Tag: Obama

Obama Lied About Net Neutrality

On By southwerkIn Capitalism

Obama Lied About Net Neutrality

Net neutrality is a business ethics issue. Are a handful of cable companies able by skillful lobbying and enormous campaign contributions going to be able to end the open internet? The question is one of basic fairness. Will the government allow the regulations to be changed so that small players on the internet (like me) can be placed on the slow track to oblivion while large companies like Netflix have priority for internet use? If the regulations are changed as planned, my tiny voice and millions of others will probably disappear because who wants to wait around while our content loads?

This problem was not supposed to happen. In fact this situation is supposed to be impossible because the President of the United States said it wouldn’t happen.

Many people in the United States, literally millions of them, believed that they elected as President, a man committed to net neutrality. For he did not imply that he was in favor of an open internet, he loudly proclaimed his support and said he would not appoint an FCC commissioner opposed to net neutrality. You can hear that direct statement in one of the You Tube video’s below.

If Obama had been defeated in 2008 or 2012, I would have expected a challenge to net neutrality. It is appalling that after all his honeyed words, his dramatic phrases, net neutrality is on the chopping block.

James Pilant

 

Watch Obama Lie About Net Neutrality Three Times Below

(I can get you more – do you really need them?)

In the one below he says he is a big believer in net neutrality.

In this one, in 2007, the President says he will take a back seat to no one when it come to net neutrality.

In this one, an interview on MTV, he is asked if he will support net neutrality and pledge not to appoint someone to the FCC who will oppose it.

I’m Beginning to Like Josh Barro

On By southwerkIn Editorial
speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on Februar...
Ted Cruz speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on February 10, 2011. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m Beginning to Like Josh Barro

This guy can take this kind of nonsense and instead of being hurt or offended, he turns it into informative and, in a way, defiant essay. I’m impressed.

And he has a good point, this kind of passion (hatred, rage?) is frightening. As a fellow writer, I find this kind of thing daunting but as a politician it must be far more threatening because not only do these people wield influence power in the party, encountering them personally must be an exciting and memorable experience.

James Pilant

One Look At These Emails, And You’ll See Why Republicans Let Ted Cruz Lead Them Off A Cliff

http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-congressional-republicans-let-ted-cruz-lead-them-off-a-cliff-2013-10

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-congressional-republicans-let-ted-cruz-lead-them-off-a-cliff-2013-10#ixzz2i1i1VxFE

The people whose letters I’m printing below are literally the people Republicans depend on to re-elect them to Congress. Keeping these people happy is their job — which is why the Republican Party has become so inept and crazy.

Jim Kennedy says I’m a “low information voter” in league with “the black racists”:

Senator Cruz is right on. I am one of those “crazy people” the liberal left does not like, being former Marine, a supporter of Tea Party, college graduate, member of NRA, member of Sons of Confederate Veterans. It is you low information voters and the black racists that hate us conservatives. Watch out in 2014!

William Neisser found me on Facebook and sent this frank message:

do you really believe the crap coming out of your mouth so 2 million people who think this Obama care isn’t good are wrong and living on another planet wow. life for you must be hard when did it become American to make people eat there vegetables. everyone has something to say but please stop talking your breath stinks like the crap you write come back to reality like the 2 million that are wrong an don’t like Obama’s health care academy for idiots thank you again yours truly screwed middle class living on another planet oh an have a great day

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-congressional-republicans-let-ted-cruz-lead-them-off-a-cliff-2013-10#ixzz2i1hj93is

From around the web.

From the web site, The Left-handed Nib.

http://lefthandednib.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/the-gops-messiah-complex/

The GOP’s Messiah Complex

To paraphrase Dana Milbank, the Republican Party is Cruzifying itself.

Lots of good reads on Cruz in the last few days:

  • Josh Barro writes at Business Insider that “Ted Cruz is living on another planet” — and the Tea Party base is more than willing to hang out with him there.
  • This AP article is one of many I’ve seen lately that talk about how fed up establishment Republlicans are with Cruz and his Tea Party fellow crazies. But look at the establishment Republicans they’re quoting by name! …
Related articles

Is Giving to the Democrats Pointless?

On By southwerkIn Politics

What Occupy taught the unions – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com

Unions are in a death spiral. Private sector unionism has all but vanished, accounting for a measly  6.9 percent of the workforce. Public sector workers are being hammered by government cutbacks and hostile media that blame teachers, nurses and firefighters for budget crises. To counter this trend organized labor banked on creating more hospitable organizing conditions by contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to the Democratic Party the last two election cycles. In return Obama abandoned the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have made union campaigns marginally easier, failed to push for an increase in the minimum wage, and installed an education secretary who attacks teachers and public education.

What Occupy taught the unions – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com

You support the Democratic Party. You organize. You get your friends to vote. And then after speaking many fine words most eloquently, they forget you. They ignore you. They insult you. corporate-profits-and-compensation 2000 2011

Those are the friends of the 99%? Those are the friends of the Middle Class? These are the people you can depend on to defend public school, control bank fees and rein in the disastrous casino capitalism that has wrought havoc on the world’s economy?

The current belief of Progressives and Liberals is to vote for the lesser of two evils. May I point out that the lesser of two evils is still evil and you are making a deal with the devil, a devil who delights in betraying your interests.

Consider your options.

James Pilant

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

The Banking Industry Gives Obama the Squeeze

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice
President Barack Obama addresses reporters abo...

Image via Wikipedia

Big banks have picked their candidate, and it’s Romney – from McClatchy

“We’ve seen a massive shift from Obama to the Republican candidates on the part of the financial industry,” said Carmen Balber of Consumer Watchdog, a California nonprofit that advocates for taxpayers and consumers. “Obviously, part of that has to do with a competitive primary. But we’ve definitely seen the financial services industry publicly chastise the president for going after financial reform.”

Big banks have picked their candidate, and it’s Romney | McClatchy

Isn’t this sweet? Barack Obama bails out the banks, protects them from prosecution for their crimes, installs banking industry figures in virtually every possible position in the government, pretended that the mortgage crisis wasn’t happening and was careful to give only the most measured criticism of the financial industry and the 1% – and his reward is massive contributions to this likely opponent.

For all of his compromise, for all of his favoritism, for all of his abandonment of the goals of justice and accountability, the President got less than nothing.

This was hardly unpredictable. The dramatic reactions of the wealthy investment to class to Obama’s mile criticism, the weak legislation of Dodd-Frank financial reform law, and the Occupy Wall Street movement demonstrated that Wall Street’s sense of entitlement and worthiness is fragile at the very least.

Only the most slavish devotion, only agreement on every point and only an acceptance of the financial industry as worthy, doing God’s Work, is adequate for the malefactors of great wealth.

The President should have realized this.

James Pilant

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

President Claims to be Concerned with the Mortgage Crisis

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

The following article title and brief selection is by Zandar from the web site, Zandar Versus the Stupid.

I very much want you to visit the site and read the article in full. If at all possible explore the web site and look at other essays.

My commentary is below the article excerpt.

Turn On The Lights, Watch The Roaches Scatter Part 84

A White House official said Obama has taken the housing crisis seriously since the start of his term and will look to augment the effort in the months ahead.

“From day one the President has worked to stabilize the housing market and help responsible homeowners stay in their homes, including through refinancing efforts, foreclosure prevention programs and programs directed at the hardest hit states,” said White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage.

“The President will continue to expand on these efforts and look at new ways to help homeowners, just as he has over the past few months with new programs to help underwater homeowners and expanding forbearance so more unemployed homeowners can stay in their homes,” she said.

I wish that were true. I wish the mortgage crisis had been an important concern for the White House but it has not been a concern and is unlikely to become one.

When the President was first elected he had large majorities in both the House and Senate. He could have made mortgage foreclosures a priority instead he created TARP, a plan which did not allow for mortgages to be reduced in line with reduced home values but only extended the time for payment. The banks used this program as a club to expedite foreclosure. They told clients to skip payments for three months to qualify for the program, then foreclosed on them telling them they had decided they were ineligible. The government didn’t even keep records of what the program was doing for the first year.

When the robo-signing scandals began, the federal government did nothing. When the scandal expanded to impugn the record keeping and practices of several large banks, the federal government did nothing.

And now the federal government attempts to cut a sweetheart deal with the industry so that they can evade any legal responsibility for their acts while, in theory, bringing some minimal aid to homeowners.

This administration has always been far more a servant of the banks than a servant of the people. I want as many State Attorney Generals as possible to no longer cooperate with the administration and pursue their own negotiations with the financial industry. That will mean that justice at least has a chance of being served.

James Pilant

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Obama Administration Continues to Protect Banks, Ignores Consumers

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

It seems that I can never get free of this subject. Obama never met  banker he didn’t like and whose interest he didn’t place ahead of everyone else. One of the things that average Americans resent is the lack of prosecution of these rogue banks. Just what did the banks do that makes me so angry? They lied directly in court claiming ownership of properties they did not own. The filed false affidavits lying about their ownership. They defrauded many customers by lying about the terms of the mortgage agreement. The lured investors into securities backed my mortgages that they knew would fail as investments and then bid against those investments with derivatives to make ever more money. To add one further insult, these heartless financial wizards foreclosed on serving veterans’ homes contrary to federal law.

Now get this. These arrogant people created their own system of ownership. Under the law of each State enshrined in American law, ownership of real property is proven by a careful record’s trail kept in most states in each county court house. To evade fees and speed the process, the mortgage machine created a computer system called MERS. They would make a single transaction using the county system then they traded the properties much like the homes in the monopoly board game. Instead of careful record keeping, we have a system where in many cases, no one knows who owns the property. In case you missed it, by using their own private system of property ownership, they never paid a dime of taxes on the transfers defrauding the states out of millions of dollars of taxes.

For more than 200 years, owning property has been the goal of Americans. To be a landowner was a mark of prestige, of achievement and security. But keeping property lines straight, land fraud and busted titles have bedeviled citizens. To curb these abuses laws were established to make as certain as possible land ownership, to protect the right to property. The right to own property is not sacred but it is as close to sacred as laws can make it.

These men, these arrogant men created their own separate legal system ignoring the laws of the government and the rights of citizens. They then used it to evade taxes and speculate like Riverboat gamblers playing with chips.

The law provides penalties so that justice may be served. Those who fail to obey the law are punished. Those are hardly radical thoughts. They are the basis of a system that treat both the small and the great equally. The administration is pushing an agreement which will free the mortgage banks from responsibility for their crimes.

What kind of nation do we live in where a petty shoplifter faces jail time and fines and bankers are freely given immunity without any assurance that I find credible that they will behave better in the future. I mean after engaging in a crime spree that makes organized crime look like a child stealing candy, they walk free. Doesn’t that give then the impression that they are above the law. It gives me that impression.

Can’t we have justice? What did I do? What did my fellow citizens do? Are we some of lesser creation that we must watch in awe and envy while those who evade over and over not just the law but evade their responsibilities of citizens to pay taxes and to act for the common good?

What kind of country are we becoming?

James Pilant

The Obama Administration’s ‘New’ Bank Fraud Deal: Still Unfair, Still Unjust, Still Unbalanced

The Obama White House continues to push for a settlement that would let bankers avoid being punished – or even investigated – for a wave of mortgage-related crimes that includes perjury, tax evasion, and several types of fraud.

Despite the President’s new-found populism – rhetorically, anyway – officials in his Administration continue to push an unfair deal designed to conceal the financial Crime of the Century.

The Financial Times reported on new details of the proposed settlement, whose stated purpose is to punish banks and reduce the amount of money owed by underwater homeowners. But it’s increasingly clear that the deal wouldn’t help homeowners very much and wouldn’t punish bankers at all.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Obama Over Rules His Own Experts – Plan B

On By southwerkIn Opinion1 Comment
I am a more than a little annoyed by this. Didn’t this guy promise to rely on the experts and instead we get some paternalistic crap about 11 year olds? This decision is going to have serious repercussions. Teenage girls are going to get pregnant with all that entails for their futures when they should have had a choice of contraception. We are not yet a nation of Baptists who believe ineffectual admonishments against having sex is an improvement over reality. Every day in this nation, particularly in the South, teenagers have sex, millions of them. They’ve been told not to. However, since the survival of the human species has depended on the young having sex for hundreds of thousands of years, it may well be possible that a church pamphlet and a pat on the head may not discourage them.
President Obama appears to be working his way through all of his campaign promises one by one, tossing them out like softballs at a little league game. I have been disgusted a long time. I don’t know what bothers me more, his fake populism or his gutless inability to negotiate.
Below are some thought from Salon.
James Pilant
Official photographic portrait of US President...
Image via Wikipedia

Obama’s woman problem – Gender Roles – Salon.com

But as an American, I think it is important for my president not to turn to paternalistic claptrap and enfeebling references to the imagined ineptitude and irresponsibility of his daughters – and young women around the country – to justify a curtailment of access to medically safe contraceptives. The notion that in aggressively conscribing women’s abilities to protect themselves against unplanned pregnancy Obama is just laying down some Olde Fashioned Dad Sense diminishes an issue of gender equality, sexual health and medical access. Recasting this debate as an episode of “Father Knows Best” reaffirms hoary attitudes about young women and sex that had their repressive heyday in the era whence that program sprang.

Obama’s woman problem – Gender Roles – Salon.com

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

David Brooks: To Hell With the Polls! | Video Cafe

On By southwerkIn Opinion

We all know that David Brooks is one of those “very serious people” (I owe Paul Krugman for the phrase.) who believe in Centrism. That is a very pretty word that indicates that if we all play nice we will live wonderful lives. We will also have to give up social security, medicare and a host of other programs because unlike the 1%, we less significant people are the ones supposed to compromise and be nice.

I’m not nice. I believe in conflict. I believe that until we make politicians suffer and lose office over their willingness to compromise on social security that the program will be in danger from the “centrists.”

The centrists believe in politicians governing without the influence of the unlettered masses – that would be us. You, when your social security benefits are taken away from you (the ones you’ve already paid for) that is shared sacrifice when the rich get tax cuts that is a spur to the economy and a reward for the “productive” classes.

You see, centrism is a fancy word for elitists and a top down ethos of enlightened philosopher kings keeping the craven, greedy masses (yeah, that would be you) in line.

It’s a precious belief in the virtue of oligarchies. It’s royalism without the royal family just the next enlightened figure to ignore popular opinion and do what is “necessary.”

This is contemptuous of democracy and the hard working, honest American people.

And this is what passes for intelligent comment at the New York Times.

James Pilant

David Brooks: To Hell With the Polls! President Obama Should Not Campaign on Raising Taxes on the Rich | Video Cafe

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Joe Mason for President 2012 – Strong Criticism of Obama’s Record

On By southwerkIn business ethics5 Comments

This video was not discovered by me but by James Fallows at The Atlantic. Here’s his take on the video –

The main complaint in this video is that Obama’s “conciliatory” and “reasonable” approach, far from being wise and strategically far-seeing, has proven to be simply weak and vacillating. This is related to the “chess master, or pawn?” debate about Obama’s strategy from earlier this summer.

(You should read all of Mr. Fallows comments. It’s a good essay.)

After listening to the video I was impressed. However, I am a little surprised at Joe Mason’s lack of a web footprint. For a would be presidential candidate, he barely exists in the world of the Internet. If my count is correct, I will be the third web site to feature this video. Please watch it now (just click on it).

Joe Mason for President 2012: Democratic Party Re-Nomination of Obama Challenged

(The Joe Mason video is also featured on Vote Third Party. Currently, the Joe Mason Campaign is apparently almost entirely a You Tube site.)

Whatever form, the Joe Mason campaign takes, it has a powerful criticism of the President’s leadership style. Many feel including myself that the President is a poor negotiator with few fixed beliefs of any importance.

Should this generate a primary challenge?

Absolutely.

Currently the Democratic Party essentially offers voters one thing only – they are not Republicans. Apparently, many Democrats think this is enough. They are so confident in this strategy that they toss their allies particularly Progressives and Liberals over the side with regularity and contempt. Further, they are absent any ideas on how to help the great middle class survive the current cycle of economic catastrophe.

The President is a pure example of this. The main and most effective threats as well as a flurry of vicious insults of his Presidency have been delivered to the liberal wing of the Democratic party to force them to get in line. They are apparently the only recipients of this kind of treatment, the Republicans hearing little but kind words.

You see, to politicians like Obama, those who have voted for the Democrats in the past have nowhere to go. Obviously, they have to vote for him, so they can be treated with disdain.

The fear of Rick Perry, Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann will bring the reluctant party faithful crawling back on their hands and knees to the only “adult in the room.”

I don’t believe that.

We don’t have to vote for Barack Obama and a good way to let him know that is a primary challenge.

The only way that Progressives and Liberals are going to have an effective say is when these kinds of politicians are humiliated at the polls and ridiculed by the party faithful.

As long as the Progressive wing of the party votes without question for a candidate there is no influence. He who can destroy a thing has power. There are easily enough Progressive voters whose defection would defeat Democrats at the polls.

That will be painful.

But is it as painful as watching Barack Obama yield time and again to the enemies of the Middle Class? Would it be as painful as having huge, almost without precedent, majorities in the House and Senate frittered away on half measures and simple inaction for two full years? Would it be as painful as watching the nation’s first real chance at health care reform thrown away for a surrender to the drug and insurance companies modeled on an old Heritage Foundation idea? Would it be as bad as watching the President ignore campaign promise after campaign promise, these superficial promises apparently only made to bamboozle the left-wing of the party to vote for him? Would it be as bad as watching a financial élite who plunged this nation into recession be rescued with taxpayer funds from their own folly?

I tell you truly, it is awful to watch the political victories of your enemies. But there is something worse, and that is to see the people you elected, you worked for, you believed in, act against your interest and call it victory.

James Pilant

Related articles

Screw Sam! Reconstruct the Mortgages with their Rightful Owners (via Deadly Clear)

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment

There is a lot of anger in this article. But I too share disgust with this government’s willingness to help out every kind of financial institution while ignoring the needs of the Middle Class. These people no longer have a defender in the government just a facilitator of the predation

James Pilant

Screw Sam! Reconstruct the Mortgages with their Rightful Owners U.S.Seeks Ideas on Renting Out Foreclosed Property By EDWARD WYATT Published: August 10, 2011 WASHINGTON— Uncle Sam wants you — to rent a house from Uncle Sam. The Obama administration said on Wednesday that it was soliciting ideas on how to turn the federal government’s inventory of foreclosed houses into rental properties that could be managed by private enterprises or sold in bulk. The goal, the administration said, is to stabilize neighborhoo … Read More

via Deadly Clear