things?

As for abortions, the writer referred to girls who are raped by their fathers as an example. They should be forced to carry the child? Im not suggesting it should be made freely available but there should be some exceptions. Don't you?

holfresh wrote:Sure banks participated in unethical behavior but they aren't solely responsible...Most of these banks still have those bad mortgages on their books...The government just sued Band of America for 1 billion dollars for selling these bad mortgages to Fannie and Freddie...The housing market was a bubble..People were buying houses who had no business buying houses...They couldn't afford it...House prices were artificially inflated as a result of this...It wasn't sustainable...Allowing banks to fail would have been systemically catastrophic...The entire system would have collapsed...The actions were to stop a depression, does the author believe a depression was a better outcome??..

As for the bailout, Outside of AIG, the government go all it's money back with a profit...Some of the problems the author had with Obama was part of the government for decades, it's the way business is done...Economic recovery is slow...U can't put it in a microwave oven and have everything done all at once...Corporate profits is back, yes, everything else takes a slower process...

And no, I don't want to foot the bill for people making bad decisions...I could have gone out and buy a million dollar house but I didn't..I knew I couldn't afford it...

The reason why incomes are lower under Obama is not because of his policies but he took office as the economy was cratering...There were massive jobs losses as he was being sworn in..But u know this...

My argument is not to vote for Obama...There just need to be some facts to be adhered to and some basic understanding of what was really happening...

Suing BOA for one billion (which is a slap on the wrist for that bank) is all well and good but their fraud wasn't an accident, it was criminal and people should be going to jail for it. Its a deliberate strategy by this administration to forego criminal prosecution and all it does is encourage more of the same because the banks know that no one will pay the consequences except the people they defrauded, and they can go on doing business as usual.

As for TARP, yes the large banks did pay back the loans but the program is projected to lose between 30 and 70 billion and over 100 billion was owed as of this summer. More than 300 banks have missed payments.

As for buyers who knowingly took on loans they knew they couldn't afford, that's fraud, and according to the FBI 80 percent of all mortgage fraud was perpetrated by the lender, not the buyer. Predatory lenders should be in jail, not allowed to keep doing business. One thing that banks are continuing to do without fear of prosecution is robosigning. Some homeowners who owned their house free and clear lost their homes to banks because of this practice. They arent being prosecuted, so its business as usual.

I never suggested that all the banks should have been allowed to fail. I am suggesting that one option would have been to take them over like AIG, and break them up, not allow them to get even larger which is insane. Most economists agree that there will be another collapse because these banks werent broken up or reduced in size.

To win, President Obama must be twice as good as Romney.

GustavBahler wrote:

holfresh wrote:I understand that systemic failure may seem like cliche but it isn't...For example, All big banks trade with each other...They owe each other 100s of billions of dollars going out into the future..Let's say bank A drops out and can't pay bank B...Well bank B will not be able to meet it's obligation to back C or D and so on and so forth...Supermarkets stock their shelves and pay employees with loans from banks...Get the idea how big this is...It's not that simple to allow banks to collapse...

I understand the connectivity, but if a mega bank fails the effects will be much more devastating than if a much smaller one does. All those assets concentrated in one place makes the system more vulnerable to collapse. I doubt that you will find any economist of note who believes that letting those banks get too big is a good thing. Especially since it will fall on the taxpayer to bail them out yet again when they do fail. Its also a matter of competition because those mega banks get sweetheart deals from the government which aren't available to small and midsize banks which hurts competition and choices for the consumer.

I agree...

nixluva wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

holfresh wrote:I understand that systemic failure may seem like cliche but it isn't...For example, All big banks trade with each other...They owe each other 100s of billions of dollars going out into the future..Let's say bank A drops out and can't pay bank B...Well bank B will not be able to meet it's obligation to back C or D and so on and so forth...Supermarkets stock their shelves and pay employees with loans from banks...Get the idea how big this is...It's not that simple to allow banks to collapse...

I understand the connectivity, but if a mega bank fails the effects will be much more devastating than if a much smaller one does. All those assets concentrated in one place makes the system more vulnerable to collapse. I doubt that you will find any economist of note who believes that letting those banks get too big is a good thing. Especially since it will fall on the taxpayer to bail them out yet again when they do fail. Its also a matter of competition because those mega banks get sweetheart deals from the government which aren't available to small and midsize banks which hurts competition and choices for the consumer.

Obama is the one that put in rules for Capital Requirements where banks have to have the money to cover their risk so the American people don't have to. As for breaking up the banks let's be honest Obama has such a HUGE army of corporate interests fighting against him that it's not even realistic to think the Republicans would let him get away with that level of legislation against banks. I mean come on man you've got to stay in the real world. Maybe if the people vote out more of these Republicans in Congress we might see some movement on this. Still Obama did do something to help protect against banks tanking the economy again. Even before Dodd-Frank was passed the Republicans went to work on trying to weaken it. Don't try and twist history to make it seem like Obama didn't do anything about the banks!!!

The financial crisis of 2007–2010 led to widespread calls for changes in the regulatory system.[10] In June 2009, President Obama introduced a proposal for a "sweeping overhaul of the United States financial regulatory system, a transformation on a scale not seen since the reforms that followed the Great Depression."[11]

The Volcker Rule is a specific section of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act originally proposed by American economist and former United States Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to restrict United States banks from making certain kinds of speculative investments that do not benefit their customers.[1] Volcker argued that such speculative activity played a key role in the financial crisis of 2007–2010. The rule is often referred to as a ban on proprietary trading by commercial banks, whereby deposits are used to trade on the bank's own accounts, although a number of exceptions to this ban were included in the Dodd-Frank law.[2][3] The rule's provisions were scheduled to be implemented as a part of Dodd-Frank on July 21, 2012,[4] with preceding ramifications.[5]

No one is twisting history here. Yes, Obama enacted some legislation that moves in the right direction but it won't prevent another meltdown. As far as corporate interests look at who he appointed to his cabinet. Larry Summers? Tim Geithner? Eric holder? Are you kidding me? His cabinet is filled with some of the same characters who caused the meltdown. His Attorney General is former Wall Street lawyer who has prosecuted zero corporate criminals who caused the crash. Who lets corporations off with a relatively meager fine and lets them go about their business. This administration is almost entirely captured by corporate interests.

Look into the TPP trade agreement, his reps are negotiating a deal which has been described as "NAFTA on steroids" with reps from 400 corporations but wont let any elected representative, even the ones on oversight committees have a look at it. Why do you think that is? I'll tell you why, because this trade agreement will hurt American workers even more than NAFTA did which ended up shuttering 50,000 factories since it was ratified.

I can give you more examples if you like. Will Romney be worse? Yes. Doesn't mean that Obama hasn't done the bidding of corporate America to the detriment of the 99 percent. Wall Street wanted 100 percent subservience from Obama, they didn't get it so they're backing Romney for the most part. It does not mean that Obama hasn't been Wall Street's best friend as evidenced by corporate profits at an all time high and the rest of the country suffering the effects of a depression. Not as bad as the great depression for the most part, but still a depression. To Obama''s credit he got more people on food stamps to alleviate the suffering or we would see the same lines at soup kitchens that one saw during the depression. This country can do better.

holfresh wrote:NY TIMES endorses President Obama for a second term:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/barack-obama-for-president.html

Their editorial board has been super pro Obama and bashing (rightfully IMHO) Romney for a long while now. No surprises.

I like how they have been more outspoken over the past few months. And I don't think it's in a left-leaning type of way, it's more like Romney is pushing too much bull**** and we are gonna call him on it way.

The problem with 3rd parties has been the extreme nature of what they propose. We don't need more extremes, what's been missing is more centrists. Obama is not an extreme lefty he's a Centrist and the Republicans moved away from the center just to try and make him seem extreme, which he's not. The Dems haven't become more leftist but the Republicans have indeed become more extremely right wing. They're the ones that have to come back towards the middle and not the fake way Romney is doing with only rhetoric.

GustavBahler wrote:

nixluva wrote:Well they tried to create some variety with the Tea Party, but it's really just a more extreme part of the right wing and to add to the problem they didn't really want to legislate anything that helped the people as they claimed. All we got were a ton of Reproductive Rights stripping legislation and almost defaulting on our financial obligations, which would've been devastating to the world economy and did result in the U.S. being downgraded from AAA status.

The problem with 3rd parties has been the extreme nature of what they propose. We don't need more extremes, what's been missing is more centrists. Obama is not an extreme lefty he's a Centrist and the Republicans moved away from the center just to try and make him seem extreme, which he's not. The Dems haven't become more leftist but the Republicans have indeed become more extremely right wing. They're the ones that have to come back towards the middle and not the fake way Romney is doing with only rhetoric.

There is nothing centrist about a president who claims that he can assassinate a US citizen anywhere in the world, far from any battlefield without a trial or charges. There is nothing centrist about a president who claims he can imprison and American indefinitely without a trial or charges. Those things that you refer to as being "extreme lefty" was the platform he ran on. Now that he is president it suddenly becomes "extreme". I'm not buying it.

That "American" you speak of wasn't killed here in the U.S. sitting on his porch doing nothing. The guy you're speaking of was actively fomenting terrorist attacks against the U.S. and consorting with terrorists in a country that is a haven for terrorists. Now if Al Awlaki came home and helped some terrorists carry out an attack you'd be one of the ones bashing the President for not protecting the American people.

Al-Awlaki was a U.S.-born Islamic militant cleric who became a prominent figure with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the network's most active branch. He was involved in several terror plots in the United States in recent years, using his fluent English and Internet savvy to draw recruits to carry out attacks. President Obama signed an order in early 2010 making him the first American to be placed on the "kill or capture" list.

Al-Awlaki, born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents, was believed to be key in turning Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen into what American officials have called the most significant and immediate threat to the United States. The branch, led by a Yemeni militant named Nasser al-Wahishi, plotted several failed attacks on U.S. soil -- the botched Christmas 2009 attempt to blow up an American airliner heading to Detroit and a foiled 2010 attempt to send explosives to Chicago.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/30/us-born-terror-boss-anwar-al-awlaki-killed/#ixzz2AeD9cIXj

Yeah I know that some have been all over this but IMO we've suffered enough already with terrorists being able to plot and then carryout attacks on U.S. citizens. This guy was not some innocent American on vacation.