Well, it sure did not take long for him to reverse himself on the single payer aspect. Senator Max Baucus, head of the Senate Finance Committee has taken single payer off the table and stubbornly refuses to allow any sort of representation of that option in his committee proceedings. Several doctors, nurses and others that tried to stand up to Baucus and protest his refusal are now in the process of being indicted for their actions.
What do we hear from our president? Again, absolutely nothing. He has completely wiped from his memory the clear statements that he made in support of single payer. Once again, there is nothing complicated about how he should go about addressing this issue. He does not have to, at this early point, get involved in any personal debates. All he need do is to advise Senator Baucus and other key congressional leaders that single payer must be a part of the overall discussion in order to explore all viable options. This makes the greatest sense in the world in such a problem-solving exercise; if the general consensus at the end of deliberation is that single payer is not feasible, then so be it. But for President Obama and Senator Baucus to be allowed to stonewall this issue is simply not acceptable to the majority of Americans.
Last but not least, let’s talk about Wall St. and the gigantic financial mess that plagues America. How has our agent of change and new visions, President Obama, approached these massive problems? Have he and his dream team of financial experts studied this situation in depth and come up with real reforms to attack the roots of the problems and develop plans to rebuild the financial foundations of our nation?
Hardly. The first thing that Mr. Obama did was to choose Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, longtime friends and associates of Wall St. and the financial sector in America to lead the effort – probably his first costly mistake. Then, after a number of puzzling statements and muffled attempts to explain the dire situation to Congress and the American people by Geithner, the process of pouring billions upon billions of dollars right back into the cauldron of manipulation and deceptive practices began in earnest. All the big guns of Wall St. got their share; and the funds doled out were totally free, with no kind of conditions or directions as to how they must be used to alleviate the collapsing housing and credit sectors.
And that is just the point. What did Obama and his star economic experts do wrong? They should have sat down and outlined the strict rules and conditions that would have to be followed in order to qualify as a recipient of bailout funds. These rules and conditions did not have to be so very strict and unworkable so as to suffocate and stifle any meaningful actions to try to stop the hemorrhaging in the industry. They only had to guard against further methods of manipulative practices and get credit flowing again.
Geithner and Summers should not have been allowed to orchestrate the whole process without bringing the best economic minds in our nations in to give their advice on the matter. They could have brought in the likes of Robert Reich, Paul Krugman, and Noureil Roubini among others. But they did not and that seems to be totally out of step with Obama’s well-known practice of involving people with many different approaches and opinions into problem-solving situations. As far as I know none of these outside experts were involved and Obama let Summers and Geithner, those Wall St. kind of guys, do their thing – so everything is going along very nicely as we keep those printing presses at the Treasury Dept. going full speed 24/7 simply throwing more money into Wall St.
To conclude, here is why I am so disappointed and disillusioned by our 44th president. During his campaign, I listened to almost every one of his speeches. I listened closely to how he inspired, challenged, promised and demanded change and new directions and totally rejected the Washington DC establishment. That was then, this is now.
To me, this man appeared to be truly visionary, a gift to America coming out of nowhere to turn this nation into a new, badly needed direction. Then he became our president. Now, in my state of unbelief and bewilderment, I watch as this same man seems to have done a near 180 degree turn. His actions and inactions with regard to the key issues of Iraq, Afghanistan, torture, healthcare and the financial crisis that I raise in this article leave me dumbfounded and searching for answers as to how this could possibly be happening. But it is.
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