The Empty Bully Pulpit

[Vanje]

article by Robert Reich

http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/72-72/6794-the-empty-bully-pulpit


excerpt:
More critically, Americans are deeply confused about the economy. In his inaugural address, Obama warned that “the nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.” In private, he professes to understand that the growing concentration of income and wealth at the top has robbed the vast middle class of the purchasing power it needs to keep the economy going. He is well aware that the Great Recession wiped out $7.8 trillion of home value, crushing the nest eggs and eliminating the collateral that had allowed the middle class to keep spending despite declining wages—a decrease in consumption that is directly responsible for the anemic recovery. But he doesn’t explain this to the American people or attempt to mobilize them around a vision of what should be done.

Instead, even as unemployment rises to 9.2 percent and at least 14 million people look for work, he joins the GOP in making a fetish of reducing the budget deficit over the next decade and enters into a hair-raising game of chicken with House Republicans over whether the debt ceiling will be raised. Never once does he tell the public why reducing the deficit has become his No. 1 economic priority. Americans can only conclude that the Republicans must be correct—that diminishing the deficit will somehow revive economic growth and restore jobs.

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Entire article well worth the time to read it.

If Robert Reich ran for president, I would vote for him.

[Speck Tater]

1. The huge line of tildes forces the page width way off both sides of my computer screen. Please edit.

[Vanje]

2. Oh tHE hUMANITY!

The link will read nicely for you.

[Speck Tater]

4. That's true.

But it IS annoying to have to scroll back and forth horizontally to read a post.
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[Safetykitten]

3. I wish this could be reccommended a million times.

[Bluebear]

8. +

[Amonester]

5. Well, to be fair, maybe he is keeping all these stories for his future...

book($?)...

Alright, I could be wrong, but the possibilities/opportunities exist.

If even bu$h got a book he didn't even write out, it's hard to imagine Barack Obama won't...

[swilton]

6. There is talent out there

Sanders, Reich, Defazio, Grayson, Krugman, Kennedy -

[hifiguy]

7. As usual, Professor Reich hits the nail squarely

on the head.

K&R

[sendero]

9. Reich..

... is one of the few telling it like it is. Plainly, clearly and correctly.

[certainot]

10. what the left can't get through their heads is that team limbaugh (think tanks) have a louder bully

pulpit.

i'm not saying there might have been a way to repeat the cheney line that deficits don't matter and get that going, if he had and made it work, and the right though it was bad for them- ie. he was going to get a bigger stimulus, they would have mapped out a strategy and pounded out the talking points and messaged over it.

actually, asking for a larger stimulus, and or another one, was already fought out and won by limbaugh and sons- they, as lead for the rest of the media, determined that small stimulus was too big and unaffordable as is, just like the left let them determine single payer was no good.

and all because the left ignores those 1000 radio stations.