Obama, after all, was the president who bailed out Wall Street with the Troubled Asset Relief Program. TARP and other Obama corporate rescue programs, after all, benefited such goliath corporations as Bank of America, Citigroup, AIG, General Motors and Chrysler — saving tens of thousands of jobs.
Romney, who wanted the Detroit auto makers to go bankrupt, represents the predatory form of capitalism that swarms all over dead or dying corporations to pick their assets clean by selling them off with huge profits going to the vulture-like middlemen.
Had the former Massachusetts governor won the presidential election, General Motors and Chrysler likely would have been diced and sliced with their valuable assets put in the hands of Chinese, Russian, Japanese and European conglomerates courtesy of financial corpse-preparing morticians like Bain Capital.
Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the economic stimulus package of 2009, provided direct and indirect assistance to small and large businesses through the hiring of construction firms and related firms to rebuild roads, highways, rail lines, airports and telecommunications infrastructure.
A “Buy American” clause prevented notorious foreign outsourcers from by-passing American workers and manufacturers by seeking out the lowest wage earners and cheapest products abroad.
As the dreaded Jan. 1 “financial cliff” approaches, President Obama is proposing a return to Clinton Administration tax rates, which imposed a top rate of 39.6 percent for those earning more than $250,000 a year.
That’s only a slight bump up from the 35 percent rate put in place by the Bush tax cuts, and together with mandatory cuts and proposed tax increases of about $600 billion, assure a soft landing for America’s recovering economy.
The Republicans and their wealthy backers have cried foul while ignoring the fact that the Clinton tax rates also saw a booming economy, especially with regard to the practically-overnight successful “dot com” start-ups, healthy government surpluses and 21 million new jobs.
Unfazed by Romney’s drubbing in the polls and the failure of Republicans to make gains in Congress, America’s wealthiest tycoons have mounted a propaganda effort aimed at convincing all of America that Obama is intent on thwarting America’s growth.
There is little doubt that if the United States was preparing to inaugurate Mitt Romney as president on Jan. 20, 2013, the world would be talking about America’s disastrous drift into the austerity budgets now forced on such European basket-cases as Spain and Greece.
The president’s election mandate to bring about a public-private partnership economic growth plan will soon be the envy of Europe, but only if the administration resists efforts to place Social Security, Medicare and public education on the chopping block.
Like FDR in the 1930s, Obama actually is saving American capitalism by reining in its excesses and plowing under its inequities.
Today’s malefactors of great wealth already have launched an industrial strength propaganda campaign to discredit Obama’s recipe for economic growth.
The media should combat this insidious assault on common sense by remembering the mission Chicago journalist Finley Peter Dunne urged on newspapers at the turn of the last century: “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
Wayne Madsen is a contributing writer to www.onlinejournal.com. Readers may write to him at National Press Club front desk, 529 14th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20045.
Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Abolition of all right of inheritance.
Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country.
Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form and combination of education with industrial production.[14]