From 1976 until 2008, every major-party presidential candidate took public money for the general election, adhering to spending limits that significantly reduced the influence of money on American elections. Candidates began dropping out of public financing for primaries in 2000, and then in 2008, Barack Obama abandoned the system entirely, preferring to raise more money from small donations, and promising to fix the public program. He has made almost no attempt to fulfill that promise.

Even in its criticism of the President, the NY Times still seeks to defend a favored son. In 2008, then-Senator Obama may have raised substantial amounts of cash from small donations, yet the Times fails to mention Mr. Obama also received more money from Wall Street than any other candidate. Senator Obama abandoned the public financing system despite signing a pledge to do the opposite. His opponent, Senator John McCain (himself a co-author of election finance reform with Senator Feingold), upheld his promise to use only public financing. For his trouble, he was drowned in an avalanche of dough and outspent eight to one.

No attempt to revive the public financing system has been made that I can see, and as the editorial points out, this is the first time in forty years neither candidate plans to use it. Both Romney and Obama have eschewed public financing in favor of rich donors and the punch of SuperPACs:

Public financing could still be resuscitated, but first, someone in power has to care about it. The Republican-led House has voted to kill the system outright. A few House Democrats have proposed a good bill to fix it, but no one in the Senate has picked up the bill. And the two major candidates are too busy grubbing for the unlimited donations that now dominate politics.

The era of “super PACs” and secret donors has made public financing more urgent.

The editorial offers ideas for raising grants of public financing to make the system more appetizing to candidates, but their suggestions weigh in at a maximum of $300 million. That doesn’t seem to be an amount that will do the trick — particularly when President Obama’s team already spent $750 million the first time out and months ago boasted about the possibility of raising $1 billion in 2012.

That such vast sums would be spent by each side to drown the other in negative ads when so many citizens are in need is grotesque. What hope do we as average taxpayers have when our voices are dwarfed by big money interests? We, as usual, will be left out in the cold. The Times also complains that we need the candidates to have time to “campaign more instead of begging among the rich.” But the greater evil is that both Presidential candidates offer vague platitudes rather than concrete platform. How about less campaigning and more doing? How about less campaigning and more outreach, more listening to voters on the ground…

Too many Americans have lost jobs to listen either to just “stay the course” or “we can do better.” In President Obama’s case, his latest among many promises to “pivot to jobs” rings hollow. The recent drop in unemployment to 8.1% is cold comfort when another several hundred thousand have simply dropped out of the work force.

Numbers don’t hold much sway. Looking at the people around me who are losing their jobs, and lost their homes, I see the number of short sales and foreclosures in my immediate vicinity in the last two years that have helped destroy my property values. I have too many close friends, accomplished professionals all, whose jobs have just been outsourced or cut, to believe the rosy numbers.

And if Mr. Romney plans on gaining traction, he had better be willing to step on the third rail in an effective way, and stop pandering to wedge issues or complaining about President Obama’s lack of leadership or fiscal know-how. All of this is meaningless. Just cutting taxes isn’t going to cut it.

To both gentlemen…give me the laundry list…What are you going to do? How are you going to get there? How are you going to pay for it.

Until the American people stand up and demand that we get big money out of politics on both sides, the rest of this is just tilting at windmills. Both political parties are “the one percent.” We had better figure that out.
*************
Anita Finlay is the author of DIRTY WORDS ON CLEAN SKIN: Sexism and Sabotage, a Hillary Supporter’s Rude Awakening, now available at Amazon in Print and on Kindle. Please visit her website www.anitafinlay.com.

WaPo’s Dana Milbank asked this question in his latest opinion piece while doing his best to romanticize the movement. Milbank centered his story on folk rocker Jackson Browne’s recent attempts to rally a small group of OWS protesters in Washington, D.C.:

He played five political tunes but left out the one most relevant to the protest movement: “Running on Empty.”

Two months ago, there was hope that the Occupy Wall Street movement and its offshoots could be the start of political counterweight to the Tea Party. But that never happened, and any last chance of it ended when New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg closed the encampment in lower Manhattan.

Nationwide, the movement lost its idealistic roots amid reports of accidental deaths, drug overdoses and scattered violence. In Washington over the weekend, 31 demonstrators in McPherson Square, a previously peaceful encampment, were arrested in a standoff with police.

“Scattered violence”? There were rapes, sexual assaults, stabbings and beatings, Dana. Be honest. There have also been many reports of vandalism and damage to local small business in the areas of OWS protests that have dearly cost some of the very people the movement is allegedly supposed to help. Check out news reports that have been filed across the country in smaller papers from Boston, Massachusetts to Portland, Maine to Santa Cruz, California. But sharing that information would further blight a group even as it explains the very reasons why it has not caught fire.

Hot flash, Mr. Milbank: Most people are uncomfortable being associated with violence.

Further, some of the protesters quoted in the news seem unclear about what they wish to accomplish. They only know they want someone else to pay. No matter how angry I am with the excesses of Wall Street, I also know that the dishonest operatives among them could not function without more than a wink and a nod from Washington, so to rail against the “evil rich” is not cutting it for me. I also get offended when wealthy celebrities pretend solidarity with a group they would not allow into their own homes.

MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan, himself a supporter of the movement, has expressed outrage that as long as Congress, and, I assume, the President, receive financial support from Wall Street, government entities are unlikely to risk cutting off their own source of campaign funds by doing something that benefits the consumer rather than their cushy benefactors. Milbank paints a sad picture of OWS:

In nearby Freedom Plaza, there are fewer tents than there were earlier in fall — and it wasn’t exactly booming then. When Browne, the 63-year-old singer and activist, walked to the microphones, there were all of 125 people to listen to the performance, including a media pack of about 40.

“You are the 99 percent!” Browne, in leather jacket, blue jeans and Salomon athletic shoes, told the modest crowd. “This is what democracy looks like.”

But this is not what a mass movement looks like.

Browne, questioned about the movement’s failure to ignite the masses, responded that people are “very angry” and that OWS would be a force to contend with in the 2012 elections. Then Mr. Browne engaged in a bit of Kool-Aid drinking when he stated:

“How angry people are is not really carried by the mainstream media.”

That is all they have been covering. Well, in a way. They, like Milbank, have done their best to romanticize the nobler intentions of a movement where the encampments, over time, have started to resemble the behavior in Lord of the Flies. I am sure many rank and file citizens have trouble being associated with that as well. Milbank continues:

No doubt people are angry – as well they should be after the high unemployment and low corporate responsibility of the last few years. But for whatever reason, they aren’t taking to the streets to join the demonstrators.

Yeah, Dana. They are angry. Many of us are angry. But we are also angry at an administration in power for three years that has had ample opportunity to “pivot to jobs” and instead has focused on anything but. Lip service is one thing. Action is quite another.

It is unfortunate that owing perhaps to differing political ideologies, the sincere members of both the Tea Party and OWS movements do not realize how much they have in common. This is not about CEOs. It is more about an elitist, protected government class that lives in a millionaire’s bubble and does as it pleases, showing only a vague passing interest to its constituents. Spitting at cops, spraying graffiti or throwing a brick through a local business window is not the way to express righteous outrage at the upper-echelon collusion now taking place. Criminal activity is a top down concern – not bottom up.

I recently wrote about Steve Croft’s 60 Minutes report on Congress’ “legal” insider trading scandal. In his story, Mr. Croft spoke with ex-Congressman Baird about his repeated attempts years ago to pass legislation banning the practice. With deep frustration, Baird shared that he could never get more than six people to co-sponsor such a measure. It died a quick death. Today, more that 120 co-sponsors exist for new legislation banning this outrageous behavior. So yes, knowledge is power. Information in the hands of the many led to appropriate outrage at our elitist Congress and perhaps, finally, action will be taken – but only if our representatives are afraid of losing their jobs.

This past Sunday, Croft also covered the fact that, to date, no Wall Street executives have been prosecuted for their part in escalating the Ponzi scheme that led to our near financial collapse. More foot dragging. Keep it up, Mr. Croft. Sharing this information with the American people may finally lead to the pitchfork moment Mr. Milbank is hoping for.

Yet in answer to Mr. Milbank’s question of why the OWS movement is not catching on, the bulk of Americans do not wish to take out their anger on other working stiffs or sully a city or town or country they love by adding to its mess. No matter if I sympathize with the cause or the politics of a particular group, I cannot stand with them if they are choosing to add violence to civil disobedience, or hurting the ability of others to make a living in the process. Just as I could not agree with Sandra Bernhard who threatened gang rape on Sarah Palin if she dared set foot in Manhattan.

Surely, it is possible to take the high road and still get the point across. And if I’m going to march, it will be on Washington, because only where laws are passed — and enforced — will change be made that can result in taxpayers’ respectful treatment.

These progressive champions don’t seem to realize they have delivered the President more grievous insults than the ones they have long sought to protect him from. By framing President Obama as lacking in leadership skills, or being held captive by the opposition party, or too beholden to the far left of his own party, these pundits are telegraphing their belief that he is too soft, not a capable executive, not responsible for his own actions and a victim.

Their reasons for depicting Obama this way are their own, but I suspect it is too horrible for them to contemplate that they were taken in by branding and attractive rhetoric. Mr. Obama is doing precisely what he has done since well before his election – capitulate in the face of challenge. Were the “principles” pundits expected the President to uphold really his or theirs? A candidate must draw a line in the sand via his or her own record, demonstrating a willingness to go down fighting for a cause over the course of years before it can be proven that such principles are any more than projections by optimists wanting to be swept up by “history” and romance.

His State Senate record in Illinois recalled a man who voted “present” 130 times, along with 6 “wrong” or “oops, I hit the wrong button” votes. As a freshman US Senator he missed over 40% of his votes, particularly risky ones. In 2008, he reneged on FISA, was guilty of double dealing on NAFTA, reneged on his written promise to take public financing in his presidential campaign, and surrounded himself with corporatist advisors like Austan Goolsbee who have long favored privatizing Social Security. Contrary to his upstart, new kind of politics image, he receiving more money from Wall Street than any other candidate and was backed by the old guard of the Democratic Party. He praised President Reagan while belittling President Clinton and campaigned down south with Donnie McCurkin, ex-gay man “reformed through prayer. That the Obamas had long lived beyond their own means, receiving help with their house purchase from now convicted felon Tony Rezko and his wife should have given pundits pause.

This list went largely unchecked.

Most important, though the left favored Obama because of his purported anti-war stance, his little known 2002 anti-war speech regarding Iraq involved no vote or political risk yet when in the Senate three years later, he voted twice to continue funding a war he disagreed with.

Reviewing the above facts along with contradictory campaign promises Mr. Obama made in 2008, one has to wonder who these pundits thought they were urging the rest of us to vote for. And why do they complain that he is behaving in an unthinkable or incomprehensible way now? If one logically considers his record and his actions, not just his words, his current behavior was at least somewhat predictable via his past deeds.

President Obama showed himself to be a political opportunist wont to help those who helped him the most. Ergo, special considerations to unions and corporate bailouts by the truckload. This is not to fault Mr. Obama by the way. He presented his best self to the American people. If there were those who chose not to question his contradictions, who would not take advantage of such great good fortune?

The fault and responsibility must be placed squarely on the shoulders of the mainstream media and pundit class who abjectly refused to do their jobs in vetting Mr. Obama as a candidate. Those of us on the ground who saw inconsistencies and voiced our concerns were roundly and viciously insulted.

Further, the current furious flailing and complaints of liberal pundits are as empty and false as their previous accusations of “racism” were toward President Obama’s critics. Come 2012, they will all fall in line behind his candidacy, believing Republicans to be six kinds of evil. This is precisely why our President feels comfortable capitulating on tax rates, or pushing healthcare (without a public option) that is years away from being fully enacted rather than concentrating on putting Americans back to work. As far as President Obama is concerned, the left “has nowhere else to go,” despite Politico posting an article yesterday stating that President Obama was continuing and even growing a number of President Bush’s past policies.

While editorials on Huffington Post, diaries on DailyKos along with other print media are rumbling about a primary challenge to President Obama in 2012, the likelihood of its success is slim. And whether one feels the left’s wish list is right or wrong headed, or “sanctimonious” – as President Obama just called it – is hardly the point. Unless those who are furious now are willing to lose to win, offering more than idle threats, we will have more of the same rhetoric that we have been getting from both parties for years – lip service paid to a cause without effective solutions or legislation to back it up.

Solutions, anyone?

Voters don’t want to be governed from the left, right or center. They want Washington to recognize that Americans want to govern themselves.

The trends he has followed throughout the year starting with the shocking upset that sent Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown to the Senate last January indicate this is the third administration in row experiencing “rejection of the party in power.” He states “tomorrow Republicans will send more Republicans to Congress than at any time in the past 80 years,” and that Democrats have aimed straight for the iceberg by pushing policies the majority of Americans did not want. That part is obvious. What may not be obvious, particularly to the media still exhibiting denial by covering for this administration, is the following:

…A common theme in all the races is that white, working-class Democrats who tended to vote for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in 2008 are prepared to vote for Republicans.

Hillary Democrats were informed by Donna Brazile et al in 2008 that our votes were not needed. Virulent Obama supporters denigrated all those who did not worship their magical politician. So much for what the Obama coalition hath wrought. Tomorrow we will find out the price for insulting the vast majority of the electorate that refuses to swallow every nonsensical sound bite like pabulum. Yet Scott Rasmussen delivers a deserved caution to Republicans:

…[N]one of this means that Republicans are winning. The reality is that voters in 2010 are doing the same thing they did in 2006 and 2008: They are voting against the party in power. [snip] That’s never happened before in back-to-back administrations. The Obama administration appears poised to make it three in a row. This reflects a fundamental rejection of both political parties.

More precisely, it is a rejection of a bipartisan political elite that’s lost touch with the people they are supposed to serve. Based on our polling, 51% now see Democrats as the party of big government and nearly as many see Republicans as the party of big business. That leaves no party left to represent the American people.

Voters today want hope and change every bit as much as in 2008. But most have come to recognize that if we have to rely on politicians for the change, there is no hope. At the same time, Americans instinctively understand that if we can unleash the collective wisdom and entrepreneurial spirit of the American people, there are no limits to what we can accomplish.

Pundit and “Big Journalism” editor Dana Loesch who spoke on behalf of the Tea Party stated that anyone new being elected this cycle should consider themselves on probation. If they do not uphold Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, and the promises they made while campaigning, they too will find themselves “with a target on their backs.” And quickly.

News anchor Brian Williams spoke with Jon Stewart indicating that voters are much more connected to the news than they have been in a long time. In other words, we’re watching.

Polls across the board indicate that Obama has bled independent support. The coalition he built on the backs of big promises and big media salesmanship has evaporated. Another shocking poll is that 47% of Democrats feel that Obama should be challenged for the nomination in 2012. Not a good sign.

Whatever happens in tomorrow’s midterms, the majority of voters are fed up with both parties. Once again we are stuck electing the current “lesser of two evils.” What we don’t want: more elitism, more bad policy masquerading as “too smart for us to understand it.” People have had it with reactionary politics and wedge issues yanking us from one side to another every few years. We need less puppeteers and more people actually willing to plant their feet behind the desk and do their jobs – serving their constituents, not following the herd mentality and worshipping the almighty dollar required to get them re-elected.

Tomorrow will put both parties on notice. Both will be foolish if they don’t heed that warning.

With the mid-term elections five weeks away, it’s desperation time. President Obama scolds voters for “apathy,” and for “not being serious in the first place,” VP Biden tells them to “stop whining,” and Senator John Kerry pronounces voters ill-informed on the issues, i.e. stupid. One has to wonder if that is going to be a successful strategy for getting people to the polls on November 2nd. Well, it may get them to vote, but whether they vote FOR your party or AGIN it is another matter.

President Obama had his best professorial, condescending tone on display these last few days both in his campaign appearances and at the end of his interview with Rolling Stone magazine. As Ben Feller of AP reported in his piece, Obama Now Blaming Democratic Voters for Their Apathy:

Admonishing his own party, President Barack Obama says it would be “inexcusable” and “irresponsible” for unenthusiastic Democratic voters to sit out the midterm elections, warning that the consequences could be a squandered agenda for years.

“People need to shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up,” Obama told Rolling Stone in an interview to be published Friday. The president told Democrats that making change happen is hard and “if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.”

Nice.

The president has been telling Democrats to “wake up” and recognize that he and the Democratic-run Congress have delivered on promises, from a new health care law to tougher rules for Wall Street to more aid for college students. Obama wants disenchanted supporters to see that Republican wins in November would undermine the ability of Democrats to get the unfinished business done, from climate change legislation to allowing gays to serve openly in the military.

However when Obama had a supermajority in the Senate and House last year he did not repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, though he could have. Whether one agrees with the repeal or not, there is little doubt he could have done what he campaigned on if he had truly wanted to. The vote on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was more political tomfoolery. The Dems waited until now so they could say – See, we tried!

CBS news reported on “a stern, lecturing tone from Obama….”

“The idea that we’ve got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible,” he said in the interview. ”

I find it a tad irritating when a millionaire who throws half million dollar pizza parties on our dime deigns to tells struggling citizens what is irresponsible and inexcusable.

The president said he keeps a checklist of his campaign promises and that he has met, by his account, about 70 percent of them.

However, just checking the “done” box is not enough. Passing legislation is not the same as passing effective legislation. Someone ought to remind Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Biden and Kerry of the same.

And do we need scolding now? The president is pretending that people are apathetic because change has not come quickly enough but perhaps they are apathetic because the type of change they are getting is not what they bargained for – nor is it helping.

Even the opportunistic Arianna Huffington noted in her article, Will Obama Appease Wall Street or Struggling Americans, that Obama is not looking out for Main Street in his choice of a replacement for economic advisor Larry Summers. She writes:

At this late date in the recession and with the midterms shaping up as they are, the president can take in the economic landscape and conclude that what most needs repairing is his administration’s relationship with Wall Street? How about hiring someone who would repair his relationship with the 26 million unemployed or underemployed Americans, and send the message: Help is on the way! After two years of governing a country locked in economic misery, you’d hope that Obama and his economic team would’ve learned that what matters isn’t the economic team’s resume or what “signals are sent” to Wall Street, but the actual state of the actual economy. But apparently not!

Rabbi Michael Lerner penned an opinion piece in the Huffington Post just below Arianna’s where he aptly characterized the reasons for Obama supporter apathy. The President and his team seem to think his supporters are angry and apathetic because they did not get everything on their Christmas list. In his article, Obama and Biden Have No Clue What’s Bothering Their Political Base, Lerner states:

It’s easier to believe that their liberal and progressive base is naïve than to acknowledge that we are not alienated for their failure to pass appropriate legislation, but for their failure to fight for such legislation. …[snip]

It’s one thing to make compromises after you’ve struggled for something you believe in, another to make the compromises without ever trying. Liberals and progressives had already been deeply disillusioned after the Democratic sweep of Congress in 2006, continued to fund the war in Iraq despite overwhelming popular opposition to that war. So when Obama entered the primaries and spent much of his time distinguishing himself from Sen. Clinton on precisely the grounds that he had opposed the war from the beginning, he gave his base the impression that he would be a leader who would challenge the war makers. Similarly, when he challenged the selfishness and materialism that pervaded Wall Street, we felt we had a candidate who would be willing to speak truth to power.

But Rabbi – it was words, just words. Didn’t you know that?

We did.

Just as he reneged on his promise to filibuster on FISA and reneged on his signed statement to take public financing during the campaign, President Obama means what he says – until he doesn’t. How could Rabbi Lerner have chosen Obama over Hillary when he had no record of delivering on his promises? Lerner continues…

Many of us will vote Democratic in November, despite all this. But don’t expect us to be able to rally others when the best we can say is that the Democrats and their national leader are better than the plausible alternatives. That is not a rallying cry likely to produce many votes or move us beyond our deep disappointments.

This is the final nail in the coffin and the most honest assessment of the “apathy” many of us predicted two and half years ago when we wrote about the Obama Change Ring and other cheap novelties…

And many others, feeling humiliated at allowing themselves to have opened to the hope Obama elicited, now find themselves either totally uninterested in politics or wishing to strike back at the Democrats for making fools of those who trusted. Obama and the Democrats remain clueless.

Humiliated. Feeling like fools.

People do not like to be humiliated and then scolded for their trouble. Or as Hillary Clinton pointed out on the campaign trail, “you don’t need a President who looks down at you.”

But then I remember that Biden didn’t have to follow this course and back an inexperienced academic in his bid for the Presidency — and I say, you’ve made your own bed now “lie” in it.

ABC’s Jake Tapper interviewed VP Biden who offered a fabulous example of the “bob and weave.” When Tapper asked Biden how many troops would come home from “America’s longest war” in Afghanistan when we reach President Obama’s July 2011 deadline, Biden first told Jonathan Alter:

“In July of 2011 you’re going to see a whole lot of people moving out. Bet on it.”

But now VP Biden is saying it’s not a deadline but a “transition…”

“The military signed on. Petraeus signed on. Everybody signed onto not a deadline, but a transition, a beginning of a transition,” Biden said.

Tapper pressed him – but what did he mean when he said “a whole lot of people” would be “moving out” of Afghanistan?

“What I was responding to was the idea that the president had been outmaneuvered. I was saying make it clear. And so it — it wasn’t so much numbers I meant. It could be as few as a couple thousand troops. It could be more. But there will be a transition,” Biden said.

A few thousand troops, eh? That oughta make everyone happy. But surely when President Obama fired General McChrystal and put General Petraeus in charge of ground operations, any firm timeline went out the window. Outmaneuvered, indeed. How tiresome for Biden et al to pretend that a “transition” is what they planned all along. Let’s go to the videotape!

In discussing the economy and the $787 billion stimulus package, Biden then complained:

“There’s a lot of people at the time argued it was too small,” he said. “A lot of people in our administration…even some Republican economists and some Nobel laureates like Paul Krugman, who continues to argue it was too small.”

He said they needed Republican votes to get it passed and finally found three. Biden also implied the real problem was Republican obstructionism:

But if it wasn’t for the legislative reality, Biden explained, “I think it would have been bigger. I think it would have been bigger. In fact, what we offered was slightly bigger than that. But the truth of the matter is that the recovery package, everybody’s talking about it [like] it’s over. The truth is now, we’re spending more now this summer than we — I’m calling this…the summer of recovery,” the Vice President said.

So let’s follow this logic – Obama/Pelosi proposed legislation they thought they could get through even though they wanted more. But it was those pesky Republicans who wouldn’t give more to them. Never mind the Democratic supermajority they had at the time and the Republicans, with a damaged brand and a minority voice were wandering like nomads in the wilderness.

Biden now says the stimulus should have been bigger to be successful. Yet they withheld half the dough last year, which they could have used to stanch the bleeding and stop the suffering of Americans in 2009. Perhaps they saved a good portion of the “stimulus” package for the “summer of recovery” – the summer of 2010 when Democrats need every vote they can get. Is it cynical of me to assume they held back those funds so they could pump money into the economy in advance of the midterms? Not likely.

Back in February 2009, President Obama sang a different tune. Via Reuters:

“It is the right size, it is the right scope. Broadly speaking it has the right priorities to create jobs that will jump-start our economy and transform it for the 21st century,” Obama said of the more than $800 billion bill at a rally in Elkhart, Indiana.

“I can say with complete confidence that endless delay or paralysis in Washington in the face of this crisis will only bring deepening disaster,” Obama said.

Furthermore, Tapper himself had the goods to call Biden out on the carepet for this falsehood. In January of 2009, Tapper had this to say:

“Obama’s team is pitching a plan that will cost between $675 billion and $775 billion, one that creates three million jobs, 80 percent of them in the private sector,” Tapper said. “But they will face skeptics.”

Looks like they got more than what they wanted, not less. Biden has also gone on the record months ago claiming we would be creating several hundred thousand jobs per month going forward – that also has not come to pass.

Tell me, is any government official going to get on TV and make an honest statement. And is any reporter going to have the guts to call them out on their lack of honesty when they don’t?

… 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.

Sigh.

Okay, here’s the thing. I love San Francisco. It is a beautiful city. But seriously, how can they keep electing this woman?? Read it and weep:

While pointing out that it is the responsibility of the federal government to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) said Thursday it is cheaper to treat teens for drug use than it is to interdict drugs being smuggled across the border.

CNSNews.com pointed out to the speaker at her weekly press briefing that a recent Justice Department report indicated that one in five U.S. teenagers used drugs last year, and then asked: “Are you committed to sealing the border against the influx of illegal drugs from Mexico and, if so, do you have a target date in mind for getting that done?”

“Well if your question is about drugs, I’m for reducing demand in the United States,” said Pelosi. “That is what our responsibility is on this subject. The RAND Corporation a few years ago did a report that said it would be much less expensive for us to, through prevention first and foremost, but through treatment on demand to reduce demand in our country, is the cheapest way to solve this problem.

“Incarceration is the next cheapest,” Pelosi continued. “It costs seven times more to incarcerate than to have treatment on demand. It costs 15 times more to interdict at the border. And it costs 25 times more with eradication of the cocoa leaf. This is an issue that it is very important to our country because of what it’s doing to our teenagers. That is the problem, what it is doing to our people.”

Yes, treatment is important, but treatment should NOT be the first line of defense in the Drug War, or in sealing our borders. Oh, but wait – perhaps Pelosi is unclear on that concept:

Click HERE for the transcript of this video.

Yep, she is unclear on the concept, especially since she doesn’t know what “seal” means. Here, Nancy, I’ll help you out:

seal or seal up – to close a container or space by covering it with something so that air or other substances cannot get in or out

It’s the getting IN part that is of import here. Understand?

Good grief.

But wait, it gets better, or worse, depending on your perspective: [snip]

According to the Justice Department’s National Drug Threat Assessment for 2010, “Nineteen percent of youth aged 12 to 17 report past year illicit drug use.” The assessment said that Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) are now the predominant supplier of illegal drugs in the United States. “Law enforcement reporting and case initiation data show that Mexican DTOs control most of the wholesale cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine distribution in the United States, as well as much of the marijuana distribution,” said the assessment.

Pelosi did say it was the responsibility of the federal government to control the border, although she did not believe that would prevent illicit drug use by teens in the United States.

“Controlling our border is our responsibility,” she said. “So, whether you’re talking about stopping drugs from coming in or having a well-managed migration policy, we have a responsibility to secure our border. But I don’t know what you meant by ‘seal’ and I think sealing the border doesn’t do a whole lot to reduce demand in the United States. As I travel the country, I know that kids are on meth and they can make it in their bath tub.”

So, if Pelosi is acknowledging that it is the federal government’s JOB to secure the borders, why the hell aren’t they doing it? This is her “logic” why:

To solve the drug problem, she said, requires reducing demand. “Let’s secure our border for every reason that we have responsibility to do so,” she said, “but if it’s talk, if our purpose is to solve that problem, we must reduce demand and the best way to do that is through prevention and through treatment on demand.”

Last week, CNSNews.com similarly asked Rep. Raul Grijalva (D.-Ariz.), who represents a district that covers 300 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, if he was committed to sealing the border against the inflow of illegal drugs. Rather than answer the question, Grijalva turned and walked away, eventually shouting back at the reporter that it was “punkish” to ask the question.

It is now considered “punkish” to ask a representative why he is not doing his job? Oh, right – in the Obama World it is. How DARE we expect them to actually do their damn jobs.

If Pelosi is so concerned about cost-saving measures in terms of our borders and drugs, why did she support bailing out the banks, and buying car manufacturers? Perhaps the money spent for those little (cough, cough) endeavors might have been better spent securing – that is SEALING – our borders, dontcha think, Nancy? Nah, I know she doesn’t think so – smoking all that Hopium seems to have addled her brain a bit.

Wow. Oh, yes, the Justice Department. The very one Obama claimed he was going to have look into Arizona’s attempt to secure the borders. That is, their attempt to do what he is not directing the government to do. Then there was his adding insult to injury by poking fun at the state at the Correspondents’ Dinner. Nice. So, Pelosi doesn’t know what “seal” means, and Obama threatens states that are trying to protect their borders. WTH is wrong with these people?

Well, Governor Brewer has a response for these braintrusts (H/T to Larry Johnson for sending me this video):

Any time now, Obama. Stop threatening Arizona, and stop making jokes at their expense. Start providing the security they need to have. That’s your JOB, and a Constitutional mandate to boot. Why Arizona is being treated like a pariah by so many, including the President of the United States, in its attempts to protect its border from invasion, a duty of the federal government, which it has failed MISERABLY to address, is beyond me.

So, Obama – stop demonizing Arizona and start doing your job. Pelosi, learn what the hell “seal the borders” means. I gave you the definition already. You’re welcome. And give these states the help for which they have been asking, Texas and California, too, for that matter. Do your damn job already.

We are at a remarkable moment. We have an open, 2,000-mile border to our south, and the entity with the power to enforce the law and impose safety and order will not do it. Wall Street collapsed, taking Main Street’s money with it, and the government can’t really figure out what to do about it because the government itself was deeply implicated in the crash, and both political parties are full of people whose political careers have been made possible by Wall Street contributions. Meanwhile we pass huge laws, bills so comprehensive, omnibus and transformative that no one knows what’s in them and no one—literally, no one—knows how exactly they will be executed or interpreted. Citizens search for new laws online, pore over them at night, and come away knowing no more than they did before they typed “dot-gov.”

It is not that no one’s in control. Washington is full of people who insist they’re in control and who go to great lengths to display their power. It’s that no one takes responsibility and authority. Washington daily delivers to the people two stark and utterly conflicting messages: “We control everything” and “You’re on your own.”

All this contributes to a deep and growing alienation between the people of America and the government of America in Washington.

None of this happened overnight. It is, most recently, the result of two wars that were supposed to be cakewalks, Katrina, the crash, and the phenomenon of a federal government that seemed less and less competent attempting to do more and more by passing bigger and bigger laws.

Add to this states on the verge of bankruptcy, the looming debt crisis of the federal government, and the likelihood of ever-rising taxes. Shake it all together, and you have the makings of the big alienation. Alienation is often followed by full-blown antagonism, and antagonism by breakage.

Ms. Noonan also states:

The right never trusted the government, but now the middle doesn’t.

If Jane Hamsher is to be believed, many on the left aren’t thrilled either.

Of course, the White House is going to go after Social Security again. It’s the pot of gold at the end of Wall Street’s rainbow, and they desperately want that injection of cash which could keep their giant ponzi scheme from exploding. . . for a little while.

Lucky for them, Obama has successfully dismantled the opposition that kept George Bush from privatizing Social Security at Wall Street’s behest only a few years ago. Did anybody fail to get that message when majority whip Dick Durbin yesterday told “bleeding heart liberals” that they need to be willing to accept cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits for the economic well-being of the nation?

…Just as the choice groups sat on their hands for the Nelson amendment in the health care bill, just like the Sierra Club remains mute in the wake of an oil spill the size of Delaware, there will be nothing more than progressive window-dressing in opposition to cutting Social Security benefits this time around. Any of these groups utter so much as a whimper in response to Durbin’s very alarming statement yesterday? Nada. Zip. Zero.

The idea that the right is more “authoritarian” and top-down than the left is absurd.

Good point, Ms. Hamsher – I don’t much trust what’s coming out of either side.

Ms. Noonan then discusses the much criticized law that Arizona’s passed out of frustration to control its borders:

It is doing this because the federal government won’t, and because Arizonans have a crisis on their hands, areas on the border where criminal behavior flourishes, where there have been kidnappings, murders and gang violence. If the law is abusive, it will be determined quickly enough, in the courts…

But the larger point is that Arizona is moving forward because the government in Washington has completely abdicated its responsibility. For 10 years—at least—through two administrations, Washington deliberately did nothing to ease the crisis on the borders because politicians calculated that an air of mounting crisis would spur mounting support for what Washington thought was appropriate reform—i.e., reform that would help the Democratic and Republican parties.

[snip]

The American president has the power to control America’s borders if he wants to, but George W. Bush and Barack Obama did not and do not want to, and for the same reason, and we all know what it is. The fastest-growing demographic in America is the Hispanic vote, and if either party cracks down on illegal immigration, it risks losing that vote for generations.

But while the Democrats worry about the prospects of the Democrats and the Republicans about the well-being of the Republicans, who worries about America?

No one. Which the American people have noticed, and which adds to the dangerous alienation—actually it’s at the heart of the alienation—of the age.

Both Hamsher and Noonan make clear that we don’t have much by way of allies in the persons of our government officials. It is apparent to anyone half awake that Democrats and Republicans, for the most part, capture an issue in furtherance of their careers and little else. There is a line in the movie “Syriana” –

“We want to give the appearance of doing our due diligence. But we don’t want to do our due diligence.”

Noonan uses the issue of government’s failure to secure the border to the same effect in her piece as Hamsher uses “the giant flaming ball of oil being pushed straight for the coasts of Alabama and Mississippi” that “[m]ight be the worst environmental event in decades” in hers – as examples of government ineffectiveness due as the result of succumbing to interest groups rather than doing what is best for the American people.

For those of us at NoQuarter long shouting in frustration for better leadership than what was being foisted upon us all, it is ironic that Noonan may be the first major pundit to make the following observation:

I asked a campaigner for Hillary Clinton recently where her sturdy, pantsuited supporters had gone. They didn’t seem part of the Obama brigades. “Some of them are at the tea party,” she said.

Though I don’t care for her “sturdy, pantsuit” snark –she notes correctly that we feel we have no place in this new world order of the Democratic party. Perrylogan, one of the commenters to Hamsher’s piece, makes clear why:

The progressive movement died during the primaries, when Obama’s supporters started calling their fellow Democrats racists.

Amen.

In the universe of President Obama, the second “Great Uniter” in a row (George Bush II being the first), we are now more divided against ourselves than ever. It also looks as though many are feeling divided from the very people we have elected to protect our best interests.

Much of this is the result of the politics of demagoguery – served up to control the populace rather than to assist it, to divide us from each other, so we never take the time to notice we have far more in common than we realize.

All this jumble is to say that when two ladies from opposite sides of the aisle express this much anger and frustration, it is time for our politicians to wake up – lest we do figure out how to unite peacefully. Then those elitists Jane, Peggy and we all rage against might be ridden out of town on a rail.

“We’re going to have to make some tough choices” about the deficit and national debt, President Obama said to a crowded gymnasium full of supporters at Indian Hills Community College, after a lengthy riff on how the unsustainable debt would need to be tackled.

This, unlike most of what the president said during the town hall meeting, was met with silence.

“I noticed I didn’t get a lot of clapping about the whole ‘We’re gonna have the hard choices’ thing,” the president ribbed the crowd.

The President is ribbing the crowd? Now that’s what I call “The Audacity of Hope.” Half million dollar pizza parties. The most expensive inauguration in history. After this gentleman spent all of last year more than tripling spending (yes, I know, I know, it was all Bush’s fault) now he wants to tell the American people it is time to make some hard choices?

More frustrating than the endless campaigning and political posturing is the notion that the American people are so bloody stupid, they will not leap to the same conclusions I just did. Further, he tells us this stuff as if he just thought of it. Haven’t the tea partiers, for one, been screaming about these very problems for over a year?

Could it be President Obama is not aware why his audience sat on their hands for his remark about “hard choices?” I cannot prove that the people of Ottumwa, Iowa agree with my assessment but perhaps this might be a reason why he did not receive the adulation he is used to and so craves:

It is offensive to be lectured to about fiscal restraint by a man who has been spending taxpayer money like a drunken sailor for the better part of a year and a half, bailing out and covering for reckless companies with reckless management styles that continue to scam the American people, hiding the true cost of the legislation his Congress has been ramming down our throats and promising transparency while delivering the opposite.

The people of Iowa, and the rest of American for that matter, have been practicing plenty of fiscal retraint as they deal with high unemployment, watching their savings dwindle to dangerously low levels amidst an uncertain future with an administration that appears tone deaf as to their problems.

Any President that keeps trying to sell the bill of goods that cap and trade is going to help solve our economic problems instead of finally planting his feet behind the desk to figure out how to put more people back ot work in this country really needs to talk less to the American people – and listen more.

“This will bear on how we think about our federal budget in the future,” [Obama] said. “Everybody dislikes Washington right now, and everybody wants to lower their taxes. Everybody hates waste in government. But at the same time, you know, government does some important things like helping to make sure you’ve got clean drinking water and that your roads aren’t full of potholes.”

Please Mr. President, stop telling me what I hate. I don’t hate taxes. I am more than happy to pay my fair share and do so regularly. I hate when my taxpayerdollars go to bailout out the actions of corrupt actors who are not held to the same rules as I am. I do not hate government. I hate bloated government, local, state and federal, that enjoys no end of perks and bloated salaries and perks. I appreciate the good things that government does, which is why I pay taxes. What I don’t appreciate is the things my tax money is supposed to pay for – like education – gets “borrowed” away and never returned.

Clearly, the President has no idea what I hate which gives me a clear indication of why his policies have nothing to do with the urgent needs of the American people.
Close attention need by paid to the following:

…Earlier in the day, back in Washington, DC, he’d presided over the first meeting of his Debt Commission, which will issue recommendations after the November 2010 elections on ways to reduce the $12.8 trillion national debt.

“I’ve said that it’s important that we not restrict the review or the recommendations that this commission comes up with in any way,” the president said at the meeting. “Everything has to be on the table. …This means that all of you, our friends in the media, will ask me and others once a week or once a day about what we’re willing to rule out or rule in when it comes to the recommendations of the commission. That’s an old Washington game and it’s one that has made it all but impossible in the past for people to sit down and have an honest discussion about putting our country on a more secure fiscal footing. So I want to deliver this message today: We’re not playing that game. I’m not going to say what’s in. I’m not going to say what’s out. I want this commission to be free to do its work.”

Could it be he is not going to give you any details about what is “in it” until after the midterms because if he told you now, all his herd mentality Dems insistently following Pelosi and Reid off a cliff would be voted down this November? Is that why we are not getting a report from the Debt Commision until after that?

In Ottumwa, the president previewed for the crowd that whatever the commission comes up with, “we’re going to have a very tough debate about how to bring down our deficits.”

He continued, “as this debate unfolds, I just want everybody to pay attention to what folks are saying. A lot of times politicians will tell you, ‘I’m going to cut your taxes, I’m going to lower the deficit, I’m going to expand Medicare.’”

Don’t settle for that, the president told the crowd. “Ask every politician when they say they’re going to balance the budget and deal with the deficit: ‘What exactly are you going to cut? What spending are you willing to eliminate? Are you going to eliminate funding for sewers? Are you going to reduce the cost of Medicare? Because there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

Who the hell out here has been getting a free lunch. The free lunch has gone to the folks at Goldman Sachs, Fannie and Freddie, and GM (who claim they paid back their bailouts — however they did it with other TARP money).

A free lunch? Why does President Obama insist upon being condescending? Beyond his pronouncements from on high about “bitter voters,” this reminds me of candidate Obama’s pronouncement about Democrats and abortion during the campaign. As reported by CBS News:

“The mistake pro-choice forces have sometimes made in the past, and this is a generalization . . . has been to not acknowledge the wrenching moral issues involved,” he said.

Really? Do we not? Telling us what we do and do not like or believe seems to be a pattern.

Reading the other fine print of his statement in Iowa, he wants us to ask other politicians what THEY are going to do – but we cannot ask the President what HE is going to do. “We’re not going to play that game?” All he is doing is playing games, while taxpayers can only look on in frustration and disbelief.

The president said “the way folks talk about it in Washington,” you might think the debt could be solved by reducing waste and abuse, eliminating foreign aid and earmarks. But those are relatively small parts of the budget, he said.

Which “folks” are these, exactly?

“We could eliminate all foreign aid and all earmarks and we’d still have a huge problem, because most of our budget goes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and defense spending, about 70 percent of the budget. Everything else we do is only about 30 percent of the budget. So this is going to be a tough bunch of choices that we gotta make here.”

Okay – so here is the bitter pill to swallow – get ready folks. Here come the cuts! So that if you have been paying in to Medicare, as my mother has, for example, in her 50 years in the work force, you can expect less. Presidents like to point toward Social Security’s impending insolvency without mentioning part of the reason it is in trouble is because government keeps borrowing money from it that they do not put back.
Remember his economic advisor Austan Goosbee talked about privatizing Social Security? Do not be surprised if you hear rumbings next year, too – the same rumblings President Bush made several years ago. Now I ask you – would you want the private sector – otherwise known as Wall Street crooks – playing with your dough while you’re busy keeping the roof over your head and don’t have enough time to daily monitor their shenanigans?

“I just want everybody to be prepared” for this debate, which will take place over the next couple years. “Remember when I was running for office, I said I will not just tell you what you want to hear, I would tell you what you needed to hear. And you needed to hear that we’re going to have some hard choices about our deficit.”

Oh, that was my favorite comment of all. I have never heard a bigger pile of horse hooey! And that is saying something. He told everybody what they wanted to hear out on the campaign trail – unicorns and giant popsicles. But little else.

Is there anyone with the courage to stand up and insist that this President start telling the truth? The press has already proven themselves to be, almost uniformly, nothing more than notches on his bedpost, cowed from speaking up for fear of a lack of access, which would mean a loss of their $5 million dollar book deals.

Who is speaking for us?

Thank you. Rant over.

Usually the Obama administration downplays expectations for job growth, but apparently Vice President Joe Biden didn’t get the memo – or he did, but just blew it off.

Well, it wouldn’t be the first time our loquacious VP has done such a thing and come up with his own thoughts on a heated subject:

“Some time in the next couple of months we’re going to be creating between 250,000 jobs a month and 500,000 jobs a month,” Biden said at a fundraiser today in Pittsburgh.

Next month, Biden predicted, the nation’s employers will add between 100,000 to 200,000 jobs to their payrolls.

Um. Could you please tell me where he is getting these numbers? We know the Census created a bunch of temporary jobs but they will evaporate in a few months. On behalf of all my friends, neighbors and local business owners who are struggling or whose businesses have already shut down, I’d love to hear some good news here – but only if it backed up by fact…

The administration’s own forecast projects that the labor market will add about 100,000 jobs a month for the rest of the year, then around 200,000 jobs a month next year, and 250,000 jobs a month in 2012.

Biden noted today that in the past he “got in trouble” for making predictions about job creation, but clearly that did not stop him from delivering his bold new projections.

“We caught a lot of bad breaks on the way down,” Biden said. “We’re going to catch a few good breaks because of good planning on the way up.”

Another phrase I’m not quite sure what to do with… “good planning”? So it was good planning to enact a pork, er, Stimulus Bill when they first got into office and then withhold a large percentage of the money until just before the midterms so they can artificially pump up the economy to get votes? Is that the sort of good planning we are talking about? Strikes me not only as cynical but downright cruel to so many who have lost their jobs and homes.

Please – if you have any news to report — I mean, real news, backed up by real fact, not just spit-balling or spin, that indicates some honest to goodness substantial job hiring is going to happen in the next few months, please share it…

I’m sure Mr. Biden would be happy to know someone agrees with him.

is upset over Democratic plans to take up immigration legislation this year – he accuses Democratic leaders of pushing forward immigration “haphazardly” and calls it an election-year political gambit.

John Kerry said in a statement on Saturday:

“We all believe that this year is our best and perhaps last chance for Congress to pass a comprehensive approach. We believe that we had reached such an agreement and were excited to announce it on Monday, but regrettably external issues have arisen that force us to postpone only temporarily,”

Kerry also commented that:

“I remain deeply committed to this effort which I have worked on for more than twenty years. We have no choice but to act this year. The American people deserve better than for the Senate to defer this debate or settle for an energy-only bill that won’t get the job done.”

Reading between the lines, I assume he thinks the Dems have “no choice” but to act this year because after the November elections, they will no longer have the numbers to ram this through. Understandably, voters who are still reeling from the passage of confusing health care legislation are deeply concerned about more sudden change and its effects on our troubled economy.

Ben Gemen of The Hill also reported earlier this week on Graham’s specific cause for concern regarding the Dems rush to ram through immigration policy:

Graham has been working with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on an immigration plan, but reacted critically to reports that Democratic leaders may try to move on the issue.

“If immigration comes up then that’s the ultimate CYA politics,” Graham said. He warned against bringing up a bill in a “haphazard way.”

“This comes out of left field,” he said. “We haven’t done anything to prepare the body or the country for immigration.” Graham said the measure he has discussed with Schumer is not ready, and wondered aloud what could be brought to the floor.

“It would be news to me if we’ve got one done [an immigration bill],” he said. “I have been working with Chuck, we have been making progress, but business and labor are not together on a temporary worker bill.”

Graham noted that the climate change and energy bill that he’s crafting with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is supposed to be unveiled Monday.

“What am I supposed to do, write an immigration bill between now and Monday with Chuck?” Graham said.

We will see what transpires. As of now, Graham is no longer on board with cap and trade.

Look, the Dems won in 2008 and all things being equal, I can understand all the horses wanting to race at the same time as they attempt to pass all manner of legislation that has been whirling around in their hot little brains for many years. However, we are still in such a difficult place with the economy. If this administration doesn’t wake up and focus on jobs, jobs, jobs right now, they may find that voter outrage grows beyond anything that can imagine or manage.

While it is certainly possible to multi-task and push on more than one front at a time, what we have seen thus far does not inspire confidence. The health care legislation that just passed is “historic.” It is also a historic mess that requires a lot of fixing. If there is more careless and hasty legislation on the horizon re reform for Wall St., immigration and cap and trade — likewise pushed through with the same lack of care in the crafting — there may be more mutlitasking required in the repairs department than our legislative bodies have any idea how to handle.

Do it once. Do it right.

I’m waiting for some of the adults in the room to emerge and think something through before putting more junk on the books. It is much easier to make a mistake than it is to repair one.

“The vast majority of the money I got was from small donors all across the country.”

– Barack Obama on Wednesday, April 21st, 2010 interview with CNBC’s John Harwood

“Vast majority.” According to Politifact, the Truth-O-Meter Says: FALSE!!!!

Obama campaign financed by large donors, too.

More of CNBC’s John Harwood and his interview with the President:

“In the 2008 campaign, you got a lot of money, about $1 million from employees of Goldman Sachs,” Harwood said. “Your former White House counsel Greg Craig is apparently going to represent Goldman Sachs. In light of this case, do either of those things embarrass you?”

“No,” Obama said. “First of all, I got a lot of money from a lot of people. And the vast majority of the money I got was from small donors all across the country. And moreover, anybody who gave me money during the course of my campaign knew that I was on record again in 2007, and 2008, pushing very strongly that we needed to reform how Wall Street did business. And so, nobody should be surprised in the position that I’m taking now because it is one that I was very clear about in the course of the campaign.”

Clearly, nothing embarrasses President Obama because he sort of made it up as he went along on the campaign trail and nary a soul in the media called him out on it.

Politifact pointed out the evidence didn’t back up Mr. Obama’s statement. More important, he got more from Wall Street than any other candidate. The public records bears this out:

While Obama got more money from small donors than his opponents, they did not account for the majority of his funds.

[snip]

In the general election, Obama got about 34 percent of his individual donations from small donors, people who gave $200 or less, according to a report from the Campaign Finance Institute. Another 23 percent of donations came from people who gave between $201 and $999, and another 42 percent from people who gave $1,000 or more.

His numbers for the primary were similar….

These numbers were compiled by the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute, and included in a report Reform in an Age of Networked Campaigns, which was published jointly with the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute.

During the campaign, Obama ended up opting out of the public financing system for presidential candidates, because the system limits how much money candidates can raise, and Obama realized he could raise much more money outside of the system.

Well, he did more than “opt-out” – he backed out of a written promise he made to take public financing.

…John Harwood, was correct when he said Obama got about $1 million from employees of Goldman Sachs; the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics puts the number at $994,795.

A topic for newsroom and pundit chatter this week has been the peculiar timing of the investigation of Goldman Sachs given the administration’s push for Wall Street regulation.

Another article, Goldman’s White House Connection Raises Eyebrows, reported:

Several former Goldman executives hold senior positions in the Obama administration, including Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; Mark Patterson, a former Goldman lobbyist who is chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; and Robert Hormats, the undersecretary of state for economic, energy and agricultural affairs.

Jacobs of the University of Minnesota said that the administration now risks “kind of a feeding frenzy.”

“The administration has to be very careful,” he said, “because . . . they’re seen as the ones who bailed out Wall Street. If there are indications that the administration was talking to regulators or to Justice Department people about when and how Goldman or other firms would be investigated, I think that’s going to create almost a mob scene.”

And now we also know the CEO of Goldman Sachs has visited the White House several times. President Obama seems to enjoy railing against the very groups he likes making deals with behind closed doors. It would be nice if he acknowledged he is a lot more banker-friendly than he lets on.

Testimony Could Undercut SEC Charge Against Goldman

The government has testimony from a Paulson & Co. official that could contradict its own claims against Goldman Sachs, CNBC has learned.

Paolo Pellegrini told the government that he informed ACA Management that Paulson intended to bet against, or short, a portfolio of mortgages ACA was assembling.

If true, the testimony would go directly against government claims that ACA did not know Paulson was hoping the collateralized debt obligations would fail, and subvert charges that Goldman breached its duty by not informing ACA of Paulson’s position.

CNBC has examined documents in which a government official asked Pellegrini whether he informed ACA CDO manager Laura Schwartz about Paulson’s position in the portfolio, named Abacus 2007-AC1.

“Did you tell her that you were interested in taking a short position in Abacus?” a government official asked Pellegrini, referring to the name of the CDO portfolio.

“Yes, that was the purpose of the meeting,” Pellegrini responded.

Oops. I am guessing that is not the answer they anticipated:

The exchange is key in that the Securities and Exchange Commission is charging that the failure to disclose Paulson’s position was a “material” factor that could have caused both ACA and German Bank IKB to back out of the CDO investment. When the CDO failed, Paulson reaped a gain of more than $900 million, the government has said.

The SEC does not mention the exchange in its complaint against Goldman.

“We look forward to presenting a complete and accurate evidentiary record in court,” SEC spokesman John Nester said in a statement to CNBC.

CNBC further learned that Pellegrini and Schwartz met at least three times to discuss the CDO and Paulson’s short position on Abacus.

Because of the deal’s structuring, Paulson stood to gain $900 million from the deal but lose only $20 million.

Here’s the thing. Couldn’t they have actually done a TAD more investigating before making these charges against Goldman Sachs? I mean, they make the charges just the other day, and voila, a few days later, this testimony comes out completely contradicting their charges. I’m just saying, maybe SOMEONE could have done a little more homework before leveling these charges, don’t you think?

And while I am at it, NQ reader Peggy Sue supplied this fascinating testimony from William Black on Lehman Brothers to the House Finance Committee. It is quite an indictment of a number of federal entities, especially the Fed, as well as the SEC:

Holy smokes. Mr. Black didn’t mince any words, did he? He is exactly the kind of straight talker we need to clear up this big, huge, mess. And he exposes the sheer incompetence of those who have been charged with oversight of financial institutions, especially continuing “business as usual” when that business was costing us millions and millions of dollars.

It sounds to me like there are a helluva lot of people running this show deserving of lawsuits, too – I’m not holding my breath that they will get their comeuppance, though. They’ll probably get promotions…

Naturally the race baiters, race hustlers and sycophants to the current administration are frustrated. Their heads really ought to explode when they watch this video. Please enjoy some tea party folk being interviewed at these protests*…since the MSM et al are so busy tellin you there are no black Americans participating in these rallies…

I wonder what the exploding heads will say now.

Chat away.

**********
* H/T Hot Air for finding the video.