Wednesday, February 1, 2012

OBAMA'S REPORT CARD: The Reality of "CHANGE"






This is unreal. Thank God someone had the background, intelligence,
and determination to put this together. This took an enormous amount
of work. I have to forward this to everyone I know. Please remember
that we hold a great deal of power...we can vote!


Barack Obama's 32 Month Report Card
by Rich Carroll

Copy this article. You will need researched material to mail your
liberal friends and/or relatives.

Mr. Hope and Change wants to create a nation humbled; humiliated,
casting–aside capitalism and individual freedoms for one where we the
people are government controlled. This would be a system that
genuflects mediocrity, steals personal aspiration and opportunity, and
punishes those who strive to succeed.

A gallon of regular gasoline the day Obama was inaugurated was $1.79
on average in the U.S. Today that price is $3.59, a 100.6% increase.

The number of food stamp recipients has risen since Obama took office
from 31,983,716 to 43,200,878, a 35.1% jump. Long term unemployment
soared 146.2% during the same 32 month period from 2,600,000 to
6,400,000. Staggering hope and change isn't it?

American citizens living in poverty have risen 9.5% from 39,800,000 to
43,600,000, and the number of unemployed has jumped almost 25% from
11,616,000 to 14,485,000 as of August 31, 2011. The number of
unemployed blacks has risen from 12.6% at the end of George Bush's
term to 15.8% today, a 25.4% increase, and finally, our national debt
is up 34.4% from 10.627 trillion to 14,278 trillion *

Keep these figures in mind as we recount the number of firsts for this
presidency:
First President to refuse to show a valid birth certificate.
First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then
deny he was a foreigner.
First President to have a social security number from a state he has
never lived in.
First President to preside over a cut to the credit rating of the
United States .
First President to violate the War Powers Act.
First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally
obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico .
First President to defy a Federal Judges court order to cease
implementing the Health Care Reform Law.
First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a
third party.
First President to spend a trillion dollars on shovel–ready jobs and
later admit there was no such thing as shovel–ready jobs.
First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of
companies to his union supporters.
First President to by–pass Congress and implement the Dream Act
through executive fiat.
First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the
deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S. , including those
with criminal convictions.
First President to demand a company hand–over $20 billion to one of
his political appointees.
First President to terminate Americas ability to put a man in space.
First President to encourage racial discrimination and intimidation at
polling places.
First President to have a law signed by an auto–pen without being present.
First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law
unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.
First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly
speak–out on the reasons for their rate increases.
First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state
they are allowed to locate a factory.
First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath
to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN)
First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been
properly issued years ago.
First President to fire an inspector general of Ameri–corps for
catching one of his friends in a corruption case.
First President to appoint 45 Czars to replace elected officials in his office.
First President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half
years in office.
First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records.
First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.
First President to coddle American enemies while alienating Americas allies.
First President to publicly bow to Americas enemies while refusing to
salute the U.S. Flag.
First President to go on multiple global apology tours.
First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights
and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends, paid for by
the taxpayer.
First President to refuse to wear the U.S. Flag lapel pin.
First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.
First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000.00 a
year at taxpayer expense.
First President to repeat the Holy Qur'an tells us, and openly admit
the early morning call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the
most beautiful sound on earth.
Remember that 32 months of Obama White House we the people have
accumulated national debt at a rate more than 27 times as fast as
during the rest of our nation's entire history, as the Obama's plan
their next extravagant vacation to the Indonesian Island nation of
Bali .
Hope and change anyone ?????????
* sources: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Wall Street
Journal, Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Dept of Labor, Standard &
Poors/Case–Shiller, Federal Reserve, US Treasury, Heritage Foundation.



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DO A SEARCH ON THE BLOG FOR OBAMA AND HIS AL RAZA INFESTED ADMIN.

IF YOU’RE NOT LA RAZA SUPREMACIST, YOU ONLY GET A JOB IN OBAMAland OF CORRUPTION IF YOU’RE A CRIMINAL BANKSTER!




OBAMA IS BUSH’S THIRD TERM!

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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.

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Every time it seems is if the Obama Administration cannot sink any lower in its efforts to deceive the American taxpayer, the limbo stick comes out, and Americans get to see, once again, just how low the Obama Administration can go. Team Obama's Regulations Review seems to be a colossal fraud, during the course of which, agencies are actually increasing the regulations affecting individuals and businesses.

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Banks, hedge funds and other financial firms lavishly backed his presidential bid, giving him considerably more than they gave to his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain.

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 was some press speculation that Daley’s departure was related to Obama’s decision to base his reelection campaign on attacking congressional Republicans for obstructing his supposed jobs initiatives, combined with doses of populist rhetoric about defending the middle class and fighting Wall Street. Whatever electoral calculations may have been involved, however, the shift in White House personnel does not reflect any change in the right-wing, pro-corporate policies of the Obama administration.

On the contrary, the appointment of Lew underscores the incestuous relationship between the Obama White House and Wall Street. All three of Obama’s chiefs of staff—Rahm Emanuel (2009-2010), Daley (2011-2012) and Lew—are multi-millionaires who made their fortunes as top executives of major banks.

He was brought in, replacing interim White House head Peter Rouse, to reassure the corporations and banks that Obama would fully implement their agenda of deregulation and austerity and to conciliate the Republicans. His appointment signaled a further shift to the right by the Obama administration.

Daley resigns as White House chief of staff

By Barry Grey
11 January 2012

President Barack Obama on Monday announced the resignation of his chief of staff, William Daley, and the appointment of the current budget director, Jacob Lew, to replace him. Daley is expected to become co-chair of Obama’s reelection campaign, where he will use his Wall Street connections to raise millions in campaign cash from the financial industry.

According to numerous reports, Daley’s departure, coming after a bit less than a year at the top White House post and at the start of an election year, took Obama by surprise. Only last October Daley had said he would remain until after the 2012 elections.

However, it had been widely reported that Daley was the focus of tensions within the White House, and last November, after the administration failed to secure a “grand bargain” deficit-cutting deal with the Republicans, Daley announced he was giving up day-to-day management of White House affairs.

There was some press speculation that Daley’s departure was related to Obama’s decision to base his reelection campaign on attacking congressional Republicans for obstructing his supposed jobs initiatives, combined with doses of populist rhetoric about defending the middle class and fighting Wall Street. Whatever electoral calculations may have been involved, however, the shift in White House personnel does not reflect any change in the right-wing, pro-corporate policies of the Obama administration.

 On the contrary, the appointment of Lew underscores the incestuous relationship between the Obama White House and Wall Street. All three of Obama’s chiefs of staff—Rahm Emanuel (2009-2010), Daley (2011-2012) and Lew—are multi-millionaires who made their fortunes as top executives of major banks.

Emanuel, who resigned in September 2010 to run for mayor of Chicago, made more than $18 million in the two-and-a half years he spent at a Chicago investment firm between a stint in the Clinton White House and six years in the House of Representatives. He left Congress in 2009 to run the Obama White House. Emanuel was the top recipient in the House of Representatives of campaign contributions from hedge funds, private equity firms and the broader investment industry during the 2008 election cycle.

Daley, son and brother of Chicago’s longest-serving mayors, headed the Commerce Department under Clinton and then joined JPMorgan Chase, where he made millions as the bank’s Midwest chairman and head of its global lobbying department, where he worked to block Obama’s new consumer financial protection bureau.

Long considered a representative of the right wing of the Democratic Party, even as the party as a whole lurched ever more to the right, Daley was tapped by Obama following the Democratic rout in the 2010 congressional elections. He was brought in, replacing interim White House head Peter Rouse, to reassure the corporations and banks that Obama would fully implement their agenda of deregulation and austerity and to conciliate the Republicans. His appointment signaled a further shift to the right by the Obama administration.

Lew is a longtime Washington insider, having served as a top adviser to the late House Speaker Tip O’Neill in the 1980s and director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the final years of the Clinton administration. He was deputy director of the State Department under Hillary Clinton in 2009 and 2010, until he left to become OMB director for Obama.

Prior to joining the Obama administration, Lew spent three years as a top executive at Citigroup. (The man he replaced as budget director, Peter Orszag, accepted a multi-million-dollar position as a high-level Citigroup official within months of leaving his post in the Obama administration).

In 2008, at the time of the financial crash, Lew was chief operating officer of Citigroup Alternative Investments, an internal private equity, hedge fund and real estate investing arm of the bank. Lew’s unit invested heavily and profitably in the hedge fund managed by billionaire John Paulson, which made billions of dollars by betting that the subprime housing market would collapse.

Paulson was named by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission as playing a central role in securities fraud committed by Goldman Sachs. Both federal bodies charged that Goldman made millions by selling subprime-backed securities to investors, without telling them that the underlying mortgages had been hand-picked by Paulson, who was, along with Goldman, betting that the securities would collapse.

For his contribution to the financial collapse, Lew received a salary of $1.1 million. Two weeks before he joined the Obama State Department, and after Citigroup had received $45 billion in taxpayer bailout money, Lew was awarded an additional $900,000 bonus by Citigroup.

Lew headed up the Obama administration’s efforts to forge an agreement with congressional Republicans over the spring and summer for $4 trillion in deficit-reduction over the next decade. The White House and the Republican leadership created a crisis over the deadline for raising the federal debt limit in order to push through unprecedented cuts in basic social programs.

Under Lew’s direction, the administration sought to outflank the Republicans from the right, including in its budget proposal cuts in Social Security as well as billions in reductions in Medicare and Medicaid. The deal collapsed as a result of Republican opposition. In the end, the two sides passed a scaled-down plan to slash $2.4 trillion, including sweeping cuts in food stamps, home heating assistance, public health and housing. The agreement excluded any tax increase on corporations or the rich.

Both the Democrats and Republicans acknowledge the August 2011 deal to be a mere down payment on more massive cuts to be enacted after the November elections.


Copyright © 1998-2011 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

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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.

According to the hype, after 120 days of effort, federal agencies have come forward with "groundbreaking" ideas--not for ways to cut costs to taxpayers by reducing regulations--but with ideas on how to generate ideas on how to implement potential regulatory review and reform.

What a lot of hullabaloo about something that hasn't happened, and which, if the timelines identified in the 30 agency plans are anything to go by, will not happen until 2012--long after the current debt ceiling has exploded and too late to provide significant contributions to the federal budget and deficit debate.

Any talk from Sunstein about billions in savings is premature at best and possibly constitutes a deliberate attempt at fraud since changes will be proposed to be implemented in 2012 or later--so that it will be difficult to measure accountability and results until long after the November 2012 presidential election.

Reading some of the agency plans housed on the White House website shows that much of what the White House is calling an "unprecedented, government-wide review" is little more than a rehash of policies, planning and strategies proposed during the Clinton and Bush Administrations. Many of those actions, which were identified by Obama's predecessors, have been left languishing during the Obama Administration because they called for tough actions.

Every time it seems is if the Obama Administration cannot sink any lower in its efforts to deceive the American taxpayer, the limbo stick comes out, and Americans get to see, once again, just how low the Obama Administration can go. Team Obama's Regulations Review seems to be a colossal fraud, during the course of which, agencies are actually increasing the regulations affecting individuals and businesses.

The Regulations Review process is adding to the size of government by creating new review committees, adding to the cost of government because none of these review bodies operate free of cost, and Sunstein and his team seem to be banking on the fact that few will read the hollow reports, so that the Obama Administration can present their "savings" howsoever they choose.

Then there is the issue of transparency. For example, the Department of Education's report along with 29 others listed on the White House site can only be commented on by providing personal Facebook information, thus eliminating commenter anonymity, which will certainly affect the content of the feedback, and forcing non-Facebook users to search for alternative means to provide comments to the Obama Administration.

In another example, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) report of regulatory reform spends almost approximately 9 pages of its 12-page report discussing the plan for the plan and spends less than three pages listing recommended regulations considered for regulatory reform. Of the five reforms listed, three of the five comprise regulation reforms were begun and completed during the Bush Administration.

One of the recommendations (#4, p.10) a review of the GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) pricing clause was an idea conceived, a Blue ribbon commission formed and funded and with findings completed during the previous Administration. These findings from the independent commission have been waiting for the current GSA Administrator to act upon for the past two years.

Instead, at no small expense to the American taxpayer, the current team at GSA seems to be saying: let's just kick that can down the road because confronting the challenges of this out-of-date, ineffective rule is just too scary. So, in this plan for the plan, the current team at GSA promises to look at the pricing clause problem with a date uncertain in 2012 for possible resolution. In the case of GSA's blatant misrepresentation, claiming credit for proposing new and "unprecedented" regulatory reform reviews based partly on a recommendation that the Obama Team will launch the Pricing Clause review is nothing other than a fraud, and an easily exposed one at that.

By contrast, the Department of Education report and the Department of Homeland Security report identify in their reports that much of the to-be-discussed regulatory reform was initiated during the Bush Administration.

For the Obama Administration to claim that the Regulatory Review chicanery comprises a "defining moment" is an insult to the American taxpayer who has to foot the bill, and the folks in government who have put their names on these reports should be ashamed.

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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/obama-his-bankster-thugs-running.html

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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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Well, Obama’s got Bush’s war profiteer whore, Dianne Feinstein, and the Saudis’ whore Hillary Clinton, why shouldn’t he have Bush’s architect for BIG BANKERS’ WELFARE, Timmy?

Obama's Wall Street cabinet

6 April 2009

A series of articles published over the weekend, based on financial disclosure reports released by the Obama administration last Friday concerning top White House officials, documents the extent to which the administration, in both its personnel and policies, is a political instrument of Wall Street.

Policies that are extraordinarily favorable to the financial elite that were put in place over the past month by the Obama administration have fed a surge in share values on Wall Street. These include the scheme to use hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds to pay hedge funds to buy up the banks’ toxic assets at inflated prices, the Auto Task Force’s rejection of the recovery plans of Chrysler and General Motors and its demand for even more brutal layoffs, wage cuts and attacks on workers’ health benefits and pensions, and the decision by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to weaken “mark-to-market” accounting rules and permit banks to inflate the value of their toxic assets.

At the same time, Obama has campaigned against restrictions on bonuses paid to executives at insurance giant American International Group (AIG) and other bailed-out firms, and repeatedly assured Wall Street that he will slash social spending, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

The new financial disclosures reveal that top Obama advisors directly involved in setting these policies have received millions from Wall Street firms, including those that have received huge taxpayer bailouts.

The case of Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council and Obama’s top economic adviser, highlights the politically incestuous character of relations between the Obama administration and the American financial elite.

Last year, Summers pocketed $5 million as a managing director of D.E. Shaw, one of the biggest hedge funds in the world, and another $2.7 million for speeches delivered to Wall Street firms that have received government bailout money. This includes $45,000 from Citigroup and $67,500 each from JPMorgan Chase and the now-liquidated Lehman Brothers.

For a speech to Goldman Sachs executives, Summers walked away with $135,000. This is substantially more than double the earnings for an entire year of high-seniority auto workers, who have been pilloried by the Obama administration and the media for their supposedly exorbitant and “unsustainable” wages.

Alluding diplomatically to the flagrant conflict of interest revealed by these disclosures, the New York Times noted on Saturday: “Mr. Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, wields important influence over Mr. Obama’s policy decisions for the troubled financial industry, including firms from which he recently received payments.”

Summers was a leading advocate of banking deregulation. As treasury secretary in the second Clinton administration, he oversaw the lifting of basic financial regulations dating from the 1930s. The Times article notes that among his current responsibilities is deciding “whether—and how—to tighten regulation of hedge funds.”

Summers is not an exception. He is rather typical of the Wall Street insiders who comprise a cabinet and White House team that is filled with multi-millionaires, presided over by a president who parlayed his own political career into a multi-million-dollar fortune.

Michael Froman, deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, worked for Citigroup and received more than $7.4 million from the bank from January of 2008 until he entered the Obama administration this year. This included a $2.25 million year-end bonus handed him this past January, within weeks of his joining the Obama administration.

Citigroup has thus far been the beneficiary of $45 billion in cash and over $300 billion in government guarantees of its bad debts.

David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s top strategist and now senior adviser to the president, was paid $1.55 million last year from two consulting firms he controls. He has agreed to buyouts that will garner him another $3 million over the next five years. His disclosure claims personal assets of between $7 and $10 million.

Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, was paid $3.9 million by a Washington law firm whose major clients include Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and the private equity firm Apollo Management.

Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, made $227,155 last year from IndyMac Bancorp, the California bank that heavily promoted subprime mortgages. It collapsed last summer and was placed under federal receivership.

The presence of multi-millionaire Wall Street insiders extends to second- and third-tier positions in the Obama administration as well. David Stevens, who has been tapped by Obama to head the Federal Housing Administration, is the president and chief operating officer of Long and Foster Cos., a real estate brokerage firm. From 1999 to 2005, Stevens served as a top executive for Freddie Mac, the federally-backed mortgage lending giant that was bailed out and seized by federal regulators in September.

Neal Wolin, Obama’s selection for deputy counsel to the president for economic policy, is a top executive at the insurance giant Hartford Financial Services, where his salary was $4.5 million.

Obama’s Auto Task Force has as its top advisers two investment bankers with a long resume in corporate downsizing and asset-stripping.

It is not new for leading figures from finance to be named to high posts in a US administration. However, there has traditionally been an effort to demonstrate a degree of independence from Wall Street in the selection of cabinet officials and high-ranking presidential aides, often through the appointment of figures from academia or the public sector. In previous decades, moreover, representatives of the corporate elite were more likely to come from industry than from finance.

In the Obama administration such considerations have largely been abandoned.

This will not come as a surprise to those who critically followed Obama’s election campaign. While he postured before the electorate as a critic of the war in Iraq and a quasi-populist force for “change,” he was from the first heavily dependent on the financial and political backing of powerful financiers in Chicago. Banks, hedge funds and other financial firms lavishly backed his presidential bid, giving him considerably more than they gave to his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain.

Alongside Wall Street, the Obama cabinet is dominated by the military, including three recently retired four-star military officers: former Marine General James Jones as national security adviser; Admiral Dennis Blair as director of national intelligence, and former Army Chief of Staff Erik Shinseki as secretary of veterans’ affairs.

These are the deeply reactionary political and class interests that are represented by the Obama administration.

Friday’s financial disclosures further expose the bankruptcy of American democracy. Elections have no real effect on government policy, which is determined by the interests of the financial aristocracy that dominates both political parties. The working class can fight for its own interests—for jobs, decent living standards, health care, education, housing and an end to war—only through a break with the two parties of American capitalism and the development of a mass, independent socialist movement.

Tom Eley and Barry Grey

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Obama’s Economic Advisers: International Socialists, Union Thugs, NBC Execs, Soros Scholars, Subprime Lenders, Amnesty Shills, and Campaign Cronies



Obama’s Economic Advisers: International Socialists, Union Thugs, NBC Execs, Soros Scholars, Subprime Lenders, Amnesty Shills, and Campaign Cronies



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WALL STREET’S RAPE AND PILLAGE OF A NATION… and it ain’t over!



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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-than-5-million-households-had.html



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THE LOOTING OF A NATION BY WALL ST BANKSTERS:

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.

Indebtedness has grown as rapidly as wealth has fallen. Between 2005 and 2009, unsecured liabilities grew 33 percent for the population as a whole, the study found.

Meanwhile, the share of household wealth held by the wealthiest ten percent of households grew from 49 percent in 2005 to 56 percent in 2009.

Racial minorities have been particularly hard hit, including by the fall in housing values. The net worth of Hispanic households fell by a staggering 66 percent, from $12,124 in 2005 to $5,677 in 2009. The net worth of black households has likewise tumbled 53 percent. Among Hispanics, unsecured debt grew by 47 percent.

The level of inequality between whites, blacks, and Hispanics is now at the highest level in 25 years, and no doubt longer. The racial differentiation is partly attributable to geography. While whites saw the values of their own homes fall by 18 percent and blacks by 23 percent, the home values of Hispanics fell by more than half.

As the report notes, “In 2005, more than two-in-five of the nation’s Hispanic and Asian households resided in Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan and Nevada, the five states with the steepest declines in home prices.” For Hispanics living in these states, the report noted, “median net worth tumbled from $51,464 in 2005 to $6,375 in 2009, a loss of 88 percent.”

These racial divergences, however, mask the more fundamental growth of inequality between the working class and the wealthy of all races. The report notes that the wealthiest 10 percent of blacks now controls 67 percent of the wealth for that group, compared to 59 percent before the downturn. For Hispanics, likewise, the wealthiest 10 percent controlled 72 percent of wealth in 2009, up from 59 percent in 2005.

The number of unemployed, meanwhile, grew from 7.9 million to 15.2 million between 2005 and 2009. Rising unemployment, too, has disproportionately affected minorities. Unemployment has affected blacks and hispanics disproportionately, with the unemployment rate for blacks currently at 16.5 percent and 11.6 percent for hispanics.

The staggering fall in wealth has had an transformative effect on American society, contributing to the millions of foreclosures and personal bankruptcies. According to figures from Realtytrac.com, there were 10 million foreclosures between 2005 and 2009, the years covered by the survey.

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






WALL ST PROFIT SOAR! SO DOES FORECLOSURES, UNEMPLOYMENT, POVERTY FOR AMERICANS… AND ILLEGALS OVER OUR BORDERS!



ONE WAY OBAMA SERVICES HIS CORPORATE PAYMASTERS IS TO ASSURE THEM THAT HE WILL SABOTAGE E-VERIFY, HOLD OUR BORDERS OPEN FOR HORDES OF ILLEGALS HEADED FOR OUR JOBS, AND CONTINUE NON-ENFORCEMENT OF LAW PROHIBITING THE EMPLOYMENT OF ILLEGALS. IN FACT, OBAMA’S SEC. of LABOR IS A LA RAZA SUPREMACIST HILDA SOLIS WORKING FOR ILLEGALS, MEXICANS THAT IS.

THERE IS A REASON WHY OBAMA, THE LA RAZA DEMS, MEXICO AND THE U. S. CHAMBER of COMMERCE WANT OPEN BORDERS…it’s all about keeping wages DEPRESSED!

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As dozens of major corporations announced increased second-quarter profits this week, the US working class was hit with a disastrous new round of mass layoffs.



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Profits soar amid mass layoffs

By Andre Damon
23 July 2011

As dozens of major corporations announced increased second-quarter profits this week, the US working class was hit with a disastrous new round of mass layoffs.

On Monday, book seller Borders announced that it would liquidate all of its stores, laying off 10,700 workers. That same day, Cisco, the telecom equipment maker, said it would cut its workforce by 11,500. Within 24 hours, Lockheed Martin, the aerospace company, announced that it would eliminate 6,500 jobs.

At the same time, Caterpillar, the maker of construction equipment, said its profits were up 44 percent in the second quarter compared to last year. Office equipment maker Xerox saw its profits grow 41 percent in the same time.

General Electric’s profits were up 17 percent, PepsiCo’s were up by 18 percent, and McDonald’s, the fast food company, saw a 19 percent increase, reaching a new record.

The energy and mining companies did even better, benefiting from rising gas prices, which reduced the real incomes of American workers by billions of dollars. Halliburton, the oil contractor, said its profits were up by 53 percent in the second quarter compared to a year earlier, while fellow oil contractor Schlumberger said its profits were up by 64 percent.

Most of the major banks likewise said their profits were up significantly in the second quarter. Goldman Sachs announced $1.09 billion in profits, up 57 percent from last year. But even this huge increase was considered a “disappointment” for traders.

JPMorgan said its second-quarter profit was up by 13 percent, despite setting aside a $1.3 billion charge-off for lawsuits it expects in relation to its trafficking of fraudulent mortgages. Citigroup reported a profit of $3.34 billion, up 24 percent from a year ago.

This renewed growth in profits comes at the same time as the sharpest growth in unemployment since 2009. Between March and June, the unemployment rate grew by 0.4 percentage points, to 9.2 percent. In the same period, the number of unemployed people grew by 545,000.

Apple, the world’s largest music retailer and a leading manufacturer of mobile electronics, announced a 95 percent increase in profitability. In its earnings statement, the company said that it was sitting on a cash hoard of $76 billion. This staggering sum, amassed by a single company controlled by a few large shareholders, could put two million people to work full-time for a year.

US corporations have combined cash reserves of $2 trillion. That is enough money to put all the unemployed people in the United States to work for four years, even without any profit generated from their labor.

But fresh off of what is for many a record-breaking second quarter, the companies are refusing to use their newly accumulated cash to hire. In fact, planned mass layoffs have only accelerated.

Even after the disastrous second quarter, the jobs situation is getting worse. Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc, the executive placement company, said earlier this week that the number of planned job cuts grew by 11.6 percent, reaching 41,432 last month. This was the second consecutive monthly increase in planned mass layoffs.

New claims for unemployment benefits have likewise moved upwards. After dipping in April to 385,000, the lowest level since 2007, they have steadily grown, reaching 418,000 last week.

The disastrous employment conditions in the private sector are only exacerbated by the aggressive budget cutting carried out by state and local governments, under the whip of cuts to federal assistance.

State and local governments have cut 165,000 jobs so far this year, on top of the quarter million workers they laid off in 2010. But this is only the beginning: analysts expect hundreds of thousands more layoffs this year as cuts in federal aid intensify.

These planned layoffs will only be compounded by the massive federal spending cuts currently being discussed between the Congress and the White House, which would eliminate between $3 and $4 trillion from federal spending. This would mean hundreds of thousands of federal job cuts.

The fact that American corporations were able to accumulate record profits while hundreds of thousands were thrown into the ranks of unemployment is not a coincidence. These profits were generated through the impoverishment of workers, who, desperate for any work available, have increasingly accepted lower wages and worse conditions.

Despite the abysmal employment conditions, mass joblessness has disappeared as a political issue in the United States, with the entire political establishment pushing for cuts to government spending. This absurd and irrational setup is a product of the monopolization of political life in the United States by the super-rich, who are carrying out a full-scale assault on the social conditions of the working class.

In contrast to the ruling class’s anti-social and destructive policy, the working class must present its own political program. The trillions of dollars sitting on the balance sheets of the corporations must be expropriated and used to provide jobs and desperately-needed social services.

This program requires a new mass political movement, completely independent of the Democrats and Republicans, to break the political stranglehold of the corporations, and reorganize society on the basis of social need, not private profit.

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OBAMA’S AMERICA: Open & Undefended Borders!


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OBAMA HAS FILLED HIS ADMINSTRATION WITH PRIMARILY LA RAZA PARTY MEMBERS.

Here’s his Sec. Labor, HILDA SOLIS:

While in Congress, she opposed strengthening the border fence, supported expansion of illegal alien benefits (including driver's licenses and in-state tuition discounts), embraced sanctuary cities that refused to cooperate with federal homeland security officials to enforce immigration laws, and aggressively championed a mass amnesty. Solis was steeped in the pro-illegal alien worker organizing movement in Southern California and was buoyed by amnesty-supporting Big Labor groups led by the Service Employees International Union. She has now caused a Capitol Hill firestorm over her new taxpayer-funded advertising and outreach campaign to illegal aliens regarding fair wages:



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Michelle Malkin

The U.S. Department of Illegal Alien Labor



President Obama's Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is supposed to represent American workers. What you need to know is that this longtime open-borders sympathizer has always had a rather radical definition of "American." At a Latino voter registration project conference in Los Angeles many years ago, Solis asserted to thunderous applause, "We are all Americans, whether you are legalized or not."

That's right. The woman in charge of enforcing our employment laws doesn't give a hoot about our immigration laws -- or about the fundamental distinction between those who followed the rules in pursuit of the American dream and those who didn't.



* Obama Administration Challenges Arizona E-Verify Law

The Obama administration has asked the Supreme Court to strike down a 2007 Arizona law that punishes employers who hire illegal aliens, a law enacted by then-Governor Janet Napolitano.  (Solicitor General's Amicus Curiae Brief).  Called the “Legal Arizona Workers Act,” the law requires all employers in Arizona to use E-Verify and provides that the business licenses of those who hire illegal workers shall be repealed.  From the date of enactment, the Chamber of Commerce and other special interest groups have been trying to undo it, attacking it through a failed ballot initiative and also through a lawsuit. Now the Chamber is asking the United States Supreme Court to hear the case (Chamber of Commerce v. Candelaria), and the Obama Administration is weighing in against the law.

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“I’m not here to punish bankers!” BARACK OBAMA ON THE FLOOR OF THE SENATE, IN  THE FACES OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE



http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/07/obamas-pledge-to-wall-st-rich-will-get.html

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OBAMA’S CRONY CAPITALISM – WHO PAYS FOR HIS BANKSTERS’ BAILOUTS AND MASSIVE GOV SUBSIDIZED BONUSES… GOT TO CUT FROM THE PEOPLE, BUT FIRST, OBAMA WILL CONTINUE TO PUSH FOR AMNESTY AFTER AMNESTY, OPEN & UNDEFENDED BORDERS, AND CONTINUED NON-ENFORCEMENT OF LAWS THAT WILL ENABLE EMPLOYERS TO HIRE ONLY ILLEGALS ON THE CHEAP!

THAT IS WHY OBAMA IS DETERMINED TO FLOOD OUR COUNTRY WITH MORE ILLEGALS!

THERE IS A REASON WHY THE U. S. CHAMBER of COMMERCE, FRONT FOR BIG BUSINESS, AND MOST OF THE FORTUNE 500, GENEROUS DONORS TO THE MEX FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA, WANT OBAMA’S OPEN BORDERS AND NON-ENFORCEMENT… depressed wages!!!!

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Wsws.org

Underlying the rise of the financial aristocracy—which exercises control over the entire political system—is the failure of the world capitalist system as a whole. In amassing its wealth, this tiny layer of the population, concentrated above all in the United States, has overseen a vast destruction of industry and social infrastructure. The ruling classes of every country now openly proclaim that the maintenance of their system depends upon an unprecedented destruction in the living conditions of the broad masses of the population.

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Obama’s budget and the rot of American capitalism

15 February 2011

On Monday, the Obama administration released its proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2012. After committing trillions in federal bailouts to the banks and billionaires, the White House is demanding cuts that will devastate the working class, and particularly its poorest and most vulnerable sections.

The $1.1 trillion in cuts for the next decade proposed by the White House is to be only the starting point for further cuts, as spokesmen for both big business parties acknowledge. Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad, a Democrat, declared, “We’ve got to do substantially more than $1 trillion worth of deficit reduction in the next decade.” Republican House Speaker John Boehner said, “There’s no limit to the amount we’re willing to cut.”

Democrats and Republicans agree on gargantuan military spending, an uninterrupted flow of funds to the financial aristocracy, and continued tax breaks for corporate America and the wealthy. As a top White House official told the press at a background briefing on the budget, “The debate in Washington is not whether to cut or to spend. We both agree we should cut. The question is how we cut and what we cut.”

The Obama budget projects that the ten-year cumulative deficit will reach a staggering $10.4 trillion. By attempting to wring such vast sums from the hides of the population, the ruling elite is trying to set American society back to conditions not seen for generations.

Programs to be cut include not only those targeted by Obama and the Republicans in the current budget debate—home heating assistance, Pell Grants, WIC, Head Start, etc.—but the much larger entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare, which will face cuts later in the budget process.

The social impact will be incalculable. As hundreds of thousands of people face the bitter cold of winter without heat and gas, Obama is proposing halving the grossly inadequate federal assistance that is available. As students graduate with record debt and no job prospects, the administration is proposing significant cuts in government aid. Such gross indifference to social distress is repeated in every sphere.

Significant cuts to Social Security and Medicare—which amount to denying America’s elderly their right to pensions and health care—would have an even broader impact.

Behind the “debate” in Washington and the media over the budget is a massive lie—the claim that the budget deficits are a product of excessive social spending. Obama’s budget director Jacob Lew summed up this grotesque falsification an op-ed column published in the New York Times February 6, under the headline, “The Easy Cuts Are Behind Us.” Lew claimed that the causes of the projected budget deficits were “decisions to make two large tax cuts without offsetting them and to create a Medicare prescription drug benefit without paying for it, combined with the effects of the recession…”

This list is notable for what it leaves out: the cost of two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, which runs into the trillions; and the bank bailouts, where more trillions in public funds were placed at the disposal of the financial aristocracy, with no questions asked. The military budget by itself accounts for the lion’s share of the ten-year deficit: more than $7 trillion of the projected $10 trillion.

Lew’s more fundamental omission, however, is the grotesque class inequality that pervades American society. The top one percent of the US population owns over one third of the country’s wealth. The greatest wealth, however, is concentrated in an even smaller layer. Indeed, the $1.1 trillion in proposed cuts—which will have a terrible impact on the lives of millions of people—is somewhat less than the combined wealth of only the 400 richest Americans.

The arguments presented by the ruling elite for the cuts are staggeringly hypocritical. As they drown in floods of cash, they insist that no money is available for workers’ most basic needs.

Workers must reject this argument out of hand. They are not responsible for the orgy of swindling and profiteering that produced the 2008 Wall Street crash and pushed the world economy into the deepest slump since the Great Depression. On the contrary, an essential feature of the speculative binge was that the share of national income received by workers has shrunk to the lowest level in nearly a century.

Underlying the rise of the financial aristocracy—which exercises control over the entire political system—is the failure of the world capitalist system as a whole. In amassing its wealth, this tiny layer of the population, concentrated above all in the United States, has overseen a vast destruction of industry and social infrastructure. The ruling classes of every country now openly proclaim that the maintenance of their system depends upon an unprecedented destruction in the living conditions of the broad masses of the population.

These measures will provoke mass opposition. The revolutionary struggles in Egypt—in which protests and strikes of millions of workers and youth forced the resignation of a US-backed dictator that ruled the country for more than 30 years—point to the forms of struggle that will spread worldwide in the coming period. Mass unemployment, record inequality, and the corruption of the political system are common to Egypt and the United States, and are in fact universal. At the foundation of this system is the principle that economic life must be subordinated to private profit and the maintenance of the wealth of those who control the giant banks and corporations.

The working class can secure its interests only through the overturn of the capitalist system as a whole—that is, the reorganization of economic life to meet social need. In every aspect of its policies and of its social being, the ruling class itself makes the case for socialist revolution.

Patrick Martin

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Obama’s Economic Advisers: International Socialists, Union Thugs, NBC Execs, Soros Scholars, Subprime Lenders, Amnesty Shills, and Campaign Cronies



Obama’s Economic Advisers: International Socialists, Union Thugs, NBC Execs, Soros Scholars, Subprime Lenders, Amnesty Shills, and Campaign Cronies



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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.

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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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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.

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. In this explosive book, Carney reveals:

* The Great Health Care Scam—Obama’s backroom deals with drug companies spell corporate profits and more government control

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* The Global Warming Hoax—Obama has bought off industries with a pork-filled bill that will drain your wallet for Al Gore’s agenda

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* Obama and Wall Street—“Change” means more bailouts and a heavy Goldman Sachs presence in the West Wing (including Rahm Emanuel)

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* Stimulating K Street—The largest spending bill in history gave pork to the well-connected and created a feeding frenzy for lobbyists

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* How the GOP needs to change its tune—drastically—to battle Obamanomics

If you’ve wondered what’s happening to our country, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages” that create make-work government jobs, 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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Praise for Obamanomics

“The notion that ‘big business’ is on the side of the free market is one of progressivism’s most valuable myths. It allows them to demonize corporations by day and get in bed with them by night. Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its best. It reveals how President Obama is exploiting the big business mythology to undermine the free market and stick it to entrepreneurs, taxpayers, and consumers. It’s an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”
—Jonha Goldberg, LA Times columnist and best-selling author

“‘Every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich.’ With this astute observation, Tim Carney begins his task of laying bare the Obama administration’s corporatist governing strategy, hidden behind the president’s populist veneer. This meticulously researched book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how Washington really works.”
—David Freddoso, best-selling author of The Case Against Barack Obama

“Every libertarian and free-market conservative who still believes that large corporations are trusted allies in the battle for economic liberty needs to read this book, as does every well-meaning liberal who believes that expansions of the welfare-regulatory state are done to benefit the common people.”
—Congressman Ron Paul

“It’s understandable for critics to condemn President Obama for his ‘socialism.’ But as Tim Carney shows, the real situation is at once more subtle and more sinister. Obamanomics favors big business while disproportionately punishing everyone else. So-called progressives are too clueless to notice, as usual, which is why we have Tim Carney and this book.”
—Thomas E. Woods, Jr., best-selling author of Meltdown and The Politically Incorrect Guideto American History

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·         Hardcover: 256 pages

·         Publisher: Regnery Press (November 30, 2009)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 1596986123

·         ISBN-13: 978-1596986121



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Obama's Green Robber Barons

By Michelle Malkin

1/25/2012

Had enough of fat cat Barack Obama, his jet-setting wife and his multi-millionaire Chicago consigliere/real-estate mogul Valerie Jarrett attacking the "rich"? Well, brace yourselves. You'll be hearing much more from the White House about the "wealthy few" who aren't paying their "fair share" as Obama's re-election campaign doubles down on class-war demagoguery.

As usual, there's always a set of immunity charms for the privileged friends and family of the ruling class. When it comes to all the Green Robber Barons who've reaped an obscenely unfair share of billions of tax dollars from the Obama administration, the envy trumpeteers will be quieter than a nest of mute church mice.

Obama's State of the Union address defiantly pitched a new round of clean energy spending orgies to help the "middle class." But how have the serial bankruptcies and near-bankruptcies of several federally subsidized solar companies -- all under Obama's watch -- helped anyone but an upper-crust elite of eco-crats and their lobbyists and consultants?

Bankrupt Solyndra, billionaire George Kaiser. In the wake of the half-billion-dollar Solyndra stimulus bust, company officials revealed plans to hand out hefty bonuses totaling $500,000. Months before the politically connected solar energy manufacturer went belly up, it was doling out bonus payments of between $40,000 and $60,000 to several executives. Last week, a local CBS News crew caught employees at the Silicon Valley headquarters trashing solar panel glass tubes worth an estimated $10 million.

The now-abandoned Taj Mahal complex cost ordinary Americans more than $733 million. But billionaire Democratic donor and frequent White House guest George Kaiser, whose nonprofit foundation was Solyndra's biggest investor, is still sitting pretty. He and the other private investors of Solyndra will recoup their losses ahead of taxpayers. And while they blast their GOP opponents, double-standard Democrats will remain AWOL on the glaring tax-avoidance strategies of the wealthy Kaiser Family Foundation.

Bankrupt Beacon Power, fat Democratic coffers. This green energy storage plant filed for bankruptcy last fall after a $43 million injection of Obama Department of Energy loan guarantees. Federal election record filings show that CEO William Capp contributed to the 2008 Obama campaign, as well as several left-wing New England Democratic candidates. Beacon Power lobbyist Steve Wolfe was a former aide to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. Beacon sought bankruptcy shelter two days after the White House responded to fiscal watchdogs' demands for a review of the DOE's shoddy loan monitoring programs.

Bankrupt SpectraWatt, red-faced Goldman Sachs. A solar cell company based in New York, SpectraWatt went belly up last August despite a half-million-dollar federal stimulus boost and lucrative backing from politically connected Goldman Sachs -- whose ties reach deep into the Obama Treasury Department, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, White House National Economic Council and 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. itself. The eco-failure was dumped in a fire sale for less than $5 million.

Teetering Nevada Geothermal, cheerleading Harry Reid. Despite $150 million in federal DOE and Treasury Department subsidies -- not to mention personal lobbying by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid -- this alternative energy project is on the brink of failure. A Deloitte and Touche audit grimly concludes that the company "has incurred net losses over the past several years, has an accumulated deficit of $44.0 million and an anticipated inability to retire its long-term liabilities." According to CBS News, the company's latest SEC filings warn of multiple defaults.

My scouring of White House visitor logs shows nine visits from another Green Robber Baron, Illinois-based Exelon's CEO John Rowe, who met with the president and former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel multiple times. As Forbes magazine reported: The clean energy company "has very deep ties to the Obama Administration. Frank M. Clark, who runs ComEd, helped advise Obama before he ran for president and is one of Obama's largest fundraisers. Obama's chief political strategist, David Axelrod, worked as a consultant to Exelon. Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, helped create Exelon" -- where he raked in more than $16 million over two years.

Remember: "Fairness" is in the eye of the wealth redistributors.

Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.