As with Labor, So with Healthcare

As President-elect Obama announced members of his economic team, progressives and a handful of others noted the absence of any labor advocates from the "Team of Rivals". Last week, President Obama hosted a 'summit' on healthcare reform. Absent were any advocates for single-payer — the system at use in very nearly every other industrialized country around the world.

Why, if Obama and his team of god=like thinkers are so 'open to all the options' is one of the most obvious and publicly popular options being excluded? Could it be that Obama has been told by The American Oligarchs that single-payer isn't allowed? That change is great, but only so much?

Luke Mitchell of Harper's Magazine, speaking on Democracy Now, noted that Sen. Max Baucus, said first that "everything is on the table" but then "went out of his way to say that we can't have single payer."

We have a clue to the reason in the Obama administrations hand-waving over bank bailouts and particularly nationalization:

Private Property is Sacrosanct.

Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, among others, have made a point of saying that the Obama administration has no intention of challenging the model of "private banking". Nor do it likely have any intention of challenging private insurance.

If in the midst of the US economic collapse, we cannot consider real change in either the US banking system or the US insurance system, then what hope have we of the Great Change that Obama held out promise for?

Indeed, we now have at least three clear instances of the Idols of Institutional Inertia which President Obama dares not challenge:

• Private banking, despite prove provided in recent months of institutionalized corruption, greed, lying and outright theft on one of the largest scales in word history;

• Private insurance, a case still in the making, but already well-supported by that of "too-big-to-fail AIG" and soon to be supported by what I predict will be a house of cards attempt address healthcare; and

• Israel, a case where US National Intelligence Council nominee Chas Freeman has been forced to step down after ruthless campaign by the Israel lobby including US Senators Charles Schumer and the vile Joseph Lieberman.

We have also seen Obama effectively continue Bush policy on extraordinary rendition and slightly diluted belligerence with substantial but far from total troop reductions in Iraq and marked increases in Afghanistan.

Obama Shills for Wall Street

Today, March 2nd, President Obama waded into the waters of Wall Street traders saying that price to earnings ratios indicate it's a good time to buy if investing for the long term.

What you’re now seeing is profit and earning ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal, if you've got a long-term perspective on it.

Wall Street didn't buy it. And the American people are a helluva lot smarter than any money-grubbing asshole on Wall Street. The catch is that the "long-term perspective" now needed is one that exceeds the life-expectancy of any living American. You're buying for your grandchildren folks (if you're under 20, that is).

But why shouldn't Obama turn penny stock pusher? The Wall Street 'experts' have proven to be anything but, so why not get the nation's top lawyer in on the game? The catch is, of course, that another fact proven in recent years is that performance of the stock markets has surprisingly little to do with the performance of the economy. Averages like the Dow have been adjusted, fiddled, finagled to immunize them against economic bad news, most particularly by removing firms from the average that do not perform suitably. Now, the entire market is doing so badly (it's not entirely immune) that there is no way but down.

But for Obama to jump in sounds more like a Hail Mary. "Puhleeze puhleeze buy stocks. Give us some good news."

This may be sadly reflective of the advice Obama is getting from Summers, Geithner and Bernanke — the Team Of Rivals. The Team of Rivals is not really in the tradition of Lincoln, but the Republicrat tradition of the past 30 years. It is the Team of Bush & Clinton. Torture, extraordinary rendition, responsibility on civil rights — Bush. Stupid economy — Clinton.

Or perhaps it is only a Team of Softball Rivals, the kind that organized between business buddies — Goldman Sachs versus A.I.G. — to play in Central Park during the warm weather.

One way or another, Obama is getting bupkis from his 'team'. It's quite amazing that his proposed budget is as daring as it is. Perhaps that is an attempt to mollify voters even the blindest of whom can see that the 'bailout' is the largest kickback to slovenly, shit-for-brains, billionaire leeches in history.