Obama to the Corporate Powers: I Feel Your Pain
Thursday 23 December 2010
by: Jim Hightower, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

President Barack Obama on a phone call in the Oval Office on December 21, 2010. (Photo: Pete Souza / whitehouse.gov)
Guess who's whining the loudest these days, wailing that they're getting a raw deal from Barack Obama.
Not the unemployed and barely employed - even though the White House has blithely ignored their critical need for a national jobs program. Not the poor, even though their ranks are swelling as millions of Americans fall out of the middle class.
No, no, the most insistent demand for attention is coming from way above the poor and the middle class. Believe it or not, it's the CEOs of Americas biggest corporations and the top bankers of Wall Street who're stamping their little Gucci-clad feet, bawling that they should be getting more love and support from the president.
It seems that the feelings of these precious ones have been hurt by Obama's occasional condemnation of the stupefying greed that's been shown by the likes of health insurance executives and Wall Street banksters. As one CEO put it, Obama's attitude "felt too much like we were the bad guys."
Yoo-hoo, Mr. Multimillionaire Executive, YOU ARE! Corporate chieftains are ruthlessly downsizing the middle class, carelessly polluting our air and water, gleefully destroying our democracy by using their corrupting corporate money to buy our government and generally feeling entitled to run roughshod over everyone -- all while pocketing obscene levels of wealth for themselves. Yet they're the ones crying?
Those guys are pathetic - they're a bunch of narcissists with a sense of entitlement. Obama ought to send each of them a box of Kleenex and tell 'em to go to hell. But unfortunately, he's no Harry Truman. So instead, he's giving in to them!
"(I intend) to make clear to the business community," he recently announced, "that the most important thing we can do is to boost and encourage our business sector." Hello ... they're doing fine. The most important thing you can do is boost America's middle class.
Obama's helping not only multimillionaire corporate CEOs. He's also helping their friends at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Of all the groups in America that need the president of the U.S. on its side, you'd think the last to win a pledge of support would be the Chamber.
After all, this outfit, which is largely funded and run by a handful of America's biggest corporations, has become the most powerful lobbying force in Washington - and one of the richest front groups funneling secret corporate cash into our elections. Indeed, it poured tens of millions of those dollars into campaign ads this fall to demonize the president and turn the U.S. House over to anti-Obama Republicans.
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Yet, the day after the election, the Chamber found itself being wooed by the White House. The president even dispatched his treasury secretary to the Chamber's opulent headquarters to eat crow and promise that, henceforth, Obama and Team would be more corporate friendly.
Good grief! Friendlier than Obama's Wall Street reform that coddled the big banksters, or his health care reform that further entrenches profiteering insurance giants inside the system? Or the tax bill cave-in that needlessly awards billions of dollars in special breaks for corporations and rich CEOs?
Yes. So friendly that Obama is now holding an ongoing series of closed-door policy meetings with assorted CEOs. So friendly that he's already delayed regulations to strengthen anti-pollution rules. So friendly that his deficit-reduction panel proposes cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 26 percent. So friendly that he's planning to put a high-powered CEO right inside the White House with him, as demanded by the whining corporate powers who say they're not getting enough love from the president.
Why do they get a special presidential slot? Why not one for labor, small farmers, consumers, the unemployed? Remind me again -- is this guy a Democrat?
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Comments
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NO, Obameh's BERNANK$TER,
Thu, 12/23/2010 - 12:33 — Vic Anderson (not verified)NO, Obameh's BERNANK$TER, Wall $treet-walker and BP (Big Petroleum) GREA$E-GUN Moll DEMpathetic!
Thank you, Jim, for your
Thu, 12/23/2010 - 13:16 — Bite (not verified)Thank you, Jim, for your closing statement. Answer: he is not a Democrat. That only leaves one other possibility, but I'm sick of saying it.
We need a national movement
Thu, 12/23/2010 - 14:33 — Anonymous (not verified)We need a national movement of Kleenex throwers at whining CEO's and Multi-Millionaires.
Humans vs corps. Corps are
Thu, 12/23/2010 - 15:09 — Anonymous (not verified)Humans vs corps. Corps are ahead in the war on the middle class. Anger alone not enough to win. The corps will only pay attention when money is at stake.
Nope, Obama is not a
Thu, 12/23/2010 - 18:37 — aim (not verified)Nope, Obama is not a democrat, he's a republican in sheeps clothing! He only wants all that corporate money to campaign for re-election in 2012! Except he's gonna lose, no matter how much money they give him! Just look at Meg Whitman's loss in CA with all her money! Whoops! Its suppose to be about the vote Mr. Obama, not the money! Oh, except when the Supreme Court gets involved then its whoever they decide! And they've already decided once it was Bush and now its the secret corporate money! So, maybe he is right...its the money stupid! Not the economy!
Since the second world war,
Fri, 12/24/2010 - 08:12 — mysterioso (not verified)Since the second world war, consumerism has been the way of life and the politics of the US. That was all and good when in the 50's through the 90's people were working and making enough to buy all the new toys and gadgets that were being advertised and thrown at us. What the corporations who grew up in this environment fail to realize is that it was the "jobs" of the middle class which allowed them to spring up and multiply. These same corporations now expect their sales to flourish when the middle class has experienced a 40% decrease in their paycheck purchasing power in the last decade alone. To their discredit, the middle class has bought into the consumerism state and believes they cannot do without all the trinkets and baubles dangled in front of them. (see Annie Leonard videos). This cycle needs to be broken if we are to survive as a nation.
As a long time independent
Fri, 12/24/2010 - 11:21 — Anonymous (not verified)As a long time independent who disdains ideologies of all stripes I have a question. What took you folks so long to get here? It started with the establishment of the income tax. The robber barons didn't like it and decided to work to get back THEIR money. The New Deal made them angrier and the Great Society was the last straw. They have invested heavily to fund counter-think tanks and anti-foundations to develop their propaganda and aligned with any other greed mongers who would sign on with them, even the unknowing gullibles who would profit the least. They have been very successful. Now when will the other 95 percent realize they too must fight back?
What we are seeing is the
Sat, 12/25/2010 - 07:11 — Realist (not verified)What we are seeing is the continuation of the attempted Coup of 1934. By using methods other than direct confrontation, the corporate interests who sought to impose a fascist/corporatist government in America (as their friends were then doing in Europe and Japan) are now finally realizing their goals. they just had to do things more slowly so as not to attract attention before they could trip the trap. They used Obama to achieve this final distraction, and he'll be gone in 2012 now that his effectiveness is ending.
Obama is a creature of the
Sun, 12/26/2010 - 19:33 — Anonymous (not verified)Obama is a creature of the power elite, a worse corporatist than Bubba Clinton. He's expert at self-congratulation and continues to bask in his recent "victories" that give aid and comfort to those who will dismantle the remnants of the New Deal. We may expect that he'll make some squeaks, but declare himself a helpless bystander,doomed to hideous deals with Republicans. A little later he'll congratulate himself again and ask for re-election.
i agree obama is a creature
Mon, 12/27/2010 - 11:28 — Anonymous (not verified)i agree obama is a creature of the corporate elite,00:33. they gave him more campaign money than hillary. every one knows that the clintons sold out the democratic party, they knew what they were getting, a paper tiger. while democrats believers in the traditions king, roosevelt, johnson and truman believed this wind bag. his christmas gift to the working poor, was to dip into social security with a tax break for employers,freezing federal employee wages and no colas for seniors skimping by on social security after their pensions funds were abused and depleted. jim hightower keep holding their feet to the fire.
"What the bourgeoisie
Mon, 12/27/2010 - 12:28 — Marx (not verified)"What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable" (Chapter 1 of the Communist Manifesto)
"Your own working class will bury you" (Nikita Khrushchev)
Jim, when you call these
Wed, 12/29/2010 - 10:52 — Latin teacher (not verified)Jim, when you call these execs pathetic narcissists, I agree -- but I just want to make sure everyone knows the proper sense of the word. I'm sure most of us know the story of Narcissus, the golden boy who was pursued by countless suitors [of both genders] and rejected them all for the celibate comfort of his own flat and unavailable reflection. Pathetic is worse, and the poet Catullus gave the word immortality as an epithet for two sycophantic hangers-on. It specifies sexual perversion, specifically the desire to be the recipient end of a homosexual act. So yes, Autoerotic Bottoms is a good way to characterize these guys. Every BDSM player knows that the bottoms are the real power trippers.... Good call, Jim.
Marx, it's guys like you
Fri, 01/14/2011 - 16:09 — Frances in California (not verified)Marx, it's guys like you give American working people a bad Rep. Who pays you to be so disingenuous? Washington Times? Heritage Foundation? What Krushchev couldn't know was that the Oligarchy would bury America and only the surviving workers with shovels will be able to dig it up again.
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