Left vs. Right? Whose Fiscal Policies Are Correct? We Can’t Even Find Out…*Open Thread*
By Anita Finlay ("Ani") on May 9, 2010 at 3:00 PM in Bailouts, Bank Bailouts, Bank Nationalization, Current Affairs, Democratic Party, Obama Administration, Obama's Broken Promises
Scrolling through a number of blogs the other day, I came across this comment to a story in The Confluence. Many thanks to WMCB for posting it:
… I have a family member who is as conservative as it gets. We disagree a lot on how much the federal govt should do. But we wholeheartedly agree on this. He said to me last week,
“Until we can get the govt and the corporations out of bed with each other, we can’t even have a national conversation on how much or how little we want the govt to do. Until we end this rigged cronyism, we are ALL f*cked, Left, Right, and Center.”
Crony capitalism was a problem before this administration took power and that problem seems only to be increasing. Special interests, backroom deals, big corporations getting special exemptions — BP comes to mind. The corporate-owned media running interference and soft pedaling or ignoring stories until well past the expiration date of their effectiveness is likewise devastating.
Even Dan Froomkin, nee of the Washington Post, who now writes for Huffington Post, penned an article complaining that President Obama’s new fiscal deficit commission will be holding its meeting out of the public eye — contrary to the “transparency” repeatedly promised by this administration:
Members of President Obama’s deficit commission huddled behind closed doors Wednesday despite pleas from the left and right that they hold all their meetings in public.
The move only heightens suspicion that rather than forging a national consensus on future spending priorities, the commission’s work will consist of backroom dealings in which members of the Washington aristocracy find high-minded excuses for cutting the social safety net.
Bruce Reed, the commission’s executive director, assured the Huffington Post there is nothing sinister about holding working group meetings like today’s in private. But he had no good reason why they shouldn’t be held in public, either.
Froomkin’s article is entitled “Obama’s Fiscal Commission — What’s Going On In There?” if you would like to google and read it in its entirety.
Clearly, both sides are unhappy with this corporate cronyism — and we have seen all too many examples of it over the last ten years.
What’s the solution?
This is an open thread.
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