In discussing the often apparently contradictory behavior of President Obama on several important issues, New York Times columnist Frank Rich recently pondered the question of whether the President is “a socialist redistributing wealth to the undeserving poor or a tool of Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs elite.” Rich seemed undecided on the matter.
I’m not. The evidence makes the answer clear, and for people such as myself, more than a little disturbing. He’s a tool of Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs elite.
Consider. What have the undeserving poor, or the deserving poor for that matter, gotten since he came into office? Now I know policy wonks can get back to me and say the President’s policies have done this or that for the poor, and they would be correct. In the same vein, however, wonks could also go through the economic policies of President Bush and come up with numerous examples that demonstrate the same thing. We have a huge federal government. Somewhere or other in this maze, some agency is always helping the poor more than in the past.
But honestly, folks, has helping the poor been the primary thrust of Obama’s economic policies in ways the poor directly feel, rather than a theoretical pass-along, trickle down way? Or to put this in even clearer terms: are there more poor in this country today than when Obama came into office or fewer poor? Have most previously poor gotten richer? Has more of the wealth of society trickled downward than upward?
Which brings us to whether Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs elite has benefited greatly during the Obama presidency. The facts here are too numerous and obvious to bother debating. Yes, the overall financial industry has shrunk in this period, causing job losses and hardship to a great many middle class financial industry workers. The Goldman Sachs elite, however, has put on so much financial fat it can barely fit through the doors of Congress on the few occasions that a mostly Democratic Congress put these fatter cats through a few minutes of stylized embarrassment.
In the FDR years there was a meaningful redistribution of wealth that not only gave the poor hope for the future, but faith that those in Washington were their protectors. FDR was truly the poor man’s friend and went down in history as a great president. Barack Obama in his first year in office has been the richest of the rich man’s friend. And unless he starts behaving otherwise, history will not treat him kindly.
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