Plumline: Joe Klein skewers the idea Obama's posture towards corporations represents 'overreach'

[flpoljunkie]

Joe Klein skewers the idea that Obama's posture towards corporations represents any kind of "overreach."

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/06/happy_hour_roundup_32.html

Malefactors of Great Wealth
Posted by JOE KLEIN
Friday, June 18, 2010

David Sanger of the New York Times raises the possibility that the President is courting danger by getting tough on the tinhorn titans of industry. He quotes Professor Jeffrey Garten of Yale:

“He's walking a very fine line here,” said Jeffrey Garten, a professor of trade and international finance at the Yale School of Management and a former top official in the Clinton administration's Commerce Department. “He is taking each case on the merits as he sees it, but he runs the risk of sowing a level of mistrust about all big companies. And it's those companies — not small businesses — that he will need to invest and innovate for the kind of recovery he wants.”

I suspect this isn't very much of a problem for Obama at all. He's not a bomb-thrower; he's been picking his shots wisely. And after a 30 year period when the Masters of the Universe were foolishly aggrandized by U.S. politicians (and, yes, many journalists), the country is looking for a revision--a politician who celebrates private enterprise but is intent on cleaning up the regulatory latrines in the financial services and resource extraction industries. The validity of Obama's position is evident in the frantic scurrying of Republicans to camouflage the effort by Congressman Joe Barton to tell the truth about his party's position on oil and gas: that any effort to hold BP--or any other energy company--responsible is an example of undue government intervention.

Obama's presidency promised a rebalancing of American politics, away from the celebration of mammon of the Reagan Era, and toward an entrepreneurial capitalism that didn't prey on the American public. I think that effort is pretty much on course.

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/06/18/malefactors-of-great-wealth-2/

[tabatha]

1. Love this quote

"Obama's presidency promised a rebalancing of American politics, away from the celebration of mammon of the Reagan Era, and toward an entrepreneurial capitalism that didn't prey on the American public. I think that effort is pretty much on course."


And another thing that is so hypocritical about the republicans - they hate lawyers, they hate the large fees lawyers charge, yet their response to the escrow fund is that it should have gone through the courts. Every day is opposite day for them.

[Cha]

4. They were longing for the days when the Supreme court

screwed the victims of Exxon oil out of appproximatley a Billion $$$

<snip>

"Hopes of fishermen throughout Washington and Alaska were sunk Wednesday when the Supreme Court slashed the amount of punitive damages that Exxon must pay for the epic Exxon Valdez oil spill nearly two decades ago.

The high court, in a 5-3 decision, found that punitive damages could not be larger than the compensatory damages for actual losses from the spill, which totaled $507.5 million.

The justices rejected the amount — $2.5 billion — that a federal appeals court had granted to be shared by 32,677 plaintiffs who had claimed damages from the worst oil spill in U.S. history, including fishermen, Alaska natives, local businesses and others.

That amount had been reduced from the $5 billion that a jury awarded in 1994.

The anxiously awaited decision, delivered on the eve of the Supreme Court's summer recess, brings to a close one of the longest-running class-action lawsuits in the country."

<more>
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008018035_exxon26m.html

[tabatha]

5. Yep, you are probably right.

[DJ13]

2. Over reach, or reach around?

[impik]

3. Amen.