Missed Opportunity

Article: Robert Reich (Obama's Address to the Nation: A Missed Opportunity to Tell It Like It Is)

The disappointment with President Barack Obama is growing daily, and his last speech did nothing to allay our concerns. In this article, Robert Reich says:

Whether it’s Wall Street or health insurers or oil companies, we are approaching a turning point as a nation. The top executives of powerful corporations are pursuing profits in ways that menace the nation. We have not seen the likes since the late nineteenth century when the “robber barons” of finance, oil, railroads and steel ran roughshod over America. Now, as then, they are using their wealth and influence to buy off legislators and intimidate the regions that depend on them for jobs. Now, as then, they are threatening the safety and security of our people.

During the "robber baron" period, the wealthy controlled the politics of this country, and politicians dared not step out of line with what they wanted. They were foiled only when Theodore Roosevelt, who was given the most insignificant job in the country (in their opinion)--Vice President--to keep him out of the way, when he ascended to the presidency upon McKinley's assassination. That was the beginning of the Progressive Movement in America, putting the Sherman Antitrust Act into real action. The Progressive Movement was based upon the premise that the federal government had a significant role in making sure that the scales of power, between the wealthy and the masses, and between industrial leaders and labor, was balanced. Democracy cannot function if the scales are tipped in favor of the most wealthy amongst us. Democracy then descends into oligarchy.

Obama is a brilliant man. His talents were on full display during the campaign. He now looks like he is working with his hands tied... very much like the presidents of the robber baron period.

Suggested books: The Promise by Jonathan Alter; Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future by Robert Reich; Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris

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