[Peace-discuss] Cockburn on Obama's acquiescence

[C. G. Estabrook]

...The Obama team has managed the tricky shot of giving more bailout money to 
the banks than the cumulative dispensations of all previous US governments, 
while at the same time NOT giving any significant debt relief to ruined 
homeowners, a huge slice of whom are poor, black and Hispanic.

Obama is not seeking to reform the financial system, and it would be beyond 
miraculous if he did, since the contrivers of the present mess - Lawrence 
Summers et al - were given a welcoming clap on the back by the new president as 
he stepped into the White House and told them to get on with the job. This 
amazing bailout for the existing corrupt system - as if Lenin had used the 
October revolution to restore the Romanovs - has been engineered without 
significant opposition from organised labour or the left-liberal end of Obama's 
own party.

Of course people curse the bankers and their political flunkeys as they watch 
their 10Ks atomise, their homes go and their jobs disappear to China. They 
smoulder as they endure the parade of Murdoch's demagogues on Fox, flirting and 
toying with the theme of Obama's assassination.

The Obama administration dares to war with Glenn Beck, apparently the only enemy 
it feels capable of confronting. The gossip site Gawker calls on its readers to 
turn in all discreditable information about Goldman Sachs executives. The 
liberal talk host Keith Olberman calls on his audience to rat out Beck. Neither 
invitation has thus far yielded any significant harvest.

Alas, American populism needs the octane of cash. During the Clinton scandals, 
Hustler supremo Larry Flynt wanted his audience to rat out high-ranking 
Republican sinners. He offered $100,000 cash rewards and the dirt rolled in. 
Populism has to be cash-based these days. Maybe that was Ralph Nader's point. 
His first work of fiction, 700 pages long, is titled Only the Super-Rich Can 
Save Us.