Monday, December 19, 2011

OBAMA WITHDRAWS NATIONAL GUARD ON NARCOMEX BORDER - BY ORDER OF THE MEX DRUG CARTELS, OR HIS LA RAZA PARTY BASE of ILLEGALS?

RECENTLY OBAMA STATIONED 2,500 TROOPS IN AUSTRALIA! YES, AUSTRALIA!

HE HAS SUED THE STATE OF ARIZONA, ALONG WITH 3 OTHERS TO ADVANCE HIS OPEN BORDERS LA RAZA AGENDA, EVEN AS PHOENIX IS THE GATEWAY FOR THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS!

THE MEX CARTELS NOW OPERATE OUT OF 2,500 AMERICAN CITIES. ACCORDING TO CA ATTORNEY GEN. KAMALA HARRIS, NEARLY HALF OF ALL MURDERS IN MEXIFORNIA ARE BY MEX GANGS!

NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY HAS SURRENDERED TO A FOREIGN INVASION AS OBAMA HAS TO LA RAZA! NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY HAS SABOTAGED OUR NATION SECURITY IN AN EFFORT TO BUY THE ILLEGALS' VOTES, AND KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED FOR THE BENEFIT OF HIS CORPORATE PAYMASTERS!

VISUALIZE IMPEACHMENT!

 

 

Obama to Withdraw National Guard Troops at Border


President Obama plans to cut the number of National Guard troops stationed along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border in half starting next year, according to administration sources. (Houston Chronicle, Dec. 11, 2011; Fox News, Dec. 13, 2011; Washington Post, Dec. 14, 2011) Currently, 1,200 National Guard troops patrol the southern border where they assist both Customs and Border Protection officers in spotting illegal entries, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with criminal intelligence. (C-Span video, July 19, 2010; see also FAIR Legislative Update, July 26, 2010)

Signaling a move away from the current “boots on the ground” approach, the troop withdrawal is part of the Obama Administration’s broader border security strategy, which includes refocusing its efforts on aerial surveillance. (San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 13, 2011) According to media reports, members of the Army and Air National Guard will replace the ground troops by carrying out surveillance by aircraft, helicopters, and unmanned drones. (Id.)

Department of Homeland Security officials insist the withdrawal is not a sign of a reduced commitment to border security, but rather the result of lessons learned about border enforcement. (Id.) One federal official involved in the Administration’s planning described the focus on aerial surveillance as “a historic and unprecedented enhancement in our ability to detect and deter illegal activity at the border.” (Id.)

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), who represents parts of San Diego near the U.S.-Mexico border, attributed the reduction to cuts in the Department of Defense. “What's apparent now is that a decision not to continue (the National Guard) deployment, even though it might be in the national interest to do so, would be based entirely on budget constraints on the Defense Department,” Hunter said. (Id.)

According to Lt. Col. Robert L. Ditchey, a spokesman for the Pentagon, “The Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security are working together closely to explore options to further strengthen the already unprecedented levels of personnel, technology and infrastructure deployed at the southwest border.” (The Arizona Republic, Dec. 12, 2011)

CRAIGS LIST - PLATFORM FOR FREE SPEECH, OR RICHARD HILARY GIBSON'S FORUM FOR HATE CRIMES & ASSAULT?


 IS CRAIGS LIST A FORUM FOR FREE SPEECH, OR SIMPLY ONE MAN'S FORUM FOR RACE HATRED, STALKING AND CRIMINAL ASSAULT?



THE “PERSISTENT MANIAC” IS OF  COURSE, THE CL FLAGGER-stalker, RICHARD hilaryr GIBSON.

CRAIG IS SIMPLY A LIMP PUSSY. HIS CEO, JIM BUCKMASTER HAS PERMITTED THE CL FLAGGER TO NOW CONTROL 100% OF ALL RANTS AND POLITICS FORUMS, WHICH ARE USED BY GIBSON FOR HIS HATE CRIMES, CYBER-STALKING, FLAGGING, INTERNET HARASSMENT, AND CRIMINAL ASSAULTS TO POSTERS AROUND THE COUNTRY THAT INTERFERE WITH GIBSON’S COMMANDEERING OF CL.

CHECK OUT CL BOSTON POLITICS FORUMS. GIBSON HAS FOR YEARS UNRELENTINGLY HARASSED AND FLAGGED ALL POSTERS OFF.

D.C. GIBSON POSTS AND FLAGS A PERV “RATIONAL REAPER”.

ATLANTA – DO A SEARCH FOR “GIBSON”, FREQUENTLY POSTING AS “WOODSTOCK”. ATLANTA IS ONE OF GIBSON RACE HATRED SITES.

SAN DIEGO – GIBSON POSTS AS PTA & HAC. HE CROSS-POSTS TO HIMSELF ALL DAY AND DELETES ALL OTHER POSTS.

LOS ANGELES, DOWN FROM 200 POSTS THREE YEARS AGO TO KNOW ABOUT FIVE POST DAILY, ALL GIBSON’S! ALL OTHERS HE DELETES.

RANTS CHICAGO, WHERE GIBSON HAS AN ASSORTMENT OF STALKING VICTIMS HE POSTS URGING TO COMMIT SUICIDE, A CRIMINAL ACT.

S.F. GIBSON FINALLY STOPPED YEARS OF OFFERING CRIMINAL REWARDS FOR THE MURDER OF ONE CHILDERS, A MAN GIBSON IS OBSESSED WITH.

PHOENIX DESTROYED BY GIBSON POSTING AS   THE INFAMOUS “PONCHO”, “DOC”, AND “DIANE”

ON DENVER POLITICS AND RANTS, GIBSON IS “RETIRED MILITARY”, “RETIRED NAVY”, “NEVER NEVER LAND”, “OFFICER FIFE”, “SHRUB MAN” ETC.

ON NYC RANTS, GIBSON WAS “GERMAN KNIGHT” THE RACIST, ANTI-SEMITIC THAT POSTED IMAGES OF NAZIS AND TAUNTED CRAIG NEWMARK, APPARENTLY A MAN OF JEWISH FAITH.

GO FROM ONE CL POLITICS OR RANTS FORUM AROUND THE NATION, AND YOU WILL FIND THEM ALL CONTROLLED BY CRIMINAL ASSAULT BY THIS CA LAWYER THAT SPENDS 20 HOURS A DAY, SEVEN DAYS A WEEK HARASSING POSTERS.

IF CL DOES NOT PERMIT GIBSON TO USE THESE FORMS FOR HIS STALKING AND HARASSMENT, GIBSON A “TECH” ATTORNEY, MAY TURN AROUND AND MARKET HIS FLAGGING OVERRIDE, WHICH WOULD PUT AN END TO CL.





ATTN: Craig Newmark - Where does your editorial staff hide out ? (FUCK JESUS CHRIST ????)



Date: 2011-12-18, 3:39PM EST
Reply to: see below
[Errors when replying to ads?]





YOUR QUICK TO EDIT AND DELETE ANY POSITIVE ADDITIONS FROM THE "CHRISTIAN" OPINION

YET THIS PERSISTENT MANIAC CONTINUES TO POLLUTE THE DC BOARD WITH HIS TRASH!




washington, DC craigslist > district of columbia > community > politics

The GLOBAL CORORATIONS say "FUCK GODDAMN AMERICA" (and "FUCK JESUS CHRIST as well")
Date: 2011-12-18, 3:03PM EST



Fuck the Lord!!! now that the corporations have taken over our government, the plan has been to eliminate every God fucking Damn job except fast food, cashier and government. And they will with the help of our shit government . Fuck the Lord !!!!!

• Location: FUCK JESUS GODDAMN CHRIST !!!!
•it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests


Location: and "FUCK JESUS CHRIST as well"
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests


FDR vs BARACK OBAMA - One Had Balls - The Other A Gutless Pawn of His Wall St. Banksters!


OBAMA’S GRAND PERFORMANCE OF “CHANGE”… or how he punked us big time!

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OBAMA’S CRONY CAPITALISM, A LOVE STORY BETWEEN THE ACTOR PRESIDENT, AND HIS BANKSTER DONORS!



Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).

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THERE IS A REASON WHY  THE BANKSTERS PILED MONEY ON OBAMA, AND WHEY THE WEALTHY AND LA RAZA WANT TO BUY HIM FOUR MORE YEARS OF CORRUPTION, AND THE TRANSFER OF WHAT’S LEFT OF THE ECONOMY INTO WALL ST’S HANDS!

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OBAMA’S AGENDA: … “but to the fact that those who can afford to buy influence are rewriting the rules so they can cut themselves progressively larger slices of the American pie while paying less of their fair share for it.”

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AS WE HAVE WITNESSED GO LIMP AT THE NOD OF HIS BANKSTER DONORS, OR ANY SPECIAL INTERESTS, MEXICO OR MUSLIM DICTATORS… CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE HIM HAVING THE BALLS TO SAY:

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

“He cites the famous speech in 1936 at Madison Square Garden, when Roosevelt declared, “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me--and I welcome their hatred.”

BARACK OBAMA – THE BANKSTER BOUGHT LA RAZA PRESIDENT!

“I’m not here to punish banks!” Barack Obama from the floor of the Senate.

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Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public—a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it.”

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OBAMA DOES HAVE A JOB PLAN! IT’S CALLED OPEN BORDERS, SABOTAGE OF E-VERIFY, CONTINUED NON-ENFORCEMENT OF LAWS PROHIBITING THE EMPLOYMENT OF ILLEGALS, LEGAL HARASSMENTS OF STATES LIKE ARIZONA AND ALABAMA ATTEMPTING TO LIMIT LA RAZA OCCUPATION, AND INFESTING HIS ADMIN WITH LA RAZA SUPREMACIST, LIKE SEC. OF LABOR HILDA SOLIS (LA RAZA).

Obama proposed an economic stimulus policy tailored to boosting corporate profitability, not jobs, and rejected any direct job creation by the federal government.

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 “Thus he writes that no administration official would “explain why saving the banks was such a priority, when saving the homes the banks were foreclosing didn’t seem to be.”



OBAMA AND HIS BANKSTERS’ ASSAULT ON AMERICAN HOME OWNERS:






As part of the bank bailout, the Treasury Department was given $46 billion to spend on keeping homeowners in their houses; to date, the agency has spent about $1.85 billion.

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They also say programs to curb foreclosure are voluntary, so they are limited in how far they can push mortgage servicers and investors, who often make more from foreclosures than from offering aid.
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REALITY BEHIND OBAMA’S CON JOBS AND PERFORMANCES:

This is only because he refuses to take seriously what Obama himself has said in the course of the deficit talks: that he supports massive cuts in entitlement programs, including Social Security, and that he supports the most modest of tax increases on the wealthy in order to provide a patina of “fairness” and “shared sacrifice,” without materially affecting the super-rich.

THE CON JOB

He writes: “Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography…”

 Once again: Why Obama won’t—and can’t—be Roosevelt

By Patrick Martin
13 August 2011

A lengthy commentary published August 7 in the Sunday Review section of the New York Times makes many criticisms of the policies of President Barack Obama, but collapses in the face of the most vital and compelling issue: which class interests the Obama administration serves.

Under the headline, “What Happened to Obama?” Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory University, expresses the disillusionment of many liberal supporters of Obama, who believed that the election of the first African-American president represented a watershed and an opportunity to revive the liberal reform policies associated with Roosevelt’s New Deal and the Great Society measures of the 1960s.

While couched in the language of post-modernism—Westen complains about Obama’s failure to “tell a story” or provide a compelling “counternarrative” to the Republican ultra-right—the criticisms are sharper than anything that has appeared recently in the Times, especially after the departure of two of the newspaper’s more liberal columnists, Bob Herbert and Frank Rich.

Westen focuses his critique especially on Obama’s refusal to denounce those responsible for the 2008 financial collapse—the bankers and billionaire speculators—and to promote an aggressively liberal alternative to the bank bailout initiated in the final months of the Bush administration and then expanded after the Democratic administration took over.

Pinning the blame for the crisis on the financial elite “would have made clear that the president understood that the American people had given Democrats the presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress to fix the mess the Republicans and Wall Street had made of the country, and that this would not be a power-sharing arrangement,” he argues.

“It would have made clear that the problem wasn’t tax-and-spend liberalism or the deficit--a deficit that didn’t exist until George W. Bush gave nearly $2 trillion in tax breaks largely to the wealthiest Americans and squandered $1 trillion in two wars. And perhaps most important, it would have offered a clear, compelling alternative to the dominant narrative of the right, that our problem is not due to spending on things like the pensions of firefighters, but to the fact that those who can afford to buy influence are rewriting the rules so they can cut themselves progressively larger slices of the American pie while paying less of their fair share for it.”

Westen contrasts Obama’s failure to the actions and words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal policies used government resources to “put Americans directly to work,” and who made a regular display of hostility to the big bankers, and vice versa. He cites the famous speech in 1936 at Madison Square Garden, when Roosevelt declared, “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me--and I welcome their hatred.”

While Roosevelt was himself just as committed to the capitalist system as his Wall Street foes, he clearly understood that in order to save capitalism, it was necessary to chastise the capitalists publicly, to appease popular anger, and to place some constraints on their operations in order to prevent a recurrence of the financial manipulations that produced the 1929 stock market crash.

Westen bemoans Obama’s refusal to follow this example. He writes: “In contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public—a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it.”

This criticism assumes, of course, that Obama could have provided a credible explanation for his decision to put the lunatics in charge of the capitalist asylum—including, most obviously, his selection of Timothy Geithner, head of the New York Federal Reserve during the 2008 crash and one of three principal organizers of the bank bailout, as his secretary of the treasury. Likewise, he chose to renominate Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke, another key architect of the bailout, for a new four-year term.

More importantly, Obama chose to continue the bailout of the banks begun by Geithner, Bernanke and Bush’s treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, and then to greatly expand it. Every aspect of the new administration’s financial and economic policy was driven by the determination to restore solvency to the investment banks, stock traders and hedge funds, at the expense of the working class.

Obama proposed an economic stimulus policy tailored to boosting corporate profitability, not jobs, and rejected any direct job creation by the federal government. After blocking efforts to limit executive pay at the bailed-out banks, the president demanded a 50 percent wage cut for newly hired auto workers as the price of bailing out General Motors and Chrysler. And his health care “reform” was driven by cost-cutting, not the extension of coverage to the uninsured.

Westen admits that these policies led to widespread confusion and then disillusionment among those voters who had expected a progressive alternative from Obama, and opened the way for the ultra-right Tea Party movement to divert popular discontent and gain influence. But he attributes this to Obama’s failure to motivate his policies, not to the objective content of the policies themselves. Thus he writes that no administration official would “explain why saving the banks was such a priority, when saving the homes the banks were foreclosing didn’t seem to be.”

Such a formulation suggests that such an explanation was possible; in other words, that Obama was pursuing a policy that was ultimately in the interests of working people, but failed to communicate it properly. The truth is far different: Obama’s policies were determined solely by the interests of the banks and corporations, and it proved impossible for him to disguise this fact from the working class. The Madison Avenue techniques and rhetoric of “hope” and “change” employed during the 2008 presidential campaign proved inadequate for gulling the masses indefinitely in the face of continued double-digit unemployment and declining living standards.

Westen concludes by effectively throwing up his hands over the recent confrontation between the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and the Obama administration over raising the federal debt ceiling and cutting the federal deficit. He describes the deficit debate as divorced from the real concerns of the American people about jobs and the ongoing economic slump, but expresses bewilderment about Obama’s role.

“Like most Americans, at this point,” he concludes, “I have no idea what Barack Obama—and by extension the party he leads—believes on virtually any issue.” This is only because he refuses to take seriously what Obama himself has said in the course of the deficit talks: that he supports massive cuts in entitlement programs, including Social Security, and that he supports the most modest of tax increases on the wealthy in order to provide a patina of “fairness” and “shared sacrifice,” without materially affecting the super-rich.

In attempting to explain why Obama made the decisions he did, however, Westen reduces great historical questions to the small change of personality and temperament, citing “lack of experience and a character defect that might not have been so debilitating at some other time in history.”

He writes: “Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography…”

These aspects of Obama’s biography are significant, but only in demonstrating that his elevation to the presidency was not the result of his personal achievements, but rather a decision by powerful sections of the ruling elite that a change in image and personnel was needed, along with some adjustments in foreign policy after the disasters of the Bush years, and a young African-American Democrat with conservative and solidly pro-capitalist loyalties would fit the bill.

While Westen faults Obama for his failure to indict the Wall Street criminals for causing the 2008 crash, it was precisely his behavior during those critical weeks that reassured the ruling elite that he could be entrusted with the presidency. While Republican John McCain improvised wildly—suspending his campaign, attempting to cancel the first debate, then reversing himself—and congressional Republicans precipitated a stock market collapse by initially voting down the bailout bill, Obama lined up 100 percent behind the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve in mobilizing every possible federal resource to save the banks and speculators.

September 2008 was Obama’s final audition for the White House, and he passed with flying colors. Why should anyone expect anything different from his presidency?

Westen ends his lament with a litany of complaints about the growing economic inequality in America, where “400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans… the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically… we cut the fixed incomes of our parents and grandparents so hedge fund managers can keep their 15 percent tax rates.”

Obama’s failure to challenge this social reality is not a personal one, or the result of individual policy choices. It rather is an objectively determined expression of very different circumstances from those that prevailed when Franklin Roosevelt was in the White House. The major difference is the long-term historical decline of American capitalism.

When Roosevelt took office, the economic conditions were even more dire than those confronting Obama in January 2009, but even in the depths of the Great Depression the United States was still the most powerful capitalist nation, with enormous economic reserves and industrial might. Today, however, the United States is a declining power, with a national debt approaching $17 trillion, an enormous negative balance of trade, and a shrinking industrial base.

Obama’s failure to offer a New Deal or echo the reformist rhetoric of FDR is not merely the product of his failure of imagination. It is an expression of the un-viability of such a policy today and the lack of support for it in the American ruling elite.

In the 1930s, fearful of the recent example of the Russian Revolution, facing immense upheavals from the American working class, the US capitalist class could afford to part with a relatively small portion of its vast wealth to stave off social and political disaster. Today it can neither afford nor envision such a policy. That makes a revolutionary settling of accounts by the American working class all the more necessary and historically inevitable.



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WHAT IS OBAMA? A WALL ST. OWNED PERFORMER THAT WORKS HARD FOR HIS LA RAZA “THE RACE” PARTY BASE OF ILLEGALS!



WHAT’S WRONG WITH OBAMA?

What's wrong with Obama?

The President's quest for re-election leaves progressives bitterly disillusioned

By Steve Breyman

Published 12:00 a.m., Sunday, August 7, 2011


Supporters are flabbergasted by the President's playbook. Why does he roll over so easily?

How come he let Wall Street off the hook? Why does he leave Main Street to suffer?

Answer: To do otherwise might -- he thinks -- endanger his political future.

Re-election is the usual top priority of national politicians. The President's politics and policies are carefully calculated to appeal to middle-of-the-roaders and swing voters.

The substance of an Obama policy is much less important than the political signals it sends, the flanks it covers and the powerful constituencies it serves. Let's look at some particulars.

Foreign policy:

Obama's opposition to the war in Iraq? A position consonant with public opinion, and with the activist base of his party. Support for the war in Afghanistan? Brilliant flank covering. Obama took away the Republicans' electoral advantage on national security by promising to wage the war more fiercely than George Bush, escalating drone strikes in Pakistan and intensifying covert interventions in Yemen and Somalia.

The aim is to actively wage the War on Terror and reduce the threat to "the homeland" so as to prevent tragedy on his watch. Even if something bad happens between now and November 2012, this is the President who killed Osama bin Laden.

Libya?

Not a single American death, a few billions down the drain, a Libyan opposition in his debt, a Republican opposition unwilling to really challenge him, a novel interpretation of the War Powers Act.

What's not to like from the re-election perspective? Keep your eyes on the prize.

Israel/Palestine?

Netanyahu has been a thorn is Obama's side but worry not. Beyond the issue of illegal settlements, Obama's loyalty to the Israeli right wing appears boundless.

Why? Zionist campaign contributions.

Push the corporate domination schemes also known as "free trade agreements?" Check.

Unprecedented persecution of whistle-blowers ("worse than Nixon" thinks John Dean)? Check.

More money for the nuclear weapons complex? A small price to pay for New START. Another giant defense budget? No problem, we'll cut it in the second term.

Domestic policy:

The debt ceiling "deal"? Does anyone to the left of Michele Bachmann believe it's in the interest of working families?

Got civil liberties? Who cares?

Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare on the chopping block? If slashing benefits for granny will confer political advantage, then so be it. Warehousing millions in jails and prisons? Beats having to find jobs for them.

Immigration reform? Can't do it without the Republicans.

Sustainable agriculture? Don't be a "professional leftist;" only GMOs, plus a lot of oil, crop subsidies, and petrochemicals can feed the world.

Nuclear energy? Fukushima can't happen here.

Clean coal? It's not an oxymoron, it's the key to votes in West Virginia. Fracking? Natural gas is the "bridge" to a green energy future.

Offshore oil drilling? BP's Gulf geyser was a tough couple of months. But we innovated a new regulatory agency, and can now move forward.

Health care reform? The greatest accomplishment of the administration. Medicare for all is simply not the American way, and pharmaceutical and insurance companies were OK with it.

Avoidance of initiatives that look like "black politics"? Check.

Lousy mortgage adjustment program? At least the big banks were saved.

Bush tax cuts? We extended those. A Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that Republicans hate? Appoint a "Jeopardy" champion to run it. High unemployment? Jobs programs are so 1930s.

The politics of re-election:

Obama might lack Bill Clinton's folksiness; he does not lack his political instincts. Triangulation places Obama in the New Center, and much further to the political right than a generation ago. Centrism enables Obama to vacuum up campaign cash at record pace.

Again, politicians will generally do what they think it takes to get re-elected; Obama is no different. This President believes you hit the political sweet spot by ignoring your base. And he knows that you don't succeed in national politics by biting the hands that feed you.

What would it take for Obama to change?

A massive sustained mobilization of angry citizens demanding radical change? Maybe.

In the meantime? Campaign cash. Lots of it.

Steve Breyman teaches at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His email address is breyms@rpi.edu.

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Obama campaign raises record sums from the wealthy

By Patrick Martin
15 July 2011

Proving that President Obama is the first choice of Wall Street and the American super-rich, his reelection campaign announced Wednesday that it had broken all previous records for fundraising, raking in $86 million during the second quarter of this year.

The $86 million total dwarfed the previous record for presidential reelection fundraising, the $50 million raised by George W. Bush in the third quarter of 2003. It was far above the $60 million target set by Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina.

Obama for America, the official name of the reelection effort, raised $47 million, while the Democratic National Committee collected $38 million, largely from fundraising events featuring the president, where big donors are allowed to give up to $30,800 apiece. Individual donations to Obama for America are limited under federal election laws to a maximum of $5,000.

By comparison, the leading Republican fundraiser, former Massachusetts governor and investment banker Mitt Romney, raised $18.25 million in the April-June quarter. The total raised by all the Republican presidential hopefuls who have filed reports with the Federal Election Commission came to only $36 million, less than half Obama’s haul.

The Obama reelection campaign will be the most lavishly funded in American history. It is expected to dwarf the $745 million Obama raised in 2008, and could top the $1 billion mark. Only two decades ago, $20 million was sufficient to finance a full-scale presidential campaign.

According to press accounts, the Obama campaign has already opened 60 offices in various states around the country, nearly a year and a half before Election Day, and hired hundreds of full-time operatives.

The vast fund-raising comes in two relatively distinct components: over half a million small donors, reflecting lingering illusions in Obama in sections of the population; and large donors, from the wealthy and the most affluent sections of the upper-middle class.

A total of 552,462 individuals gave money during the second quarter, including 260,000 who made no donations during the 2008 campaign. Of these, 98 percent were of $250 or less, with an average contribution of $69. Based on that average, the small donations accounted for less than half the total raised, about $37 million.

The remainder, about $49 million, came in large-dollar contributions, including thousands who gave the maximum of $35,800—$30,800 to the DNC and $5,000 to Obama for America.

The Washington Post noted, “Much of the tens of millions Obama raised through the Democratic National Committee came from big fundraising events that the president attended throughout the spring. Donors to the DNC can give up to $30,800, and many of those who made the maximum contribution got to attend intimate, invitation-only dinners at which the president took their questions behind closed doors.”

Moreover, the total number of small donors was deliberately inflated by a promotion run by the campaign in which anyone who gave as little as $5 was entered into a lottery for a dinner with Obama and Vice President Biden.

The Obama campaign, clearly concerned about releasing information that would demonstrate corporate America’s enthusiasm for the president’s reelection, declined to say how much Obama for America raised from large donors. These numbers will be buried in the 15,000-page report the campaign files Friday with the FEC.

The report to the FEC will also detail the amount raised by “bundlers,” those who solicit donations from a group of individuals and reach a total set by the campaign, of $350,000 or more, as well as a group called Gen44, consisting of individuals younger than 40 who raise $100,000 or more.

While the 2008 Obama campaign was regularly described as fueled by small donors, the actual figures demonstrate the opposite: Obama did indeed raise $180 million from that source, but that came to less than one-quarter of his overall fundraising. Nearly half of his total—and the bulk of the early money, critical to sustaining his campaign against the initial frontrunner, Hillary Clinton—came from big donors.

Some details of the wooing of big-ticket donors were reported in the Washington press. The Post reported June 29, “Campaign officials are working to broaden Obama’s network of ‘bundlers,’ the well-connected rainmakers tasked with soliciting big checks from wealthy donors, while seeking to preserve the aura of a grass-roots movement by luring back the kind of small Internet donations that helped shatter fundraising records four years ago. Obama has attended 28 fundraisers from coast to coast—a pace that could continue, or even accelerate, over the next several months.”

The Post noted that White House Chief of Staff William Daley, former vice chairman of JP Morgan Chase “has huddled in recent weeks over breakfasts and dinners with business leaders and Wall Street financiers in Chicago, New York and Washington,” while campaign manager Messina “made his pitch during at least two meetings in Manhattan with Wall Street executives.”

Politico described one Wall Street fundraising dinner held at Daniel, a top-drawer restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper East Side: “The tables were filled with moneymen like Marc Lasry, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Avenue Capital; Robert Wolf, the chief executive of UBS Group Americas; and Mark T. Gallogly, a co-founder of Centerbridge Partners.”

While noting the absence of Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, this was said to be by mutual agreement—an effort to avoid photographs of the president shaking hands with the CEOs of the largest recipients of federal bailouts.

“While Wall Street executives still complain about the president’s name-calling and pressure for a regulatory overhaul,” Politico observed cynically, “many say privately that his bark has been worse than his bite.”

The event raised $2.3 million in a single evening, far more than the projected $1.5 million. Politico concluded that “Obama’s campaign set a goal of getting 400 individuals to each help raise $350,000 by year’s end. That may sound like a tall order—especially with much of Wall Street on the sidelines—but early indications suggest the effort is on track, according to people involved in the campaign.”

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More than 5 million households had their wealth wiped out since 2005

By Andre Damon
28 July 2011

The typical US household lost 28 percent of its wealth during the economic crisis, with one third of these being totally wiped out, according to a recent analysis of Census Bureau data carried out by the Pew Research Center, “Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks and Hispanics”.

While the study headlines racial disparities, the most striking findings concern the general impoverishment of all sections of the population. The percent of US households who have a net worth of zero dollars or below—meaning they have more debts than assets—grew from 15 percent in 2005, to 20 percent in 2009. This means that 5.6 million households, or about 15 million people, had their wealth totally wiped out during the first part of the economic downturn. These figures come from an analysis of Census Bureau survey data for 2005 and 2009.

The study found that, after adjusting for inflation, the median wealth of US households fell from $96,894 in 2005 to $70,000 in 2009, a drop of 28 percent. The majority of this is attributable to the precipitous fall in real estate values, by about 30 percent between 2006 and 2009 and even more since.

The fall in home values has been compounded by falling wages. Between 2005 and 2009, workers’ average hourly earnings fell, on an inflation-adjusted basis, by 5 percent, according to the Labor Department.

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UNDER OBAMA, THE RICH GET RICHER, AND JOBS GO TO HIS LA RAZA PARTY BASE!


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Obama's Regulatory Reform Sham Continues

By Lurita Doan

5/30/2011



President Obama's much-praised efforts at regulatory reform remain a sham. This past week, while the President traveled overseas, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in conjunction with rolled out its review of proposed changes to government regulations.

The reform will affect at least 30 federal agencies and is designed to "always consider costs and ways to reduce burdens for American businesses when developing rules; expand opportunities for public participation and public comment; and ensure that regulations are driven by real science." An elegant White House web page, accompanied by an online, explanatory video, supported by an in-person appearances from OMB Director Jacob Lew and Cass Sunstein, and countless, premature victory laps around Washington cannot disguise the emptiness of many of the proposed reforms. For, what has been released is just the plan for the plan.

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FROM CREOLE FOLKS



Obama Seeks Brother of "Chicago Mob Boss" for Top White House Post

The roaches and con-artist, fake journalist on cable news are all lying about William Daley being all this and all that, this man is an open borders, down with America, free trade globalist.  MSNBC and Gretta "the Scientology" Van Susteren from Fox News are knowingly deceiving the public about D. Issa & his letter to "business owners"=which they made into such a BIG DAM DEAL, but no one says anything whenBarrack Hussein Obama, comes around with all of these shady bankers, hedge fund managers and Wall St. Tycoons, which he puts in his cabinet.  All of Obama's meeting with Wall Street asking, "What can I do for you?" is never something covered by Keith Oberman or Rachel Maddow. 

(Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama is considering naming William Daley, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive and former U.S. Commerce secretary, to a high-level administration post, possibly White House chief of staff, people familiar with the matter said.

 Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses


BY TIMOTHY P CARNEY

 Editorial Reviews

Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?

Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.

Congressman Ron Paul says, “Every libertarian and free-market conservative needs to read Obamanomics.” And Johan Goldberg, columnist and bestselling author says, “Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its best and an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”

If you’ve wondered what’s happening to America, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages,” this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.

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FROM JUDICIAL WATCH



Shaping up to be the most corrupt
administration in American history:

  • Obama’s team: Not the “best of the Washington insiders,” as the liberal media style them, but rather, a dysfunctional and dangerous conglomerate of business-as-usual cronies and hacks
  • In the first two weeks alone of his infant administration, Obama had made no fewer than 17 exceptions to his “no-lobbyist” rule
  • Why the fact that the massive infusion of union dues into his campaign treasury didn’t trouble him in the least reveals Obama’s credibility as a reformer
  • The lack of unprecedented pace of withdrawals and botched appointments -- and how getting through the confirmation process was no guarantee of ethical cleanliness or competence, even as Obama’s cheerleaders were glorifying the Greatest Transition in World History
  • Inconsistency: How Obama, erstwhile critic of the campaign finance practice known as “bundling,” happily accepted more than $350,000 in bundled contributions from billionaire hedge-fund managers
  • How Obama broke his transparency pledge with the very first bill he signed into law -- helping make hostility to transparency is a running thread through Obama’s cabinet
  • Michelle Obama: Beneath the cultured pearls, sleeveless designer dresses, and eyelashes applied by her full-time makeup artist, is a hardball Chicago politico
  • Joe Biden: It’s not just that he lies, it’s that he lies so well that you think he really believes the stuff he makes up
  • Treasury Secretary Geithner: His ineptness and epic blundering -- including how he nearly caused the collapse of the dollar in international trade with a single remark
  • The appalling story of Technology Czar Vivek Kundra, the convicted shoplifter in charge of the entire federal government’s information security infrastructure
  • Obama’s “Porker of the Month” Transportation Secretary, Roy LaHood: An earmark-addicted influence peddler born and raised on the politics of pay-to-play
  • SEIU: Responsible for installing a cabal of hand-chosen officers who exploited their cash-infused fiefdoms for personal gain and presided over rigged elections -- in the process, becoming all that they had professed to stand against as representatives of the downtrodden worker
  • How Obama lied on his “Fight the Smears” campaign website when he claimed that he “never organized with ACORN”
  • ACORN: How the profound threat the group poses is not merely ideological or economic -- it’s electoral
  • ACORN’s own internal review of shady money transfers among its web of affiliates: How it underscores concerns that conservatives have long raised about the organization
  • Liar, liar, pantsuit on fire: How Hillary Clinton has already trampled upon her promise not to let her husband’s financial dealings sway her decisions as Secretary of State
  • How even a few principled progressives are finally beginning to question the cult of Obama -- even as Obama sycophants in the mainstream media continue to celebrate his “hipness” and “swagga”



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As part of the bank bailout, the Treasury Department was given $46 billion to spend on keeping homeowners in their houses; to date, the agency has spent about $1.85 billion.

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They also say programs to curb foreclosure are voluntary, so they are limited in how far they can push mortgage servicers and investors, who often make more from foreclosures than from offering aid.

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NEW YORK TIMES

June 4, 2011

For the Jobless, Little U.S. Help on Foreclosure


The Obama administration’s main program to keep distressed homeowners from falling into foreclosure has been aimed at those who took out subprime loans or other risky mortgages during the heady days of the housing boom. But these days, the primary cause of foreclosures is unemployment.

As a result, there is a mismatch between the homeowner program’s design and the country’s economic realities — and a new round of finger-pointing about how best to fix it.

The administration’s housing effort does include programs to help unemployed homeowners, but they have been plagued by delays, dubious benefits and abysmal participation. For example, a Treasury Department effort started in early 2010 allows the jobless to postpone mortgage payments for three months, but the average length of unemployment is now nine months. As of March 31, there were only 7,397 participants.

“So far, I think the public record will show that programs to help unemployed homeowners have not been very successful,” said Jeffrey C. Fuhrer, an executive vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Data released last week suggests that the administration’s task is only growing more difficult as the problems created by unemployment and housing persist. New job growth in May was anemic, and unemployment inched up to 9.1 percent, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Earlier in the week, a widely watched index found that housing prices had dropped to their lowest level in nearly a decade. And while the rate of homes falling into foreclosure has slowed, the reason is delays in processing foreclosures, not a housing recovery, according to RealtyTrac, a company that tracks foreclosures. There were 219,258 foreclosure filings in April, the latest month available.

Critics of the Obama administration’s approach to preventing foreclosures have pressed for two years to get officials to focus more of their attention on unemployed homeowners, with meager results. As part of the bank bailout, the Treasury Department was given $46 billion to spend on keeping homeowners in their houses; to date, the agency has spent about $1.85 billion.

Morris A. Davis, a former Federal Reserve economist, estimates that as many as a million homeowners slipped into foreclosure because of insufficient help for the unemployed.

“The money was there and they didn’t spend it,” said Mr. Davis, an associate real estate professor at the University of Wisconsin. “I don’t mean to sound outraged, but I am pretty outraged.”

Administration officials said their programs have had a positive impact, albeit not as large as they had hoped. But they say that the problems of unemployment and negative equity on homes are not easily solved. They also say programs to curb foreclosure are voluntary, so they are limited in how far they can push mortgage servicers and investors, who often make more from foreclosures than from offering aid.

“We are trying to be careful in designing programs that at the end of the day aren’t just about spending money but getting people back on their feet,” said James Parrott, a senior adviser at the White House’s National Economic Council.

President Obama has been scrambling to curb the number of foreclosures ever since he arrived at the White House.

At the start of 2009, the administration announced its primary foreclosure prevention initiative, the Home Affordable Modification Program. It provides incentives to banks to modify mortgages, reducing monthly payments for eligible homeowners.

The administration said the program would help three million to four million homeowners, but so far, only 670,000 homeowners have received permanent modifications. In addition, the program was primarily meant for homeowners with risky mortgages; jobless owners are often ineligible because some payment, albeit reduced, is required.

Administration officials said the program was helping homeowners whose income had been reduced. Sixty-one percent of homeowners who received permanent modifications listed “curtailment of income” as their reason for applying, though it is not known how many of them are unemployed or simply had their hours or pay reduced.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development received $1 billion as part of the financial regulatory reforms that passed last year to help unemployed homeowners. That money will be used to provide government loans to unemployed homeowners for up to 24 months.

Though the program was announced last fall, so far applications are being accepted in only five states; the others are delayed because of “implementation challenges,” a HUD spokeswoman said.

Critics do acknowledge one bright spot — the Hardest Hit Fund, a federal program that will provide $7.6 billion so that some states can administer their own programs for struggling homeowners. Of that, 70 percent will be directed to unemployed homeowners, said Andrea Risotto, a Treasury spokeswoman.

So far, $455 million has been spent. Over the last several years, academics, housing groups and government economists offered proposals to Treasury officials to help the unemployed avoid foreclosure.

One, which Mr. Fuhrer of the Boston Fed helped write, called on the government to provide loans, or grants, to unemployed or underemployed homeowners to make up for the amount of income they lost. The loan would have to be repaid once the homeowner found a new job.

Another proposal, by a non-profit group called the PICO National Network, a coalition of faith-based community organizations, would have allowed unemployed homeowners to postpone much or all of their mortgage payments for a year or more.

But administration officials have balked, arguing that regulators and “other industry stakeholders expressed strong reservations” about allowing unemployed homeowners to extend payments for longer terms, according to a Dec. 23 letter that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner sent to Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, who had pressed for measures that would more directly aid the unemployed.

The debate is playing out on the sidelines of partisan Washington politics, since Republican lawmakers have made clear they would like to get rid of anti-foreclosure programs altogether, and would block any new programs. Instead, it is setting homeowner advocates against administration officials over how to spend money already appropriated.

Administration officials maintain that the decision on whether to offer mortgage relief to homeowners ultimately was up to mortgage servicers and investors, not the government, which can provide incentives but not compel action.

“We as an administration have limited levers,” Mr. Parrot said. “We can push them on the margins.”

But Lewis Finfer, a PICO organizer, said he could not understand why the administration had not been more receptive given the extent of unemployment.

“We have a program to deal with this,” he said.

Many unemployed or underemployed homeowners said they would welcome an extended break in mortgage payments.

Mary Ernest, 51, of Blackstone, Mass., lost her job as a school aide and said she had been “reduced to begging, more or less,” to keep her home. Adam Heyman, 41, of Chelsea, Mass., scraped together enough money to pay the mortgage on his condominium for about 18 months. Though he finally got another full-time job, his bank had already foreclosed on his condo.

“If I had a way to slow down the process or stop it for a while, that would have been nice,” Mr. Heyman said, adding, “Now I can certainly afford to pay.”

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OBAMA’S BANKSTER DONORS DOIN’ GOOD! PROFITS UP! FORECLOSURES UP! BANK NO REGULATION GUARANTEED! BAILOUTS FOR BUYOUTS…. And not a single bankster donor in prison!



WHAT DID THE BANKSTERS KNOW ABOUT OUR ACTOR OBAMA THAT WE DIDN’T KNOW?

Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).

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“Obama's rhetoric covered the whole financial industry, but the key changes will affect only a few high-profile players, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., while sparing investment banks like Goldman Sachs Group Inc.”

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Lou Dobbs Tonight

Thursday, July 9, 2009

And Harvard economics professor JEFFREY MIRON will weigh in on the state of the U.S. economy—and why the only plausible argument for bailing out banks crumbles on close examination.

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"There is a populist and conservative revolt against Wall Street and financial elites, Congress and government," Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg warned in an analysis this week. "Democrats and President Obama are seen as more interested in bailing out Wall Street than helping Main Street."