A Response to Obama Bashing...

The following is a written response to an op-ed piece my brother posted on his blog. It's amazing to me that people have targeted Obama before he's had time to do anything. I look forward to any comments readers may have.

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...As for this highly slanted opinion piece, it's amazing for an opinion piece that stresses "facts" so much, it fails to acknowledge the facts which run contradictory to their point of view. Let's analyze these in turn:

1) The Honeymoon - Obama had an 83 percent rating when taking office and though that slipped in a week by 15 points or so, it has held steady, and even increased in the late days of February to 68 percent, according to a Gallup Poll. This is stated by many news agencies as still an impressive rating.

2) The Stimulus Bill - The structure of this bill should be of no surprise to any one who knows history. The greatest expansion of government happened with FDR; and I don't see any historians laughing about his agenda, especially those who got their asses saved by FDIC. Sure, there maybe some questionable items in this bill, however there are some badly needed infrastructure components to it as well. One I believe to be noteworthy is the development of high-speed rail. The United States, and our dependence upon oil and our cars, is FAR behind any other developed country in this regard. The development and building of these trains and routs will be expensive, yes; but it will also provide jobs and potentially relieve the airline industry of overcrowding--something I don't see the Republicans arguing against.

3) The Republican Solution - Reganomics. Give to the rich so they can technically invest it and vuala! Well, money isn't the only thing that flows downhill. Let's be clear that it's DEreculation and a pro-wealthy tax code that got us here to begin with. On Bush's last speech/meeting with the press, he stated that when he started his administration, he started with a recession and he's leaving with one. News Flash: that's what happened with Reagan too. It's true that cutting taxes for the rich to reinvest does allow for a trickle down effect, but that's short term thinking and not pragmatic. What forces those who have money to invest is greed, and it's that same greed that led to this mortgage and lending crisis to begin with: by bankers and speculators thinking, "how can I get a quick buck?" and vuala, we're fooked.

4) The Problem and Misdiagnosis - The fact that the stock market tanked is a symptom of the problem which exacerbated our economic issues. The problem is liquidity of funds through lending. NO one is lending any money. The Bush Administration gave banks a 700 Billion dollar bailout WITHOUT a provision to lend that money to anyone, allowing them to give CEOs lavish bonuses (and I'm not entirely convinced that was an accident). Sure, we need people to get to investing again, yes. But that's only going to happen when we get banks and private lenders to start granting loans again, so people can afford their current livelihood. We need to get money into people's hands with a manageable payment schedule so we can get industry back onto its feet. This way, those investors who sold their stock and stashed it in Gold (notice that the price of Gold went through the roof when the stock market crashed? Gold is a proven safe haven for investor's funds.), can reinvest it into industry. Again, that might happen faster with Reganomics, but as I've proven earlier, haste makes waste.

Thanks for sharing this post, Na. I wish this author would consider ALL the facts and simply agree to disagree, rather than arrogantly point fingers.