Has everyone read Matt Taibbi's new piece in Rolling Stone?

Its titled "Obama's Big sellout" and its a heck of a reality check.

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Rolling Stone:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/sto ry/31234647/obamas_big_sellout/print

Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.

Then he got elected.

What's taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.

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I will first acknowledge that Taibbi in no way was a supporter of Mrs. Clintons, but he does us a great service by reminding people of the forgotten mis-truths central behind Obama's primary campaign and the hidden truth about how he has done Wall Street and the financial community's bidding since winning the White House - to the great detriment of America's working families.

You see, from Day One of campaign Obama - he led Hillary in raising money from Wall Street, national bankers, traders and bondsman.  This is even though Hillary was the Senator from New York and the entire liberal web pretended that it was Hillary who was being bankrolled by the financial vested interests that most progressives believe are too influential and greedy.  Obama also led Mrs Clinton in raising money from K street lobbyists - who bundled money and gave through their spouses or had their "non registered lobbyist" partners in their firms be the names on said checks to team Obama.  

This was done at the same time that the Obama campaign pushed the myth that it was Hillary that was backed by the hated lobbyist community.  You could have polled the blog community then or now and Id bet that way over 90% would believe that both Wall and K Street strongly backed Hillary in order to stop the more progressive Obama, but this was not true. The truth was the complete reverse. 

It was Obama who was the establishment candidate - the one supported by the vested interests, not Clinton.

This can be traced to who it was that Obama leaned on from the first day that he got to Washington.  Tom Daschle.  Daschle was defeated on the same day that Obama was elected to the US Senate.    In that shakeup, almost 100% of Daschles staff went over and became Obama's.  In a way - Obama took over for daschle - not only with his staff - but also his Presidential ambitions. (The long list of moneyed backers - wall street, k street, us corporate leaders who send our jobs to china - that Daschle had acquired as head of the Senate went right to Obama along with his chief of staff) These were not great reformers - Daschle represented the old line Senate establishment - he was placed in his leadership office by the Chris Dodds, Bob Grahmns and Teddy Kennedy's of the Senate. Bill Clinton never gave them the free reign to spend taxpayer dollars in the 90s and they deeply resented this.  There is great mythology about these fellows careers as true blue "public servants" - but one thing is for sure - these Senators always supported the financial and bonds community.  (Remember its the Kennedy family that owns the Chicago Mercantile Mart - which is run by a Shriver cousin and daschle and his wife are now the two highest paid lobbyists in this town.)

But because the political media was on a jihad to hurt Hillarys campaign and prop up Obama's - it was always reported that it was Hillary that was the one backed by the big guys and Obama raised all his money in 20 dollar checks.  BS.  Till very close to the end of the campaign - Obama raised the MAJORITY of his money in checks of over $1000.

Why was this you may ask.  First, the Clintons had a track record of being very strong deficit hawks.  Do you really think it even slightly possible that the same team that gave us the only balanced budgets in our lifetimes would have WASTED the 900 billion dollars - of giveaways to connected insiders - that has been called the "stimulus package"?  Hillary did have a stimulus plan - but it was all about building and rebuilding our degrading physical infrastructure - roads, bridges, schools etc...

900 Billion.  Lets put that number in perspective.  That same amount of money could have paid for all US high school graduates for the next twenty years - to go to their state colleges and universities -including room and board - for four years.  All of them, every kid who graduates from high school in our Country.

Now who was it that said that Hillary wouldnt be allowed to win with the superdelegate count or by allowing the votes of MI and FL dems to be counted?  The same person who pushed through this disgusting give away to the congressionally connected - Nancy Pelosi.  (Y'know the fiery "liberal" whose husband has made mad gazillions of dollars playing the same money games we decry GOP tycoons for)

Health care.  Ive known from 1/20/09 how this health care debacle was going to end.  Team obama wants a political victory much more than they care about actual reform - and they will pass a nothing bill and make all DEMS pretend that its a great "victory".  BS. Hell, if you couldnt see the future when obama first made the deal and giveaway to big Pharm when he gave away the store - for a pledge from those people to spend 150 million on media backing his plan - youre blind, dense or high on hopium.

$150 million!

There was never gonna be any "public option".  The Obama team made that clear from the beginning - they were leaking from the beginning that they were eventually gonna negotiate and trade that away.  And what do we end up with - a mandated plan where ALL of the policy coverage is steered directly to big insurance.  

Obama priorities are being made more clear every day by what kind of issues he chooses to deal with first. He pretty much turned health care over to congress, and now is is content to say he is in favor of whatever lame bunch of nothingness gets passed (as long as he doesn't get embarrassed by not getting anything passed).

He helped bail out Wall Street and the banks (and has kept quiet of what regulations are desirable to stop them from ripping off the country again).

Obama came into office amidst sweeping crises in the financial sector and did not do what needed to be done, and what had been done the last time the U.S. was sent careening into a depression because of Wall Street: he failed to push for tough financial reforms. Barack Obama needed to be the FDR figure who remade the American capital markets and made them fair again, and he barely laid a finger on the whole scene.

Instead, he put the people who created the problem in charge of fixing the mess,(like Citigroup exec Michael Froman, a Harvard classmate of the president - Obama might not have much in common with folks who dont eat arugula - but he does luv his harvard homies, no?) and ended up bailing them out instead of the rest of the country, at huge current and (presumably) future cost.The total bill for the Bush-Obama bailout is certainly above ten trillion at this point -- Inspector General Neil Barofsky thinks it might hit nearly $24 trillion ultimately -- and this went through without much fanfare. Meanwhile, the congress is stuck in the mud, panicked at the thought of paying three or four trillion over a decade or so for a health care program.

When will he get around to helping ordinary people? Obviously, contrary to what he said in his campaign, this does not seem to be a high priority of his. And by the time it becomes a priority, he will have spent us into a hole, and there will be nothing left for the poor and the middle class.

Lets be clear...we Hillary supporters told you during the primaries that Obama would never push for real health care reform, but you people wouldnt listen...you believed the myth that a Chicago/Daly pol who had a convicted slum lord influence peddler like Tony Rezlo - buy HIS LAWN OF HIS HOUSE for him - saving Obama $700,000 on a $2.5 million house was an idealist and the hope of regular working people.  (I still dont get how that didnt stop his rise from the get go...THAT was corruption in plain view -but the media and his hope-drunk supporters pretended it was nothing)

We Hillary supporters told you about Obama;s amazing fundraising from Wall Street financial interests and said how that showed he was NOT the candidate you thought he was, but you wouldnt see...

The question is when will a significant amount of Democrats begin to tell the truth about this President and the false message and promise that he used to manipulate our Primary system while at the same time degrading and attacking both Clintons as sellouts, corporatists and very effectively and completely unforgivably...race baiters?

If it was OK for Teddy Kennedy to challenge Carter in 1980 - why dont we begin to discuss who could take on Obama in 2012.  His polls are incredibly bad - the worst in modern times.  Both Huckabee and Sarah Palin are ONE POINT behind him in recent national polling.  I dont think its gonna get better.  If the Obama administration changes, pulls things around and starts to actually care about working Americans first - fine - but if does not and because of this, we have terrible loses in 2010 as many expect - I think at that time every thinking Democrat must consider backing a challenger to him in the primaries.(By the way - I know that can't and won't be Hillary.  She wont ever run again.  We Democrats had our chance there - but we blew it.  That ship has sailed...)