OWS: The Connections are Wide and Deep
WASHINGTON – The video above is of Sgt. Shamar Thomas. It went viral and now has over 2 million hits. After Scott Olsen’s assault, it seems even more relevant.
Interestingly, Olsen is reportedly from Wisconsin, the state that Gov. Scott Walker ignited with his anti-democratic view of economic equality.
As a reminder, Pres. Obama and the Democrats did not mount any economic message for the 2010 midterms. Then after getting their… um.. hats handed to them in December, Pres. Obama made a deal with Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts. Now that candidate Obama is on the campaign stump, however, he says he won’t extend them again.
Of course, now that Pres. Obama’s own political future is on the line he’s sounding like a class warrior who has religion. One by one on cable, the talking heads proclaim he’s “back,” his message is winning, etc.
It’s not hard to believe Pres. Obama’s populist message, conveniently timed and politically motivated, is winning. The message to back up the middle class and working stiffs, one that I’ve been drilling home for years, is always a winner. It’s just unfortunate that Mr. Obama only finds it when his own fortunes need a lift.
It’s also why I laugh out loud when David Axelrod or team Obama go after Mitt Romney, making the argument that slick Mitt will say anything to get elected. If that charge sounds familiar it should. Yes, Mitt Romney is a Wall Street jackal. Obama’s not in that league, but he doesn’t have any problem taking campaign contributions from those who are. You decipher the difference.
Ronald Reagan started sapping the American dream in the 1980s, which lasted for 12 years.
The Bush tax cuts and two wars off the books in the 2000s did the rest.
When Pres. Obama came into office, the economic die was already cast.
Unfortunately, Obama chose to hire Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, the latter the man who convinced Pres. Bill Clinton to dismantle Glass-Steagall, though when Clinton finally signed the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, Congress had passed it with a veto proof majority. An apology from Clinton is hardly enough, but you would have thought Barack Obama would have learned before entering office what these actions had wrought. Instead, he doubled down on known economic quantities and friends of the establishment, moneyed class. People who helped the economic crisis occur.
Elizabeth Warren offered Pres. Obama a glimmer of hope and a way out of the mess Geithner and Summers had made of his economic message. Unfortunately, Tim Geithner had no intention of letting her gain power and Obama had no intention of using his presidential clout to make sure the woman who understood the financial plight of we the people had any.
From Confidence Men, the book that sent the White House into swift damage control, by Ron Suskind:
“… Only those in his inner circle at Treasury, though, can read what’s behind that expression: a string of private efforts across the past year to neutralize Warren. The previous fall, Geithner huddled with top aides to develop what one called an “Elizabeth Warren strategy,” a plan to engage with the firebrand reformer that would render her politically inert. He never worked out a viable strategy–a way to meet with Warren without drawing undesirable comparisons–and so, like the president, he didn’t.
What the Treasury Department did do, unbeknownst to Warren, was embrace demands from the banking industry to create a bureau under the condition that Warren would not be allowed to lead it. [...] The industry managed to get the proposed agency shrunk into a bureau that would live under the auspices of the Federal Reserve…
It may seem like all of the events currently swirling are unrelated and happening separately, but as days and weeks pass there is a common thread running through them all and it’s not going away.
AFTER-TAX INCOME GREW MORE FOR HIGHEST-INCOME HOUSEHOLDS
After-tax income for the highest-income households grew more than it did for any other group. (After-tax income is income after federal taxes have been deducted and government transfers—which are payments to people through such programs as Social Security and Unemployment Insurance—have been added.)
CBO finds that, between 1979 and 2007, income grew by:
- 275 percent for the top 1 percent of households,
- 65 percent for the next 19 percent,
- Just under 40 percent for the next 60 percent, and
- 18 percent for the bottom 20 percent.
Taylor Marsh’s new e-book, The Hillary Effect – Politics, Sexism and the Destiny of Loss, the view from a recovering partisan, will be published on November 8th. Marsh is an author, Washington based political analyst, veteran national politics writer and commentator on national politics, foreign policy, and women in power. She has reported from the White House, been profiled in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and has been seen on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic, as well as on radio across the dial and on satellite, including the BBC. Marsh lives in the Washington, D.C. area. This column is cross posted from her new media blog.
19 Responses to “OWS: The Connections are Wide and Deep”
President Obama will be re-elected. Their is no viable opposition to date.
The President is doing a great job in the face of unprecedented partisan intransigence.
I’ve said for ages Pres. Obama is the best bet to win in 2012, though he is beatable.
So what?
Is that all that matters to people? Hardly.
Obama’s reelection chances have absolutely NOTHING to do with the issues in this piece.
In fact, it’s the two party, Wall Street funded, corporation backed, system & candidates like Barack Obama that produced the economic mess OWS protesters are rising up against.
As Ralph Nader ( or Gore Vidal ) said ” There is only party in this country, the money party”. Sadly Obama has only confirmed this.
While I disagree with a lot of your political positions, Taylor, I admire you for your willingness to give criticism where due, in a relatively nonpartisan manner (I say relatively because I think virtually everyone still identifies with one side or the other and tends to see things through that prism even when trying to remove bias.)
What I wonder about is whether you think that things would have been different in a Hillary Clinton administration. I’ve tended to think of HC as being very closely aligned with BC, so I assumed that the same alliances that led to BC’s economic policies- including those that contributed to the current mess, despite the fact that he had short term successes on the economic front- would have been similar. Of course it turns out that Obama too has, as you put it, doubled down, as seen right off the bat with the economic team that he put into place. My question though is whether you thought that this would have been different under HC?
@CS
I agree with your take on Bill and Hillary. Their economic team is the Obamama economic team. Before there was neocons, Clinton gave us neoliberal economic policies. Clinton reappointed Greenie twice. it’s a wonder he didn’t give gREENSPAN A MEDAL BEFORE bUSH 41 DID.
Excellent commentary and observation Taylor, right smack on the mark. This passage goes to the horserace, but not much else:
“Of course, now that Pres. Obama’s own political future is on the line he’s sounding like a class warrior who has religion. One by one on cable, the talking heads proclaim he’s “back,” his message is winning, etc.”
Yes, his “message” (blah blah blah).. Of course most of us realize that talk is cheap, cheap, cheap. The talking heads seem to neither know nor care about this fact. Oh sure, Obama is the lesser of evils, and while I’d rather get the flu than cancer, that doesn’t mean I’d enjoy having the flu. There has to be a better way. In that absence of that we have frustration, hence the OWS phenomenon.
Great great piece… right on the mark. Personally, I would vote for Warren over Obama if given the chance. She is extremely intelligent and knows how the system works.
She could actually create serious change.
Change TG and his friends on Wall Street would not like at all.
Well I’ll be the odd man out here, so to speak. I just don’t get the Warren-mania. It almost reminds me of the 2008 Obama-mania, with a lot of hope and not much in the way of specifics. People seem to be projecting their own feelings onto her. She was a law school professor before becoming the TARP watchdog, and I don’t see where she exactly did a bang-up job on the Congressional Oversight Panel.
I went to her website and it’s the same feel-good stuff all other candidates use. I didn’t see any tough talk about Wall Street. Vote for her for president? She’s less experienced than Obama was, which is saying a lot.
I don’t have a negative opinion of her, I just don’t see what the fuss is about.
The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke
Someone who is running for office on a platform of NOT F**KING OVER the middle & working classes.
I’d vote for Warren in a heartbeat. So… DaGoat, who do you like for prez so far?
So far, Huntsman.
I’m very satisfied with President Obama’s economic agenda and his choices for his cabinet.
The problem is Republican intransigence, not the President’s performance. In fact the very reason the Republicans are so desperately intransigent, is because the President succeeded with healthcare where past Administrations simply gave up. It scares the Republican Party, and, it should. That is why they have no first string contenders for next year’s election.
I am firmly convinced that President Obama knows exactly what he is doing.
The Warren-mania is far-left mania, probably out of desperation as much or more than any infatuation with her.
She’s not fit to be President and it’s ludicrous to have liberal Mass. rush to try to shove her into a Senate seat. She appears to be fit most for a top position in the Department of Commerce (not the Department of the Treasury) regulating business, yes, at the risk of horrid overregulation and politicization.
As far as Hillary Clinton, most, I’m confident, suspect that she’d be more competent and higher-achieving than Obama is so far.
The far right and their corporate masters are afraid of her. Her resume speaks for itself. That is unless you don’t value knowledge, which seems to be a main theme for the “I don’t know nothing about nothing” wing of the Republican party.
In general though…she actually does care about the middle class and until now…has not had to worry about pleasing wealthy donors.
Hopefully her run for the Senate won’t change that. We all saw how McCain’s nomination changed him for the worse.
So Warren wrote a book, is a consumer advocate and cares about the middle class. What distinguishes her from someone like Ralph Nader?
Candidates like Cain (who I do not support) have been criticized for lack of foreign policy experience, yet as afar as I can tell Warren has no foreign policy experience at all. She has not been a governor, senator, congresswoman or business woman.
On Shannon’s comment, of course knowledge should be valued, but so should experience and management skills. From what people are saying it looks like Warren is a single-issue candidate. Since her issue is the issue-du-jour right now she is popular but will that hold up for the long run?
To me Hillary Clinton is vastly more qualified than someone like Elizabeth Warren.
Since Warren is running for senate and not POTUS, I’m not sure why the commenters are judging her by that standard (except I guess that some commenters seem to want to elevate her quickly to a POTUS candidacy.)
Even aas a conservative, having I’m sure some very different ideological opinions than she holds, I do have a lot of respect for Warren. I think she seems to have immense integrity and a good bit of intelligence.
Only time will tell whether or not she’s able to maintain any integrity in electoral politics.
I felt she was in her element in a position like the watchdog of TARP and if she were to hold such a position under an administration that WANTED toothsome oversight, she’d have been terrific. I think she’d also excel at a position like an Inspector General where the system at least to some extent allows a person to provide oversight.
CStanley I brought up the presidential standard since ShannonLee felt she would vote for Warren over Obama and JSpencer agreed. To me this illustrates the wild enthusiasm Warren has generated. I don’t see where she actually has accomplished anything that warrants this enthusiasm. I do agree she seems smart and to have integrity, and also agree she’d be most effective in an oversight position.
Don’t forget that not only could Hillary Clinton exploit suitable people in New York (for a “stepping stone” to running for President), but more applicably here, there are people who actually voted Al Franken to the Senate. The academic Warren is more serious (a pun, yes), but the hype about her and her left-activism is ludicrous at times. (Interestingly, those committing the worse hype seem like folks who would want other comedians like Jon Stewart or the un-Senatorial, at-times-scummy Bill Maher elected Senator or even President someday. Ease the hype!)
Taylor, excellent post. For anyone still believing that the present administration could do no wrong, I highly recommend the Suskind book mentioned, Confidence Men.
It has given me a whole new insight for the phenomenon of the Occupy movement.
But as others have mentioned, the present GOP brand doesn’t seem to have any viable alternatives as candidates, and I can only hope Obama might feel Lame-duck empowered to heed some of the concerns of the 99%.