Obama Says He'll Really Fight for the People ... Next Time

Wednesday 3 August 2011
by: Jim Hightower,
Truthout | Op-Ed

By gollies, America's workaday majority of middle-class and poor people have a fighter on our side in Washington. Unfortunately, that fighter is Barack Obama.

On Sunday, he waved his white hankie of surrender in the debt ceiling battle, agreeing to a disastrous deal ruthlessly pushed by the loopiest of the tea party extremists in the Republican House. It slashes some nearly $1 trillion from national programs that ordinary Americans count on,puts Social Security and Medicare at risk, and promises to make our depressed economy, and even the deficit, worse.

Obama also cravenly conceded to the demand by GOP/tea party corporatists that those fortunate few at the tippy-top of our economy make no sacrifice whatsoever to the goal of deficit reduction. Tax-dodging corporations, hedge-fund profiteers and the richest 1 percent of our nation's plutocratic elite are allowed by this sorry deal to retain every dime of their subsidies, tax breaks and other federal giveaways.

(More here.)