Saturday Morning Reads

Good Morning!

Just for some fun, let’s look at this day in history. Back in  1993 the last Russian troops left Poland in what was one of the signs of the end of the Cold War.    In 1975 , it was the rollout of 1st space shuttle orbiter Enterprise (OV-101) that brought tears of joy to every Trekker’s eyes.  One of my favorite things to watch as a little girl debuted in 1964. “Bewitched” premiered on ABC TV.  I was always rooting for Samantha to use her magic as much as possible and dump Darren Downer.   Also, when I was older and in high school in 1972 ,  “M*A*S*H,” premiered on NBC TV.  Today is also the birthday of the late, great  Anne Bancroft who was born in the Bronx in 1931.  She  had some other names too!  First, she was born into the name Anna Maria Italiano.  Then she was also known as Mrs. Mel Brooks. Bancroft  starred in some of my favorite movies like “The Miracle Worker” and “The Graduate”.  She definitely got some of the best women’s roles back then. She died of uterine cancer in 2005.  Happy Birthday Mrs. Robinson where ever you may be!!!

Despite incredibly bad polling numbers, Obama’s close advisers refuse to entertain the idea that Obama may become a one-termer. It’s all in the message, you know! Plus, it’s all the fault of the villagers and the “elite”. Well, that’s what Axelroad wrote in a memo to Sunday news program producers.

Axelrod’s memo, which took on “members of the media” and “elite commentary,” seemed to be a reaction to those concerns.

He said Obama is in much better shape to beat his Republican rivals next year than his approval ratings would suggest, in part because of voter support for the jobs proposal and in part because of the public’s dismal view of Republicans.

“Members of the media have focused on the president’s approval ratings as if they existed in a black box,” Axelrod wrote.

“Two-thirds believe we should cut taxes for the middle class and rebuild America’s roads and bridges,” Axelrod wrote, referring to the CNN poll. “Three-quarters believe we need to put our teachers and first responders back to work. More Americans trust the president to handle the economy than congressional Republicans by a margin of nine points.”

Axelrod also took issue with the conventional wisdom that the president has lost much of his base to disillusionment or disappointment, saying that Obama is polling higher with Democrats than President Clinton was at this point in his first term.

“Despite what you hear in elite commentary, the president’s support among base voters and in key demographic groups has stayed strong,” Axelrod wrote.

There’s a gossipy book coming out on September 20th from Ron Suskind on the early Obama years called ‘Confidence Men’.  Details were released this morning and I’m actually more interested in reading some of the blog reactions than the book itself.  The first reaction to read comes from Marcy over at Emptywheel.  Marcy talks about the Chief of Staff appointments.

But I’m just as interested in Suskind’s revelation that Obama didn’t want Rahm at first.

The book says one of Obama’s top advisers, former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, was not the president’s first choice for the position. According to Suskind, Emanuel’s name was not even on the initial short list, which included White House aide Pete Rouse.

Folks on the Hill are now bitching about Bill Daley. Though I think they’re crazy to miss Rahm, who may have been nicer to the Hill but was also ineffective. Me, I thought Rouse was the best of the three and wonder what it was that led Obama to pass up that choice and–in what was one of his first announcements–pick Rahm instead. It’s not like Rouse wasn’t available; he has been with the Administration throughout the Administration.

There was still a lot wrong with the execution of this Administration, such as the insubordinate Treasury Secretary that Obama didn’t fire. But a decent Chief of Staff might have at least made it more effective.

It looks like Timmy was in the well from the get go. If you want a rip roaring assessment of  Timmy and his act of subordination to the President because of his uber loyalty to Big banks, you really should check out Yves at Naked Capitalism.  She’s got a great ticktock over there on just how friendly Obama has always been to Wall Street and the huge commercial banks.

Let’s be clear. I’m sure Suskind’s sources did indeed tell him what he reported in the book. But there is plenty of reason to believe that this idea, that Obama “ordered” a Citigroup resolution plan and Geithner ignored it, is just an effort to shift blame for an unpopular pro-bank strategy to Geithner.

Look at the spin: we are supposed to believe Obama wanted to be tougher with the banks and was thwarted by his Geithner. Does that mean we are also supposed to believe that Eric Holder also ignored Obama’s orders to prosecute?

The only problem with this effort at revisionist history is that it is completely out of synch with other actions the Administration took in February and March 2009 that had to have been approved by Obama. And his posture before this supposed Citigroup “decision” and after, has been consistently bank friendly. Obama knew from the example of the Roosevelt administration, which he claimed to have studied in preparing his inaugural address, that the time to undertake any aggressive action was at the very start of his term, in that critical speech. March was far too late to start studying the question of whether to nationalize Citigroup.

Remember, Obama has been on the defensive since mid 2010, when it looked like the Democratic party was going to take big mid-term losses and they turned out to be even worse than expected. The realization that the Administration’s poor policy choices were coming home to roost would no doubt lead to trying to shift blame off the President on to convenient scapegoats. That mid 2010 timeframe likely coincided with Suskind’s research and interviews. And the “inexperienced President” positioning also serves to explain why an order-bucking staffer like Geithner is still in the saddle. Obama has since leashed and collared his advisors; this failure to exercise a firm hand was a short-lived problem, although the early mistakes that resulted still haunt him. A clever story, no?

All we have to do is look at the bigger arc of the President’s financial services industry bait and switch to see that this “Geithner blew me off” account doesn’t hold up. Recall that during his campaign, Obama made a great show of having Paul Volcker, who clearly had the stature to stare down the banks, as an advisor. The assumption was that Volcker would be Treasury secretary or otherwise very influential (think Kissinger in his role as head of the NSA, which prior to his appointment, had never been a powerful position).

After the election, Obama named Geithner and Summers, two of the major architects of the deregulatory strategies that drove the global economy over the cliff, to his most senior economics/financial services positions. And to top it off, Geithner and Summers then were close allies and Summers was seen as a ruthless infighter, so together they were more formidable than either would have been individually. Volcker was given a role that was the equivalent of exiling him to Siberia, head of a newly-formed Financial Stability Oversight Council. Anyone who knew anything about the players could see that Obama had decided to throw his lot in with the banks.

A WAPO piece by  Nia-Malika Henderson and Peter Wallsten says the Obama White House was overloaded with testosterone-addicted male power baboons–specifically Geithner and Summers–that essentially created a hostile work environment for women adivsors.

In an excerpt obtained by The Post, a female senior aide to President Obama called the White House a hostile environment for women.

“This place would be in court for a hostile workplace,” former White House communications director Anita Dunn is quoted as saying. “Because it actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women.”

Dunn declined to discuss the specifics of the book. But in an interview Friday she said she told Suskind “point blank” that the White House “was not a hostile environment.”

“The president is someone who when he goes home at night he goes home to house full of very strong women,” Dunn added. “He values having strong women around him.”

The book, due out next week, reveals a White House that at times was divided and dysfunctional.

Robert Scheer–editor of Truth Dig–has great analysis up that supplements the idea that Obama has always been big bank friendly and that he’s gone easy on them.  Scheer also says that Obama now owns the economy.  He wrote the piece in response to the horrible poverty numbers released last week.

It’s getting too late to give President Barack Obama a pass on the economy. Sure, he inherited an enormous mess from George W., who whistled “Dixie” while the banking system imploded. But it’s time for Democrats to admit that their guy bears considerable responsibility for not turning things around.

He blindly followed President Bush’s would-be remedy of throwing money at the banks and getting nothing in return for beleaguered homeowners. Sadly, Obama has proved to be nothing more than a Bill Clinton clone triangulating with the Wall Street lobbyists at the expense of ordinary folks.

That fatal arc of betrayal was captured by a headline in Tuesday’s New York Times: “Soaring Poverty Casts Spotlight on ‘Lost Decade.’ ” The Census Bureau reported that there are now 46.2 million Americans living below the official poverty line—the highest number in the 52 years since that statistic was first measured—and median household income has fallen back to the 1996 level. As Harvard economist Lawrence Katz summarized this dreary news: “This is truly a lost decade. We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we’re looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s.”

So I absolutely had to share this picture on the left from this week’s edition of  The Economist showing the world’s biggest employers. I was shocked to see that the US Defense department came in at number 1 while a not close second was the People’s Republic of China’s Liberation Army. Then, comes Walmart and McDonald’s.  I have to say, this looks like pretty fucked up global priorities to me.

ONE of the biggest headaches for policymakers in many rich countries has been how to create jobs during a period of fiscal austerity and anaemic growth. The private sector has been slow to generate jobs, and government-spending cuts usually end up cutting jobs. And governments employ a lot of people: in our chart of the ten biggest global employers, below, seven are government-run.

Okay, well, that’s enough from me for the morning.  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?