Obama, Inc.
With Daley and Immelt on board, our president is waltzing with the devil.
When you dance with the devil, never fool yourself into thinking that you're leading.
That would be my 50-cents-worth of advice to President Barack Obama as he remakes his presidency into a Clintonesque corporate enterprise. Following last fall's congressional elections, he immediately began blowing kisses to CEOs and big business lobbyists, and he's now filled his White House dance card with them.
First came Bill Daley, the Wall Street banker and longtime corporate lobbyist. In early January, Obama brought him to the White House ball to be his chief-of-staff, gatekeeper, and policy coordinator.
Then Obama tapped Jeffery Immelt to lead his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, which is supposed to "encourage the private sector to hire [Americans] and invest in American competitiveness." This is a bizarre coupling, for as General Electric's CEO, Immelt was a leader in shipping American factories and jobs to Asia and elsewhere. Today, fewer than half of GE's workers are in our country.
As an AFL-CIO official notes, "Highly globalized companies don't have the same interests as the United States. There is no company more emblematic of this than GE."
In his recent State of the Union speech, Obama offered only cold comfort to the millions of Americans who are unemployed or barely employed, saying blandly that "The rules have changed." Well, yes--and who changed them? Self-serving CEOs like Jeffrey Immelt, that's who.
America's working families--our endangered middle class--have a right to expect Obama to fight for rules that are fair to them and our country, not meekly accept rules that have been skewed by an elite corporate class to profit them alone. Instead, our president is waltzing with the devil.
He's rebranding his presidency, all right. It's becoming Obama, Inc.
Urgent. It's never been this bad.
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission from the outset was simple. To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It’s never been this bad out there. And it’s never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed and doing some of its best and most important work, the threats we face are intensifying. Right now, with just two days to go in our Spring Campaign, we're falling short of our make-or-break goal. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Can you make a gift right now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? There is no backup plan or rainy day fund. There is only you. —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
When you dance with the devil, never fool yourself into thinking that you're leading.
That would be my 50-cents-worth of advice to President Barack Obama as he remakes his presidency into a Clintonesque corporate enterprise. Following last fall's congressional elections, he immediately began blowing kisses to CEOs and big business lobbyists, and he's now filled his White House dance card with them.
First came Bill Daley, the Wall Street banker and longtime corporate lobbyist. In early January, Obama brought him to the White House ball to be his chief-of-staff, gatekeeper, and policy coordinator.
Then Obama tapped Jeffery Immelt to lead his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, which is supposed to "encourage the private sector to hire [Americans] and invest in American competitiveness." This is a bizarre coupling, for as General Electric's CEO, Immelt was a leader in shipping American factories and jobs to Asia and elsewhere. Today, fewer than half of GE's workers are in our country.
As an AFL-CIO official notes, "Highly globalized companies don't have the same interests as the United States. There is no company more emblematic of this than GE."
In his recent State of the Union speech, Obama offered only cold comfort to the millions of Americans who are unemployed or barely employed, saying blandly that "The rules have changed." Well, yes--and who changed them? Self-serving CEOs like Jeffrey Immelt, that's who.
America's working families--our endangered middle class--have a right to expect Obama to fight for rules that are fair to them and our country, not meekly accept rules that have been skewed by an elite corporate class to profit them alone. Instead, our president is waltzing with the devil.
He's rebranding his presidency, all right. It's becoming Obama, Inc.
When you dance with the devil, never fool yourself into thinking that you're leading.
That would be my 50-cents-worth of advice to President Barack Obama as he remakes his presidency into a Clintonesque corporate enterprise. Following last fall's congressional elections, he immediately began blowing kisses to CEOs and big business lobbyists, and he's now filled his White House dance card with them.
First came Bill Daley, the Wall Street banker and longtime corporate lobbyist. In early January, Obama brought him to the White House ball to be his chief-of-staff, gatekeeper, and policy coordinator.
Then Obama tapped Jeffery Immelt to lead his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, which is supposed to "encourage the private sector to hire [Americans] and invest in American competitiveness." This is a bizarre coupling, for as General Electric's CEO, Immelt was a leader in shipping American factories and jobs to Asia and elsewhere. Today, fewer than half of GE's workers are in our country.
As an AFL-CIO official notes, "Highly globalized companies don't have the same interests as the United States. There is no company more emblematic of this than GE."
In his recent State of the Union speech, Obama offered only cold comfort to the millions of Americans who are unemployed or barely employed, saying blandly that "The rules have changed." Well, yes--and who changed them? Self-serving CEOs like Jeffrey Immelt, that's who.
America's working families--our endangered middle class--have a right to expect Obama to fight for rules that are fair to them and our country, not meekly accept rules that have been skewed by an elite corporate class to profit them alone. Instead, our president is waltzing with the devil.
He's rebranding his presidency, all right. It's becoming Obama, Inc.