Race To The Top
"He ran in 2008 and claimed - or led people to believe he claimed - that he would radically change Washington, be more transparent, fix the wars, clean the oceans, make the sun rise and basically turn rivers into wine.Professor Johnson may not be aware that Ohioans appear to be on the cusp of giving President Obama the boost he needs to remain in the White House. But then polls are just polls, and sometimes they're not true reflections of what is actually occurring out on the street and in people's homes as they discuss their general dissatisfactions with the political process and whom they elect to lead their governments.
"If Mitt Romney is elected, it will not be because of the Cooperman letter and things like it. It will be because Americans were disappointed that Barack Obama didn't accomplish what he led them to believe he would accomplish."
Professor Jason Johnson, Hiram College, Ohio
And it's true that Barack Obama, the 2008 candidate for president of the United States pre-election that brought him to the White House promised change. The kind of change that people believed in. A lot of those people who were so besotted with his presence and his fervency and aura of electability and expectation are no longer quite so enamoured of him.
A lot of them were outraged at the rescue of Wall Street in that same year when the bottom fell out of the American economy, feeling that their money went to pay exorbitant CEO buy-outs and they were left with nothing; useless mortgages, unemployed and a dismal future. During this second campaign for his re-election, President Obama is making it abundantly clear that he is not in favour of helping the wealthy evade their share of the country's taxes.
He has, in fact, gone from shovelling out Treasury funds to rescue Wall Street to loosening up welfare entitlements, and in the process digging the country into a deeply suffocating well of debt-and-deficit. And people are still unemployed. And houses are still being abandoned, their mortgages greater than the house values themselves. And the great coup of universal medicare hasn't been the huge success it was claimed.
Socially progressive fiscal conservatives who just happen to be well remunerated and who had supported him the first time around are far less certain this time. Joining the ranks of the less entitled, the poor who still have nothing to boast of. And some in the billionaire class who had also seen him as the right man at the right time in the White House and helped place him there, no longer appreciate the stark divisions he has helped create with the 99% blaming the 1%.
In fact, those who create wealth and jobs and prop up the GDP. Whom presidential candidate Obama has characterized as "billionaires and millionaires who don't pay their fair share". Leon Cooperman, Wall Street billionaire whose working class background led him to support President Obama first time around now accuses him of "setting the tenor of a rancorous debate" that "smacks of what so many have characterized as class warfare".
"He's taking away the incentive for people to become wealthy and then he's putting a safety net underneath them - he's confining them to the middle class or less. [President] Bill Clinton tied welfare to work, and I think Obama eliminated some of that. That twisted me a bit because money isn't free - it's expensive", complained a medical malpractise lawyer refusing to be identified when interviewed for fear of a backlash that might impact his practise.
Labels: Communication, Democracy, Economy, Heritage, Social-Cultural Deviations, Traditions, United States, Values
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, November 03, 2012
<< Home