Mr. Obama last week obediently recited the Chamber of Commerce's liturgy about governmental regulation being the cause of what ails the American economy in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. This public oath of allegiance signaled his now admitted complicity with those who supposedly had been his opponents. The one example of alleged bad regulation he cites in the WSJ op-ed is something about saccharin and the environment. The prospect of our corporate moguls being released from the bonds of saccharin regulation doubtless has China's President Hu and his colleagues quaking in their well-tailored suits.
Let's make one thing perfectly clear. These actions were not imposed on Obama. They are not the inescapable outcome of political circumstances. He chose this path. It conforms to his behavior from the very start of his presidency. It was a newly-elected Obama who hand-picked Geithner and Summers. Who installed as his right-hand man Rahm Emanuel from the board of scandal-ridden Freddie Mac and deal-maker at Dresdner Kleinwort. Who declared at a press conference on the eve of his inauguration that he would not seek to repeal the Bush tax cuts but rather let them drain Treasury revenues until they expired, which of course he has conspired to prevent. Who met clandestinely with Big Pharma to cut a secret deal that ruled out the government's bargaining on drug prices. Who met clandestinely with health industry giants to cut a secret deal that ruled out the public option.
This is the same Obama who does not know the main provisions of the Social Security Act of 1935 -- as evinced on repeated occasions. Who put Social Security and Medicare on the rack by rigging his deficit commission with the appointment of Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles. The Obama who avowedly takes his inspiration from Ronald Reagan; who spent his holiday in Hawaii reading an account of how the Gipper's White House office was run for him. The Obama who has reserved his harshest and heartfelt words for attacks on progressives. Political expediency is not the reason for turning his back on his supporters and on his pledges. After all, spurning his constituents and kowtowing to the entrenched interests led to the biggest off-year disaster in American electoral history. In short, all the evidence is that an old-school "moderate" Republican occupies the White House. It's official - we voted for a Republican
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-brenner/barack-obama-out-of-the-c_b_813027.html