Barack Obama ran on a platform of promising change and people have waited a year to see what kind of change he would deliver. The answer is finally in and the picture isn't easy to take for the lifelong members of the Democratic party. The Democrat party is no longer the people's party, the unique conglomeration of diverse partisans who had no other home for their cause.
Thanks to the new President from Harvard where money talks and money walks the Democrats have now become the political party of Wall Street, big banks, big pharma, big insurance and big money. Left in the debris of a once proud party of the people are the traditional Democrats from labor, teaching, minorities, Catholics and every other group that does not have extremely deep pockets.
How did our new president reverse the political landscape and take the Democrats from the populists to protectors of big money? Perhaps he spent too much time at Harvard researching the wealth of the Harvard endowment fund and the source of that wealth. Or maybe it was the dominating influence of his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel who set out a couple of decades ago to become the poster boy for protecting Wall Street. Or maybe it was the stark realization that in today's world of politics money is everything as long as the campaign rules are not changed.
Whatever, while his domestic and foreign policy agendas fell flat on their face and the public revolted against the big government, big spending, big deficits and big taxes he proposed in health care, energy, the environment, housing, and many other areas, he was slamming through a seemingly dumbfounded congress the foundation for his new paradigm. He got bank bailouts, insurance bailouts, auto bailouts, Wall Street bailouts, housing bailouts, secret deals with big pharma, all were meant to guarantee the survival of the money mongers regardless of the impact on the people.
As a result the people's candidate became the beneficiary of all those bad guys he promised to stop when he was still a candidate, a promise his record demonstrated was just another political lie from just another Washington politician. Suddenly an avalanche of big money flooded in to Obama and all those who agreed to be his puppets. In fact over $429 million has flowed into congressional campaign funds for the 2010 elections and it is only mid-January.
Where are the Obama windfall campaign funds going? Democrats dominated the big business fund raising marathon capturing seven of the top ten places in the House and eight of the top ten places in the Senate. House Democrat Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland led all House members for receiving special interest funding to such an astounding degree that every major bank receiving Obama bailout funds contributed to his 2010 campaign funds. Even Charles Rangel, Democrat of New York hit the top ten and he is under a long delayed investigation for cheating big time on his taxes.
Any Democrat who voted for health care reform would share in the hundreds of millions of dollars paid out by the pharmaceutical and insurance industries to support health care reform. Why, you might ask, would the drug and insurance industries be paying for something that the president said would hurt them? It will not hurt them.
It will assure the drug companies can maintain their billion dollar profits on their drugs by keeping out foreign competition. Lawyers and their billions in legal fees for malpractice cases against the medical community are protected. Waivers of anti-trust laws for insurance providers will remain. Current health care providers who already charge too much will find their profits swelling from the flood of uninsured whose insurance will be paid for by new taxes.
The result? Industries such as pharmaceutical, hospitals, nursing homes, health professionals and insurance companies are pouring money into Democratic campaigns at a far greater rate than Republican campaigns.
The same is true in the financial sector. The bad boys on Wall Street, in the banking, housing and investment fields are pouring money into Democrat campaigns at almost the same rate as they are paying billion dollar bonuses. For the first time Obama has made the Democrats the favorite recipient of cash from Wall Street, banks, securities, investment, real estate, lawyers and lobbyists fields.
Republicans used to be the party of choice for Wall Street and big business. Obama has changed that long established paradigm. Indeed he has brought about the institutional change he promised, but it was not in the areas of social programs or policy initiatives. No, the Obama agenda was always about controlling the flow of dollars into campaigns.
Of course this leads to a couple of important questions about our new president. Why is he the new protector of Wall Street and big business? And who told him to do it? Certainly there is nothing in his published background that would indicate he would become the most effective fund raiser from big business in history. Nor that he could parlay his relationship with big business into controlling the money hungry minions on capitol hill by filling their campaign coffers.
Goldman Sachs, the bad boys of Wall Street, may hold the key to Obama and his conversion from populism to capitalism, Rothschild style. In numerous articles I have warned of the strange interaction between Obama during his climb to the top of the mountain and how Goldman came out of nowhere to help push him along the way. The media in America never got interested in pursuing the truth about this any more than they got interested in pursuing the truth about the Obama years after Columbia when he travelled in unusual places while his Ivy League education loans got paid off.
With the paradigm achieved and the media now learning this is not the president they were promised or expected, maybe now they will look into the background and find the truth. However, the public, especially the Democrats and Independents, know something is terribly wrong with the promise of Obama compared to the results.
Now that he or Emanuel are the new King Midas of the Democratic party and are dividing their efforts between raising money from big business to scolding big business, from financing congressional campaigns to protecting the people paying the money, maybe the traditional Democrats who have lost their party will lead a new effort to find the truth about Obama and his strange policy shifts.
Watch the flood of last minute money into the Massachusetts Senate race for Ted Kennedy's seat and look at where the money comes from and the truth will be obvious. Obama and his minions will pump into the campaign money from the very people they claim are the cause of our problems in the first place. How did they get their hands so deep into the pockets of big business? What was promised in return? Can we, all Americans, really afford the new Obama paradigm?
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