The Natives are Restless

I still count myself a loyal Obama supporter, but the NATIVES ARE RESTLESS. Here's my latest missive to the White House:

I was very disappointed when the President failed to stand up to the banks on cramdown by bankruptcy judges on first home mortgages. Sen. Durbin was right, "the banks own the place."

Now, the socalled financial reform package is here, and it's clearly insufficient. There should have been more consolidation, more control of derivatives, more clear negative consequences for overleveraging.

But, in any case, the President must make absolutely clear to the Congress that this is absolutely the minimum that will be acceptable. The compromises have already been made. No more concessions to Wall Street: pass this and expect more reform later on, not less.

The President's numbers on handling the economy are slipping, and it's because he's been TOO accommodating. Messrs. Summers and Geithner clearly have the wrong mindset. We need a serious new Pecora style commission, a reinstatement of Glass Steagall and widening of its scope to include hedge funds and investment banks, and an overall scheme that really will prevent the kind of deemphasis on a production economy and overemphasis on speculation by the financial sector that very nearly caused the collapse of the entire World economy in the last year.

Mr. Obama must be MORE BOLD, more reform-minded, and more determined to use and even grow his political capital to live up to his promise of real change, because the way things are going, the perception is already dawning that there is to be little in the way of change at all, and that in fact Obama is just more of the same kowtowing to the money elite.

Don't Mess with Social Security, Mr. President, or you will lose support in your own party

I'm writing because I'm extremely concerned about remarks made by Secretary Geithner yesterday to the effect that the president is completely clear that "social security is not untouchable politically." Now, this remark is ambiguous, of course, but it is sending the wrong message. If President Obama wants to keep his core Democratic supporters, of whom I am one, as supporters and not merely nose holding lesser of two evils voters, he must reassure us that he holds to core Democratic principles.

One of the reasons George W. Bush lost support among "Reagan Democrats" and ultimately these same people provided the margin to elect Mr. Obama was his tremendously ill-advised and mean spirited attempt to destroy social security. Democratic voters regard a fair minimal retirement income as an irrevocable promise made to us by our government, which cannot be undone. Of course, there will need to be adjustments to funding and I think most voters would accept reductions in very high income peoples' benefits, but the core benefit of social security should indeed be considered untouchable.

President Obama instead should support lifting or raising much higher the cap on payroll taxes, or even making such taxes progressive for incomes above $100,000. Social security has never been an insurance program, and FICA is a tax, not a premium.

So many modest and middle income people have seen their private retirement funding reduced or even destroyed, if the President thinks voters will swallow any reductions in social security benefits for middle and lower income people, he's very mistaken.

With the Republican party increasingly marginalized, the President needs to consolidate and reinforce his traditional Democratic values, because otherwise, his supporters like me, who voted to restore Democratic values to government, will be drawn away to Third Parties and the electorate will be factionalized. I say this out of sadness and disappointment. The President has failed in a number of areas to clearly hew to a Democratic-principled policy. Unless he clearly states that he doesn't intend to allow Social Security to be savaged by the Republicans and their Fellow Travelers in our party, my Obama sticker is coming off the car and I will start to think of myself as part of the Grumbling Opposition within the Democratic Party.

Public Option essential in health care

Robert Reich is right that the public option, i.e., the right of every citizen to opt for publicly administered health care, is essential if affordable health care for all is to be achieved. Only if there is a public system, providing low-administration costs and fair and predictable standards, with reduced costs, will the private health care option be forced to be truly competitive.

AIG symbolic of the need for much more forceful leadership from the President

I think Mr. Axelrod and Mr. Emmanuel need to realize that they're dead wrong if they think the AIG fiasco isn't important to people. Read Josh Marshall today in talkingpointsmemo.com. People want to know that President Obama is in charge, and that he's not going to let Wall Street execs make the decisions when it comes to companies that have been bailed out by the taxpayers. Whatever this takes, in the form of emergency legislation, regulation, or just sheer force of will, is imperative.

AIG is symptomatic of a bigger picture. Americans are willing to be patient, but they are not willing to see people whose quasi-criminal conduct caused this mess be kept around, paid off, or, worse, allowed to continue running the place. The hell with the retention contracts. AIG-FP should be shut down, asap, and all of its execs fired. The same with the hedge fund like operations of all the banks and investment banks involved. We own them, in large part, and it's time President Obama started forcing the decisions.

White House Comments

Note: former whitehouse comment e-mail address, comments@whitehouse.gov has been taken out of commission. You have to use the form, www.whitehouse.gov/contact , but they have increased the size of the comment field to 5000 characters, so you can get in several pages of text if you need to. Everyone should take the time to communicate with the government regularly!

Banks and Economic Reform

"Nationalization" is a loaded word, as we all understand, but Nouriel Roubini, Paul Krugman, and Joseph Stiglitz are clearly correct that some form of RECEIVERSHIP for the biggest insolvent banks is going to be necessary, and delaying it will only make matters worse. I urge President Obama to hold a major conference within the administration, inviting the best progressive economists from OUTSIDE the Wall Street club that has infected the thinking of Geithner, Summers, Ruben, etc. and work out what it will really take to restore a banking system that works for the people.

In general, I believe that the president must realize that the current crisis will take BOLD, PROGRESSIVE reform, which gets our country back onto a production footing, reforms the financial system so that it is smaller and no longer a parasite on the production economy, and puts forward an agenda of multiple rounds of stimulus and job creation, since it is quite clear already that the Stimulus is a good start, but not enough. Future stimulation of the economy should not involve tax cuts at all; we can't afford them.

The Republicans, unfortunately, have made it clear that their game plan is obstructionism. The President must develop and articulate a major progressive reform agenda, and must take it directly to the people, constantly, and relentlessly, so as to make the people MAKE their lawmakers pass this agenda. Bipartisanship will not work.
[sent to new comment form (5000 char. limit]: whitehouse.gov/contact

Don't "fix" social security

Dear President Obama,

I read with alarm where some in your administration are apparently transfixed by the mythology that Social Security is 'broken' and needs 'fixing.' Social security is not broken, and in fact is solvent with only minor need for adjustments in the future. Medicare, largely due to a generally broken health care system, is of course a different story. Please understand. The people who elected you did so in large part as a rejection of Bush economic policies as well as other failed and terrible policies: decidedly including his terrible, stupid plan to destroy Social Security. Social Security is a touchstone of stability and minimal financial security for ordinary Americans, and we will not tolerate any attempts to "jigger" it or reduce it.

Thank you.

David Studhalter