On the cover of this weeks Time Magazine is a photoshopped picture of Barack Obama standing next to Ronald Reagan. Reagan has his arm around Obama's shoulder as Obama gushes a smile like he's meeting Frank Sinatra. The lead story in this mainstream magazine is "Why Obama, hearts Reagan and What He's Learned From Him."
It is a disreputable cover
and one that the current White House certainly wouldn't tolerate
unless of course they agreed. Let's forget that Reagan was a
Republican and Obama was elected as a Democrat. Let's forget that the
Reagan administration was corrupt up to its eyeballs. Let's forget
that the Reagan administration generated wars that killed thousands
of innocent civilians in Central America. Let's forget that the
Reagan administration sold the chemical weapons to Saddam that were
used to gas the Kurds. Let's forget that the Reagan administration
traded arms for hostages and sent birthday cakes to the
ayatollah.
After we've forgotten all of that, we are left with
the administration that shifted the tax burden from America's wealthy
to America's working class. An administration which declared ketchup
a vegetable to skirt Federal law on providing school lunches. An
administration that bought plastic Air Force bombers for three
quarters of a billion dollars a copy. Plastic dreadnoughts, too
expensive to risk and too expensive to throw away.
It was message discipline. The US couldn't appear to look weak, so innocent people had to die. Whether shooting down a civilian Iranian airliner or bombing Tripoli Libya, it was all about message.
Bloomberg - " AOL Inc. co-founder Steve Case will lead a White House campaign seeking to increase private-sector investments in startup companies and small businesses as part of President Barack Obama's directive to promote entrepreneurship, the administration announced."
Watch closely as the Obama administration uses the tools of misdirection so popular from the Reagan years. Obama talks one way and then acts the opposite. How is he planning on promoting entrepreneurship?
"Obama's fiscal 2012 budget, set for release Feb. 14, will include a proposal to make the elimination of capital gains taxes on certain investments in small businesses permanent, according to the announcement. The budget will also include an expansion of the New Markets Tax Credit to help encourage investments in startup companies and small businesses based in low-income areas.
The White House also will announce that the Small Business Administration will direct $2 billion in existing guarantee authority over the next 5 years to match private sector investments in lower-income areas."
What does Obama's budget offer for the unemployed and struggling? The same thing that Reagan offered, nothing!
Bloomberg- "In spite of differences between Democrats and Republicans on reforming housing finance, both sides back proposals that would make mortgages more expensive and difficult to obtain.
Government officials and lawmakers want to make the market less vulnerable to another credit crisis, and all the options lead the same general direction: Borrowers will need larger down payments than in the bubble years, have higher credit scores, and pay extra fees to cover risks and premiums for federal guarantees on government-backed mortgage bonds."
The plan first proposed by the American Enterprise Institute, a right wing think tank, is to privatize the mortgage market. To reduce government loan guarantees because two banks, Wells Fargo and Bank of America now control nearly 50 percent of the American mortgage marketplace.
Bloomberg - "We are going to have more collapses of this market if we open home ownership up to anyone who wants a home as opposed to people who can afford a home," said Peter Wallison, an author of the AEI report and former general counsel at the Reagan Treasury Department. "People are coming to that realization now." Wallison was also a key Reagan administration player involved with deregulating the finance industry. Wallison was Ronald Reagan's lead counsel in the Iran Contra affair and now he's back, just in time to help the Obama administration.
"Joseph Pigg, senior counsel at the American Bankers Association in Washington, said that without a government guarantee, banks would be unlikely to keep offering traditional 30-year mortgages. "
Yes Reagan would be so proud, Republicans and Democrats working arm and arm with Republican think tanks and the American Bankers Association just to limit any government assistance available to the public in a monopolized mortgage market.
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