Obama is Allowing Others to Errantly Formulate His Policy

We voted for "change we can believe in", but that isn't happening as Obama isn't making his policy, but depending on others whose hidden agendas aren't conducive to the benefit of our middle-class. Geithner shaped the bailout and it resulted in "enriching the very folks who impoverished the rest of us". The bailout didn't address job creation as by June 19, 2009 only "seven percent of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has been doled out so far". Congress was left to shape health care. Obama spiffed up the Bush 43 policy of shipping off our money to Pakistan and Afghanistan, but that hasn't worked in the past, and if he spent the time to come up with a new GWOT theory he would have realized that. We aren't getting the best of Obama because as of now he isn't even contributing.

With Bush 43 no objections were allowed. That didn't work out well for the US did it? If you were a Republican or Democrat if you disagreed with Bush 43 on any matter you were labeled a traitor. Gibbs is lands some hard blows on Dean about disagreeing with Obama's health care capitulation.

The article "Thievery Under TARP" at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090504/scheer states "We are being robbed big-time, but you can't say we haven't been warned. Not after the release Tuesday of a scathing report by the Treasury Department's special inspector general, who charged that the aptly named Troubled Asset Relief Program is rife with mismanagement and potential for fraud. The IG's office already has opened 20 criminal fraud investigations into the $700 billion program, which is now well on its way to a $3 trillion obligation, and the IG predicts many more are coming.

Special Inspector General Neil M. Barofsky charged that the TARP program from its inception was designed to trust the Wall Street recipients of the bailout funds to act responsibly on their own, without accountability to the government that gave them the money."

It should have been anticipated that Geithner would help his own and he did as the article states "As with the entire banking bailout, the new plan of Obama's treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, is likely to enrich the very folks who impoverished the rest of us, as the report notes: "The significant government-financed leverage presents a great incentive for collusion between the buyer and seller of the asset, or the buyer and other buyers, whereby, once again, the taxpayer takes a significant loss while others profit."

At the heart of this potentially massive fraud was the original decision of Henry Paulson, President Bush's treasury secretary and a former Goldman Sachs chairman, to not require the recipients of the bailout, such as his old firm, to account for how the money was spent. Unfortunately, President Obama's administration continued that practice."

He didn't look out for the common middle class person because he hasn't done enough at job creation. The June 19, 2009 article "Why Obama's big economic gamble is failing" at

http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2009/06/19/why-obamas-big-economic-gamble-is-failing/

states "Team Obama had to fully understand this. Indeed, a study from the Congressional Budget Office study - when led by current Obama budget chief Peter Orszag - concluded that an Obama-like economic stimulus package would be "totally impractical" because it would take so long to implement. (True enough, only seven percent of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has been doled out so far.)"

The policy that has taken all of the oxygen out of the room in Obama's administration is health care-which Obama has been sidestepping.

The article "Angry Liberals: Why Didn't Obama Fight?" at

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/12/16-5

states "More than anything else in Barack Obama's presidency so far, health reform has exposed a get-a-deal-at-any-cost side of Obama that infuriates his party's progressives.

And as Democrats tried to salvage health reform Tuesday, some liberals could barely hide their sense of betrayal that the White House and congressional Democrats have been willing to cut deals and water
down what they consider the ideal vision of reform."

What is Obama's core belief in health care? As the article states "A single-payer plan, a public option, a state "opt-out" of the public option, a trigger and a Medicare buy-in - all ideas pushed by Democrats and blessed by Obama at various times but now gone from the bill."

Obama has been allowing Connecticut Senator Lieberman to dominate the formulation of the health care policy and he is doing the bidding of the health insurance fat cats in Connecticut. So what are left with? As the article states "The Senate version is not worth passing," former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told POLITICO, referring to plans to strip the latest compromise from the bill, a Medicare buy-in. "I think in this particular iteration, this is the end of the road for reform....
No one will think this is health care reform. This is not even insurance reform," he said."

Why wasn't Obama leading the debate? As the article states "Yet perhaps what angers liberals the most is that Obama himself never seemed willing to push hard enough for the public option - and, in fact, all but took it off the table in August when he said he could sign a bill that didn't include it.

Once Obama said he didn't need a public option, these progressives argue, there was no cost or penalty to be paid by a Lieberman or a Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) or a Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) for taking to the Senate floor and opposing it, too."

Not only Obama failed as the article states "Obama's failure to demand a public option and Reid's decision to take reconciliation off the table emboldened moderates who might have thought twice about challenging a popular president or a Democratic majority comfortable with using Senate procedure to pass a bill with 51 votes.
"They were very good at making it look like they wanted a public option in the final bill without actually doing anything to make it happen," said Jane Hamsher, publisher of the liberal blog Firedoglake. "It's hard to believe that the two most powerful people in the country - arguably the world - could not do more to achieve their desired objective than to hand the keys over to Joe Lieberman. They would not be where they are if they are that bad at negotiation."

The article "The Self-Destruction of Barack Obama" at

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Self-Destruction-of-Ba-by-Bernard-Weiner-091216-122.html

sums it up as the article states "President Obama has lost his 2012 bid for re-election.He has made key decisions in three areas that, unless he alters his approach (not likely), could well guarantee a Republican victory: an embarrassingly rolled-out, badly-compromised health-care reform bill; his continuing slavish subservience to those on Wall Street that took the country into the economic toilet; and his sad imitation of CheneyBush's imperial campaign in Afghanistan."

Obama's Afghanistan policy is just a rehash of Bush 43's Iraq reconstruction. The article "Pakistan's Zardari resists U.S. timeline for fighting insurgents"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/15/AR2009121504774.html

illustrates that even though we've been sending them money these countries feel no obligation to cooperate as the article states "Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has resisted a direct appeal from President Obama for a rapid expansion of Pakistani military operations in tribal areas and has called on the United States to speed up military assistance to Pakistani forces and to intervene more forcefully with India, its traditional adversary.

In a written response to a letter from Obama late last month, Zardari said his government was determined to take action against al-Qaeda, the Taliban and allied insurgent groups attacking U.S. forces in Afghanistan from the border area inside Pakistan. But, he said, Pakistan's efforts would be based on its own timeline and operational needs.
The message was reinforced Monday by Pakistan's military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, who told Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of the U.S. Central Command, that the United States should not expect "a major operation in North Waziristan" in the coming months, according to a senior U.S. defense official. North Waziristan, one of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas on the Afghan border, is a sanctuary for the Afghan Taliban."

How much cooperation have we received from Pakistan? The article's headline "Billions In U.S. Aid To Pakistan Never Reached Army, Generals Say" at

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/05/billions-in-us-aid-to-pak_n_309283.html

is self explanatory as the article states "The United States has long suspected that much of the billions of dollars it has sent Pakistan to battle militants has been diverted to the domestic economy and other causes, such as fighting India. Now the scope and longevity of the misuse is becoming clear: Between 2002 and 2008, while al-Qaida regrouped, only $500 million of the $6.6 billion in American aid actually made it to the Pakistani military, two army generals tell The Associated Press."

There were even people squealing on Musharraf, but Bush 43 kept shipping them money as the article states "Daniyal Aziz, a minister in Musharraf's government, said he warned U.S. officials that the money they were giving his government was being misused, but to no avail.
"They both deserved each other, Musharraf and the Americans," he said."

Afghanistan is more corrupt than Pakistan. People already are squealing on Karzai, who didn't win the election cleanly. There are reports that senior U.N. officials said that soon after it was becoming clear that major fraud took place in Afghanistan's presidential election in August, the second highest ranking U.N. official there, American Peter Galbraith, tried getting the White House to participate in replacing Hamid Karzai as Afghan president. Karzai became incensed when he learned of the plan and Galbraith soon was fired.

Just as Bush 43 disregarded Musharraf's vices Obama will see Karzai as being so important that he will ignore reality also. The names change but the failures are perpetuated.

We thought things would change for the better, but from his policies of the bailout, health care and his continuation of Bush 43's GWOT, Obama is depending on others whose ulterior motives don't include aiding the bottom 99%. We need Obama to help the vast majority.