or all the wailing one hears, especially in Virginia, about Barack Obama being some kind of radical with a socialist agenda, let’s take a reality check.
It wasn’t enough a few weeks back that many school systems in Virginia and the U.S. refused to show his speech to school kids because they feared some kind of “politicized” leftist message. This riff is also strummed in the state’s gubernatorial race where social right-winger Bob McDonnell faces a good chance of taking the position away from the Democrats for the first time in eight years.As for Barack, let’s take a measure of the man. My yardstick shows that in many ways, he’s not that much different that the hapless George “W” Bush (remember him?). A few points:
- Obama seems to like national security secrets just as “W” and is taking measures to preserve them.
- Obama is as tough, if not tougher, on illegal immigration, as Bush. He’s pushing a national electronic system to verify immigration status immediately and has tightened up borders. The only diference seems to be that Obama goes after employers while Bush went after the workers.
- The meltdown of last year showed that financial services badly needs more regulation not less. Obama is backing away from several campaign initiatives, namely: a Consumer Protection Agency to protect Average Joes from predatory practices. Obama is backing down from putting teeth into the plan. True, business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are fighting the pro-consumer plan tooth and nail, but none other than Rep. Barney Frank, The Big Liberal, is emasculating the plan. Despite his populism, Frank gets a lot of financing from, you guessed, banks.
- Credit ratings agencies like Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and others failed miserably at reporting honestly on the derivatives, CDOs and CDSs that so poisoned the financial well last year. An S&P guy said they’d rate cows if asked. But Obama has backed away from tough regulation of these groups.
- Former Fed Chief Paul Volcker is criticizing Obama for building in “too big to fail” guidelines into future bailouts that got Bush’s people so much criticism.
- After the Dems dumped all over the Bushies for “the surge” in Iraq, Obama wants one for Aghanistan although he may be changing his mind.
And so it goes, if you remember that famous song by The Who.
Peter Galuszka
PS: Next time you bloggers get into financial bailouts, remember that JP Morgan Chase, U.S. Bancorp Cap One and BB&T have all paid theirs back. Citi, Bank of A and Well Fargo all still owe big time.