Stoller: "Obama mocks the idea that he is an honest politician"

Karmadillo

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Sun Aug-28-11 09:40 AM
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Stoller: "Obama mocks the idea that he is an honest politician"

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/08/matt-stoller-power-politics-%e2%80%93-what-eric-schneiderman-reveals-about-obama.html

Matt Stoller: Power Politics � What Eric Schneiderman Reveals About Obama
By Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.

A lot of people have asked why New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is going after the banks as aggressively as he is. It�s almost unbelievable that one lone elected official, who happens to have powerful legal tools at his disposal, is doing something that no one with any serious degree of power has done. So what is the secret? What kind of machinations is he undertaking that no one else has been able to do?

I�ve known Schneiderman for a few years, back when he was a state Senator working to reform the Rockefeller drug laws. And my answer to this question is pretty simple. He wants to. That�s it. Eric Schneiderman is investigating the banks because he thinks it�s the right thing to do. So he�s doing it. This guy has thought about his politics. He wrote an article about how he sees politics in 2008 in the Nation, and in his inaugural speech as NY AG he talked about the need to restore faith in both public and private institutions. Free will still counts for something, apparently.

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I�m no genius, I just listened to what these people actually said and did. Obama mocks the idea that he is an honest politician, overtly, lying about NAFTA and FISA very early on in power. Miller lied to activists about being willing to put bankers in jail, and then said he was negotiating with banks in secret. It was overt. For Miller, as with Obama, few people really picked up on the lies until recently. Iowa activists who heckled Miller got it, as did Naked Capitalism readers. Now it�s becoming more and more obvious. That�s just how it is, I suppose, people in the establishment are paid to not notice corruption until the harsh glare is too bright.

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When you look closely at most significant areas of government, it becomes clear that the President and his administration are enormously powerful actors who get a lot done. Handing over our national wealth to the banks and to China is not nothing. These people are reorganizing the economy and the political system so that there are no constraints on the oligarchical interests that fund and pay them. That is their goal, it has been their goal from day one (or even before that), and anyone who says otherwise is just wrong or deluding him or herself. Obama spoke at the founding of Robert Rubin�s Hamilton Institute, and his first, and most important by far policy initiative, was his whipping for TARP, a policy that was signed by Bush but could not have passed without Obama getting his party in line. That was his goal, and he�s still pursuing it. The numerous �what happened to Obama� wailing editorials overlook the consistency of his policy agenda, which stretches back years at this point.

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