President Obama Speaks on Income Inequality and Economic Mobility
This got lost in the other news this week, and once again we ask ourselves, “If the President of the United States gives a policy speech, will anyone listen?” This is a plenty solid statement of progressive principles and if no one labeled them progressive , I’d bet there is alot here most Americans would absolutely agree upon. Because middle and low income people ARE being thrown under the economic bus and have been since the Reagan presidency. The disconnect is, of course, Congress and not one of our Congressional delegation (that I can find, anyway) has chimed in to note that the President has a point and that they are working on (detailed) stuff to help ameliorate this. Getting rid of the thumb on the scale for most of their voters is a clear way to better prosperity all around, but I gather that Third Way cred is going to be more important than you OR your vote. Anyway, here is the President’s speech, about 48 minutes long.
Tags: Death of the Middle Class, Income Inequality, President Obama
Yes, the President makes good speeches about income inequality, but at the same time he supports propping up Wall Street with an 85 billion a month bond buying program.
Could it be that Obama is an advocate of supply side(trickle down) economics just as Reagan was?
The left really beat Reagan up over trickle down economics, but you don’t here them slamming Obama over it at all really.
hear
The President has also sent up at least three jobs bills — all focused on revitalizing crumbling infrastructure — and none have passed. Probably because the GOP doesn’t much care that Americans aren’t working or that our roads are falling apart.
And why do you care about the supports to the mortgage industry? It works like a tax cut for your guys, so you should be happy. Rich people getting paid and not rich people getting the bill. That’s your party’s formula, so why could you be unhappy about that?
“GOP doesn’t much care that Americans aren’t working or that our roads are falling apart.”
……..and bridges. You forgot the bridges.
Remember when Obama was touting the first stimulus when congress was completely controlled by the Democratic Party? He kept going around the country preaching about bridges, and infrastructure. Why didn’t the roads and bridges get fixed then?
The stimulus that got passed was a compromise measure — one that was small enough and had some tax rebates in it to get some GOP votes to pass. What’s the current pricetag to fix the infrastructure? 2 trillion or so?
A few smallish infrastructure projects did get done. Unless you want to argue that building a high speed EZPass interchange on 95 is all we need to do, it is time for you to grapple with the sheer size of the problem. But not that it matters — your party doesn’t much care about this kind of thing anyway.
Instead of starting a war in Iraq, we could have rebuilt our infrastructure. Good going conservatives
cassandra,
Unfortunately when you give a 48-minute speech on economic inequality in the middle of blowing the roll-out of the ACA, not many people are going to listen. That might not fair, or good policy, or even adequate reporting, but it is the same reality that everybody else in the office faces. After no WMDs and Katrina, nobody listened to Dubya, either. (And while I’ll eventually listen to it or at least sample it, it’s Saturday, so not today.)
The other reality is that Mr. Obama has more or less lost the media war at this point and entered into early lame-duck-dom. Yeah, you can blame the GOPers in the House for passing nothing, but Harry Truman managed to rage successfully against a “do nothing” Congress. Nobody likes or trusts the GOP on these issues, but now the majority doesn’t see the administration as much more credible. If it passed, would they actually be able to implement it? Most people now doubt it.
The Tea Party (and I will give you this: with a massive assist from the “news” media) managed to bring the Presidency down to their level.
Steve, The first part of what you said was bullshit. ACA or no ACA, the for profit press in this country wouldn’t cover the topics in that speech unless they were stapled to Lindsey Lohan’s ass.
Your second thoughts come closer to the truth.
Jason
You had me until we got to her ass.
Obama gave a speech on economic issues two years ago in Osawatamie, KS which got little to no coverage, either. What *did* get covered was Teddy Roosevelt’s Osawatamie speech from 100 years ago.
cassandra,
I think it is fairly plain that two dynamics work here. In the first, jason is right: nobody actually covers serious economic discussions. Even Elizabeth Warren only gets covered because she manages to sound populist and speak in sound bites.
The second is that any press love affair with the President ended a good while back. Ideally you’d like to believe that the press wouldn’t have a bro-mance with any politician, and would actually cover the news, but we know that’s not going to happen.
@jason re: “for profit media”–so what’s the alternative? State-run media?
I’m always trying to beat back the nostalgia I’m sometimes afflicted with that recalls the media as a “forth estate” of government.
When exactly would that have been? Like the middle class, a responsible media seems to have been a bug rather than a feature of our system.
Not to worry people. The media is just in a transitional phase. Pretty soon they will be receiving the daily narratives from the Clinton camp, and their direction will be clear……….Chelsea will be there 🙂
There was never much of a love affair between Obama and the media, no matter what the wingnut press says.
cassandra
I think there is a love affair with Obama when he is campaigning, because he is such a good campaigner. But when he’s in office, I agree with you.
@FBH: No, the Hillary backlash from the media will be intense, and it’s already starting to stir, because there is no duller narrative than inevitability.
When Gore was inevitable, the media turned on him early and never let up. When Hillary was inevitable in ’08 the media helped hype Obama into a credible threat, and then fell in love with itself when their wish came true. The media did everything it could in ’12 to hype the forces arrayed against re-election, much like a boxing promoter hyping a challenger who has little real chance against the champ.
This time, again, the inevitable Hillary will be attacked by all Republicans along with liberal Democrats, giving the media plenty of “trouble for Hillary” fodder once she declares. Whether the GOP nominates an unelectable loon like Cruz or an empty suit like Rubio or, heaven forbid, a theocratic scold like Rick Santorum, the media will make that person sound just as close to the American mainstream as Hillary.
At this point the media is so predictable you don’t even have to wait for the events to happen to know how they will be presented.
Let’s remember a few facts about the stimulus that might not fit well with the echo chamber sound bites and talking points. It was about a third “shovel ready” projects, one-third tax cuts, and another third aid to states specifically for things like Medicaid, police, teachers and fire-fighters. Some of the “shovel ready” projects were rejected for partisan reasons by state officials. At least one high speed rail line, and a New Jersey to New York tunnel are in that category, so not even all of the shovel ready project money was spent, though some did get into different projects.
The history of significant infrastructure spending having positive economic impact is very consistent and includes major commerce and budget benefits during the terms of Eisenhower, Reagan and Clinton. Eisenhower and Reagan initiatives were done in a bi-partisan manner, and Clinton’s was done with pretty much only the support of democrats. Reagan’s was particularly interesting, because in his weekly Thanksgiving weekend address, he announced he was asking congress for a gas tax increase that would be put to use to “improve our deteriorating infrastructure of roads and bridges.” Just six weeks later, there was a bill on his desk, and it did not take long to get people back to work and see real progress on road and bridge projects in communities across the country.
There is today a higher percentage of roads, bridges, and things like water and sewer lines that are labeled at risk or near failure categories than we had in 1982. There were plenty of democrats who did not like Ronald Reagan, and almost everyone knew this scope of work would have significant positive economic impact, but no one voted against it because they were afraid it would make the President more popular. It was the right thing to do then, and it is the right thing to do now.
Geezer’s take on how things are going to go down is chillingly on point.