Mar 22 2009
Obama Picks Dumb Fight With Most Powerful In America
OK, we can now determine scientifically and without any doubt the President Obama is naive and in way over his head.
Many people have been trying to understand how this administration could pretend everything is going well after the serious of blunders we have seen in less than 100 days in office. From the tax evading nominees, to the fiasco that is the treasury department, to the screwed up Spendulus bill trying to masquerade as a stimulus bill, to the closing of GITMO with no idea what to do with the prisoners, to the lame out reach to Iran, to the aborted plan to charge military personnel to heal their war wounds to …. You get the idea.
We have all been witness to the avalanche of blunders. But today we see the blunder of all blunders, as Team Obama tries to take on all of the most wealthy and powerful people in America:
The Obama administration will call for increased oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies as part of a sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation, government officials said.
The outlines of the plan are expected to be unveiled this week in preparation for President Barack Obama’s first foreign summit meeting in early April.
Increasing oversight of executive pay has been under consideration for some time, but the decision was made in recent days as public fury over bonuses has spilled into the regulatory effort.
Another knee-jerk, stupid reaction from a team of amateurs. First off, Obama considers anyone whose household income is greater than $250,000 a year rich. That is a lot of upper middle income families. But even if he limited himself to the top 1% of individuals (note he is not going after companies here) then he has picked a fight with the people who fund elections across this country. And they will not stand still for this idea. They are mobilizing as we speak, applying pressure to democrats everywhere.
I am not going to sit back and pretend I have the knowledge, insight or moral superiority to conclude these people are evil and need to be reigned in. I leave that egotistical exercise to inferior minds with massive insecurity complexes. We have a country and an economy built on the premise that if you work hard (and get lucky with the timing) you can become very wealthy. Many people achieve huge success legally and morally. And these people actually have a right to band together and challenge Obama on this matter.Â
Team Obama’s juvenile effort to attack the rich is actually their answer to all the bad press about their previous  blunders, especially the AIG bonus cover up. As I noted yesterday Obama and the Dems are desperate right now for the nation not to discover who is really at fault for the financial collapse, since they will be the ones dealing with the angry mob. But this is a really, really lame attempt to besmirch the best corporate leaders in the country just to try and divert attention. It is clumsy and transparent to many. Everyone who runs a company is now targeted by a failing group of people in DC who are doing nothing more than lashing out. Team Obama is cornered by their own ineptitude and trying to thrash their way out of the mess they put themselves in.
Like his deficit plans, Obama’s grand plans are unsustainable. He has no idea how this game is played.He assumes all he has to do is utter some brilliance and the court of DC will run to make it so. Â He is going to go down in history as the example as to why we should never pick a complete novice for the job of President.
Update: Yeah, its bad. Maxine Waters has come to challenge Obama on the AIG bonuses, Paul Krugman (liberal at the NY Times) has panned all the Obama’s economic plans, and now liberal Frank Rich has come out to note Obama is flubbing his “Katrina Moment“:
A CHARMING visit with Jay Leno won’t fix it. A 90 percent tax on bankers’ bonuses won’t fix it. Firing Timothy Geithner won’t fix it. Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans’ anger with his full arsenal of policy smarts and political gifts, his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed. It would be foolish to dismiss as hyperbole the stark warning delivered by Paulette Altmaier of Cupertino, Calif., in a letter to the editorpublished by The Times last week: “President Obama may not realize it yet, but his Katrina moment has arrived.â€
Except now it is a nation, not one city, in trouble. No wonder Team Obama is in full panic mode pointing fingers.
Update: Wow, Barack has even lost Maureen Dowd:
But there was Michelle on Friday, the first day of spring, with a bunch of fifth graders, digging a veggie garden on the South Lawn.
…
The tableau of Michelle Obama hoisting a pitchfork on Friday with her sinewy arms and warning that the commander in chief would be commandeered into yard work left me wondering if the wrong Obama is in the Oval.
Ouch – that’s going to leave a mark.
Update: What he said (Scott @ Powerline):
I feel utterly powerless to do anything about the fellow in the Oval Office who combines infantile leftism and adolescent grandiosity in roughly equal measures. It seems to me that every day he is responsible for assaults on the freedom and well being of the American people. I can’t keep up and I can’t stand to pay attention.
It does have a sort of morbid fascination to it.
This is just like going to a NASCAR race for the crashes, where we have an unlimited supply of cars to crash and the only casualties are the spectators.
Unfortunately, Obama “…floats like a butterfly…” and tickles like one too. The man is too pre-occupied to grasp the extent and depth of the financial mess, much less use all his energies and talents (whatever they may be) to provide the unrelenting focus and attention of his administration necessary to craft meaningful solutions for it. In essence, nothing has changed since 20 January.
Our nation’s employers, entrepreneurs, and investors are now officially the declared enemies of this administration. Let’s call them the “new enemy combatants”.
I suppose next he will announce that the terrorists will be leaving Guantanamo to make room for those evil capitalist “fat cats”.
Scott @ Powerline express my feelings so beautifully. I can’t bear to see “The Man” one more time, but I’m afraid to miss what he is going to do next. As I said before it feels as if his hand extends right into my living room, rearranges the furniture, plays around with my children, and grabs whatever he wants before he pulls it back. President Bush put his arms around the Country.
Krugman, Rich, and Dowd – Those three mean together means he’s lost the New York Times, which means he’s lost the respectable half of the Democrat party.
The rest of the MSM takes their cues from the NYT. This will begin to ripple out with ever greater and greater ferocity.
In practical terms, attacking the bank executives means that financial stocks which had started to lead the market up again will collapse again. As that happens, the rest of the market will take their cue and this short term rally will be over quickly as we head back towards 6,000.
There is one ray of hope that this won’t happen – Obama could fail completely and be unable to get any of this off the ground.
In fact, the complete and total failure of everything Obama intends is the only true hope this country has left.
In the meantime – he is plowing through. It doesn’t matter if he is losing these people – he is still going through with EVERYTHING. I read all of these columns (in the NYT’s – including Friedman!!!!) and even though they sound bemused and confused and nervous, they are still WITH HIM. I don’t know what it will take to turn them. You just watch, after 60 minutes tonight and the news conference on Tuesday, they will be hailing him all over again as the ONE. I am so bummed. I think it is why I only blog pretty stuff from the 19th century…
There is no way it can be legal for the government to decide how much money other people make.
What about people like Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey who have built huge businesses with their effort and talent? Does Congress get to decide how much they can pay themselves?
How about Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan, does the state get to decide what they make on endorsements?
How about Bruce Willis and Johnny Depp, does the government get to decide what they can make?
This is nuts, it will destroy business in this country.
Barack Obama insisted on giving bail out money to companies like AIG and now he is demonizing them for taking it. The man does not know what he is doing.
Obama is going to try to kill one of the great things about America. He will kill the hope of doing well financially that every kid knows is possible here. If my children see no hope of doing financially well and possibly, just possibly becoming sucessful beyond their wildest dreams, then why bother bettering themselves. Why bother going to college? My daughter wants to work with animals and possibly run a horse rescue. My son wants to be a psychologist. Why bother period?
What is it going to take for the dreamers who voted Obama into office to realize what they have done?!?! This whole thing is insanity!!!
Terrye:
“There is no way it can be legal for the government to decide how much money other people make.”
Again I ask – why do you drop this opinion when we’re talking about automakers, and the UAW? Hypocrite much?
So, tell me:
How much does it kill you people that two-thirds of this country still approves of Obama?
Heh.
It’s good that you comment occasionally to remind us all how stupid you are.
No one says autoworkers shouldn’t make whatever the market will bear. But if they make so much it puts their owner out of business, how is that a success.
GM should pay whatever they can and stay in business, but the government (us taxpayers) shouldn’t bail them out.
You seem to have a hard time understanding that.
Are you Punch drunk?
It just keeps getting worse for Dodd.
AJ,
“But even if he limited himself to the top 1% of individuals (note he is not going after companies here) then he has picked a fight with the people who fund elections across this country. And they will not stand still for this idea. They are mobilizing as we speak, applying pressure to democrats everywhere.”
Why do you have a problem with picking a fight with the people who fund elections across the country? Isn’t that part of the problem – politicians doing the bidding of their major campaign contributors rather than looking out for the country as a whole? If that is your position, why are you complaining about the AIG bonuses? AIG contributed a ton of political contribution to both Democrats and Republicans – I guess we should shut up, let them use the bailout money to compensate the same executives who drove the company into the ground, and be happy that they are not “mobalizing”.
AJ,
“I am not going to sit back and pretend I have the knowledge, insight or moral superiority to conclude these people are evil and need to be reigned in. I leave that egotistical exercise to inferior minds with massive insecurity complexes.”
I agree that these are not evil people, but are you really so ignorant that you don’t see a reason to reign them in? These major financial sector companies made billions of dollars over the last 10 years pursuing high risk/high return investments, the bottom fell out and now we are giving away billions of dollars to keep these same companies afloat because we determined it is too dangerous to let them fail. So I guess you are okay with repeating this same cycle every 10 years?