One Man With Courage

My hope for the new president is that he can bring change to this country but I’m skeptical, after all, president elect Obama is a politician first and foremost, and politicians are more interested in keeping power than in doing what’s right for America.

The power and wealth are in the hands of the few because the same politicians who are in control are the same ones who helped bring this nation to the position we’re in, with the middle class on the verge of collapse.

According to an article in the Nation magazine by Eric Alterman, Charles Schumer as a member of the Banking and Finance Committees took steps to “protect industry players from government oversight and tougher rules…over the years, he has helped save financial institutions billions of dollars in higher taxes and fees.” “These included weakening banking regulations, undercutting efforts to regulate credit rating agencies and interfering with efforts to increase transparency of their balance sheets. And he scuttled his party’s efforts to demand that hedge fund billionaires pay an equivalent share of their earnings in taxes as do janitors, schoolteachers and the rest of us.” No wonder Schumer didn’t want to tax hedge fund billionaires, he received contributions from Bernie Madoff the now infamous hedge fund scammer. And Senator Schumer received $135,000 in campaign donations after attending a Democratic fund raiser with some 20 of the heaviest Wall Street hitters last year.

Obama’s pick for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner as president of the New York Federal Bank helped to broker some of the current deals in place to bail out Wall Street with little transparency so that we the tax payer don’t know where these trillions are going. What will he do as Secretary of the Treasury?

Barack Obama’s appointee to head the National Economics Council Lawrence Summers, was a champion for banking deregulation under President Clinton.

When George Stephanopoulos asked Rahm Emanuel if Obama was going to increase taxes on the rich he received no reply. No wonder Rahm Emanuel didn’t answer, considering he’s the Democrat who’s received the most in contributions from the financial sector.

With all these campaigners for the rich back in control how is Obama going to change the way things work in Washington?

A crack has already developed in Obama’s change rhetoric; during the campaign Obama said he would roll back the Bush tax cuts for the rich. Now he’s thinking of waiting until they expire rather than roll them back on his own.

Andrew Jackson said “one man with courage makes a majority“. It remains to be seen if Obama is the one man with the courage who can bring change to a country careening into a new gilded age of a few robber barons who continue to pilfer our capitalistic democracy, leaving a wake of desolation for the common man.