Four more years’ YWC cliché, E. coli”

Re-reporting, editing, comment by Carolyn Bennett

“Yes we can” brings you the same ole pandering, purposely clueless, precedent-keeping status quo
The citizens can judge if they will

Only a fool believes — or an astute person is unprincipled enough to peddle such nonsense — that regulation off shores jobs and destroys financial sectors, sustains polluted air and unclean water and tainted or otherwise unsafe food.

Public protections have been grossly inadequate in the past several years, Public Citizen’s Robert Weissman wrote in mid January. Under-regulation and corporate disregard of safety rules have resulted in multiple salmonella and E. coli outbreaks, a flood of lead-tainted toys, a massive and environmentally devastating oil spill, deadly mine disasters and the collapse of our economy — costing eight million U.S. jobs.

“We need to focus most urgently on fixing these problems and others,” Weissman says, not cutting back, conducting internal reviews, creating red tape, and further burdening agencies already overworked and under-resourced.

President Barack Obama’s January opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal “adopts business and right-wing think-tank talking points about the harms of regulation and urges ‘balance’ in achieving the right amount of regulation. This, Weissman says, “is the wrong way to think about regulation, and it is the wrong direction for the American people.

Markets cannot function without proper regulation. That means businesses cannot function without proper regulation.

We do not need a ‘balance’ between regulation and the free market. We need effective regulations that foster the right types of markets.”

The current U.S. president in a long line of presidents is deliberately, calculatedly, clueless, pandering to corporate while pushing broad sectors of the American people [the country, its union, its institutions] more deeply into danger, despair and disaffection.

In this year’s State of the Union address, amidst much pandering and the usual pathetic platitudes and clichés (not a syllable on employment/unemployment, poor/poverty, environmental health), the U.S. president self-identifies as the cunningly clueless figure most people by now know him to be. Like his presidential predecessors (now members of his cabinet and inner circle) who “felt your pain” and sold you out, subliminally telling you “you’re on your own,” the president said — as if you did not know — “The competition for jobs is real.” How astute is that? And —

“None of us can predict with certainty what the next big industry will be or where the new jobs will come from.” This is a leader without vision — a regressive in a requisite era of “progress.”

Is the choir this Sunday singing “four more years” of this “yes-we-can”?

Somehow, I doubt it.



Sources and notes
Public Citizen President Robert Weissman wrote on January 18, 2011, “Obama’s new approach to regulation is misguided” Instead of fewer, “we need stronger controls over big business, ” Statement of Robert Weissman, President, Public Citizen, January 18, 2011,
http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/pressroomredirect.cfm?ID=3258

“Unprecedented bailouts, Outlandish bonuses, Token regulation, Too big to fail getting even bigger, The global economy sacrificed to feed a boundless greed,” these, according to Public Citizen, are the destroyers of quality — a quality of life the Same Ole Washington barons persist in imposing on people’s lives.

Public Citizen for nearly four decades has championed citizen interests before Congress, the executive branch agencies and the courts. The group has successfully challenged abusive practices of the pharmaceutical, nuclear and automobile industries; and has led the charge against undemocratic trade agreements that advance the interests of mega-corporations at the expense of citizens worldwide. Public Citizen is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization with two offices in Washington, D.C., and Austin, Texas, https://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=2306

Remarks by the President in State of Union Address, the White House, Office of the Press Secretary, For Immediate Release January 25, 2011, United States Capitol, Washington, D.C., http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/25/remarks-president-state-union-address

Also: CounterSpin, January 28-February 3, 2011, “Laila El-Haddad on Palestine Papers [and] Robert Weissman on Obama and Big Business,” http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4241


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