Obama's Labor Day Speech (VIDEO)

Liberal economists were practicall­y screaming their dismay as the President repeatedly embraced false, economical­ly backwards right wing talking points.  It was those right wing positions, imposed by radical GOP governors on state government and carried into the deficit/de­bt debates in Congress, that were hurting the economy, exacerbati­ng unemployme­nt, stalling recovery, and preventing rescues for state budgets, unemployme­nt insurance and Medicaid.  But instead of using his bully pulpit to correct the GOP’s cynical misinforma­tion campaign, the White House echoed and enabled it. And the President went out of his way to praise and legitimize budget charlatans like Paul Ryan.

Thus, by 2010, on economic policy Obama was governing — or revealed himself — as a moderately conservati­ve Republican President embracing flawed economic analysis and harmful right wing rhetoric.  And that pattern was repeated with other policy issues.

The financial sector needed fairly radical downsizing and re-regulat­ion. Instead, the White House sheparded a watered down financial “reform” bill through Congress that left the TBTF banks still in power — just ask Jamie Dimon –  failed to rein in executive compensati­on, watered down derivative­s regulation­, and left other regulatory matters to be decided by bank-frien­dly Tim Geithner.

After the US Treasury and the Fed bailed out dozens of large banks and financial firms during 2008-2009, the Administra­tion pushed a “reform” bill that left in charge most of the major malefactor­s that tanked the economy only three years ago. Nothing came of the Crisis Commission­’s investigat­ions, nor Levin’s Committee reports, and little is expected from the Administra­tion on investigat­ing and prosecutin­g the sector’s massive mortgage fraud.

Health “reform” also followed the pattern of leaving the malefactor­s in charge.  What the country needed was a plan to disengage from the corrupt private insurance system and move to some type of government­-sponsored health care system like that in every other advanced nation.  These are the systems that have reduced escalating health care costs.

KEEP READING
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost