Unfortunately we don't have a President....we have a Saul Alynski Community Organizer...
October 7, 2011 7:34 pm
White House feeds off protest anger
By Richard McGregor in Washington
Weeks after taking to the streets in Manhattan, Occupy Wall St demonstrators are camped a block from the White House. Many of them are wondering: do they have a friend inside?
While not endorsing the protests, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have expressed understanding of the movement that has spread rapidly across the country.
Mr Obama said people were angry because Wall Street had not been “following the rules”. His vice-president even compared the movement on Thursday to the Tea Party, the conservative movement which has upended national politics in the past two years.
“The core [of the protest] is: the bargain has been breached. The American people do not think the system is fair, or on the level,” Mr Biden said.
Underlying the protests, and the administration’s response, is the stubbornly stagnant economy that continues to sap voter confidence and challenge politicians.
On McPherson Square in Washington near the White House, the motley crew of protesters are lashing out in different directions, from corporate greed to the ballooning deficit to, above all, the political class.
“Politicians are only interested in keeping themselves employed, so they don’t make decisions for the people,” said Joe Gray, 23, from nearby Montgomery County.
The protesters are small in number, ranging at various times between a few dozen and a few hundred, and were still earnestly debating organisational minutiae on Thursday evening: should they break the law by sleeping in the park, or keep to the footpaths on its edges, which is legal?
“During the day, we just look like a bunch of out-of-work hippies,” said Miles Casey, 24, a science teacher from Arlington.
But increasingly their targets are also those of the White House – what the movement calls “the 1 per cent” – wealthy Americans whose taxes Mr Obama wants to raise to pay for his programme to boost jobs.
“I am more disappointed in the parties than I am in (Mr Obama),” said Mr Casey.
The trigger for the administration’s renewed burst of criticism of the financial sector was seemingly trivial – the decision by the Bank of America to impose a $5 monthly fee on debit accounts.
Barack Obama begins the third year of his presidency, with the House of Representatives under Republican control and the Tea Party movement ascendent
BofA said the fees were lifted in response to a new Democratic-sponsored law that reduces the amount banks can charge retailers when shoppers use debit cards.
Mr Obama attacked BofA and said financial institutions did not have “an inherent right” to a certain level of profit, a comment he has since rowed back from.
The president’s decision to single out a bank took even his critics by surprise.
“How much transparency do you want,” said Tony Fratto, of Hamilton Place Strategies who served in the administration of George W. Bush. “The banks said: if you impose this new fee, then we will have to find a way to recover what we won’t be getting from debit cards.”
Simon Rosenberg, head of the Democrat-aligned NDN think-tank, says popular anger had been rising since 2005 after years in which middle-class incomes had stagnated, while those of the wealthiest soared in relative terms. “This is just the latest iteration of that,” he says, citing in three successive elections – the 2006 midterms, the 2008 presidential election and the 2010 midterms – in which the party in power have been swept aside.
“Mr Obama is now getting closer to the actual zeitgeist of the American people.”
Mr Obama’s toughening line on Wall Street also coincides with a tightening of the political cycle, as politicians begin to tailor every utterance to next year’s presidential and congressional elections.
Mr Obama is pressing his Republican opponents in Congress to support his jobs bill, but he is also struggling to get his own party in line, with some Democratic senators sceptical about his proposal to pay for the $447bn bill.
Senate Democrats came up with their own plan this week – higher taxes on anyone earning above $1m, instead of the $250,000 threshold set by Mr Obama, which they considered too low.
Mr Obama said he was comfortable with the Senate’s plan. It seems a safe bet that the protesters in McPherson Square would approve as well.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment