How close has Obama come to saying the GOP pillars of deregulation and privatization are scams?

[yurbud]

Maybe it's being snipped out, but Dems seem to nibble around the edges of it instead of drive a stake in the vampire.

The same is true with two industries that are blood-sucking leeches draining the life out of other businesses, big and small: health insurance and big oil.

Dems have taken some shots at big oil, but they haven't gone for the jugular and said they need to be decoupled from our foreign policy, only that we need to get off foreign oil. We aren't in the Middle East for us. We are there to give that oil to big oil companies so they can reap the profits not someone else.

Likewise, they seem reluctant to say that at a minimum, if private insurance is going to be part of the mix, it needs to be strictly regulated with required ratios of premiums paid out in claims, and criminal penalties for denying care to those who paid their premiums.

Maybe Obama is going to hit these guys hard after the election, but if he goes the way of the other Dems and tries to ride the crocodile's head, he's going to be eaten like the rest.

[babylonsister]

1. Yes, let's wait til he gets elected.

And sadly, I think the rethugs, in the minority, will be getting in line because our situation in this country and world will be so screwed up, they won't have a choice and might even welcome someone with a brain, even if he is a Dem.

[MadMaddie]

2. Actually I think a jab here and a jab there to keep them off

balance is the way to go, have you noticed every day the Democratic strategy seems to be increasing in attacks....strategically thinking it is smart not to show all of the tactics in store for the Republicans.

I think we are starting to see an escalation of these jabs.....I am enjoying it.. :toast: :popcorn:

[yurbud]

5. death of a thousand cuts is great--as long as you eventually get to the jugular

[MadMaddie]

6. Exactly!!

[ben_meyers]

3. According to Mother Jones he has said it pretty loud already

It's the Deregulation, Stupid

Commentary: Democrats from Carter to Clinton helped roll back the government's regulatory power, but as the economic crisis deepens, "regulation" is no longer such a dirty word.

By James Ridgeway

March 28, 2008

Speaking at Cooper Union in New York City on Thursday, Barack Obama went where few Democrats have dared to go in the past quarter-century: He made a case for more regulation. As part of a speech on his economic platform, Obama depicted the current economic crisis as a consequences of deregulation in the financial sector. "Our free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it," he said. "Unfortunately, instead of establishing a 21st century regulatory framework, we simply dismantled the old one—aided by a legal but corrupt bargain in which campaign money all too often shaped policy and watered down oversight."

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2008/03/deregulation-economic-crisis.html

[yurbud]

4. that's a good sign that somewhat counterbalances the Chicago School economists in his posse.