Editor’s Note – Class warfare, manifest even further from what is a most derisive campaign well underway now, as Obama not so subtly elevated the OWC efforts into legitimacy. With public and private sector unions joining the cause, we have the makings of a new way to skew our election process, this time, with junk-economics and class warfare. The person who ran on the key principle of re-uniting a very polarized nation in 2008 as he explained, has done the opposite; its now more polarized than at any time in our history. He accused George Bush of doing what he is now doing on steroids.
At SUA, we have a very real ax to grind with the banking/financial and stock world, yet it is strange to see the current administration attacking the very people that financed his way into the Oval Office. The Democrats (Read Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Dick Durbin) forced banks to provide funding to those who could not afford to purchase a home, and now we are at a new low in the percentage of people who actually own the homes they are in because the bubble they created burst and the fall-out is not over by a long shot. Now the Dodd/Frank Bill, and specifically the Durbin Amendment is being blamed for the banks increasing fees.
It is obvious to us that this administration knows its constituencies of support very well and knows exactly how to manipulate and motivate them. What comes out of Obama’s mouth is often diametrically opposed to what he means. He assails the fat-cats of Wall Street, as if they are polemically all Republicans, yet the opposite is true. He bites the hand that feeds him, because this may be the only way he can keep the keys to the White House for another four years.
Obama Voices Empathy With ‘Frustration’ Behind Anti-Wall Street Protests
Three weeks into a growing protest movement targeting Wall Street and the nation’s financial services sector, President Obama expressed empathy Thursday for the demonstrators, even going so far as to elevate them as a force in the 2012 election cycle.
“I think part of people’s frustrations, part of my frustration, was a lot of [lending] practices that should not have been allowed weren’t necessarily against the law, but they had a huge destructive impact,” the president said at a midday news conference Thursday.
The remarks represented Obama’s first public comment on the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, which is now in its third week, and has led to more than 700 arrests in New York and elsewhere.
As the president spoke to reporters in the East Room, more than 1,000 anti-corporate protesters were gathering, less than a mile away, at Washington’s downtown Freedom Plaza. Waving placards and chanting slogans, the group marched to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – to protest the organization’s support of the Obama administration’s jobs plan – then moved on to K Street, the hub of lobbying and law firms that is the capital’s pinstriped cousin to Wall Street.
The action in Washington had been planned months in advance, said organizers with the October 2011 Coalition, and enjoyed no formal ties with the Occupy Wall Street movement. But it was clear the two groups largely share the same goals, tactics and fervor.
Obama, in remarks on the protests that extended to nearly 10 minutes, refrained from rebuking those arrested or mounting any defense of Wall Street. Instead, he further criticized bankers and lenders.
“We had the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, huge collateral damage all throughout the country, all across Main Street,” the president told reporters, “and yet you’re still seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on abusive practices that got us into this problem in the first place.”
The closest Obama came to defending Wall Street was when he added: “I have said before, and I will continue to repeat: We have to have a strong, effective financial sector in order for us to grow.”
In her own, weekly news conference, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., went even further, praising the Occupy Wall Street crowds for their youth, focus, and effectiveness. “God bless their spontaneity,” she said.
But Rep. Peter King , R-N.Y., who sits on the House Financial Services Committee, blasted President Obama for siding with the protesters.
“What they’re doing is disgraceful,” King said in an interview with Fox News. “They should be denounced; they’re breaking the law; they’re serving no real purpose at all….And for the president or anyone else to give them any credence or credibility is also irresponsible.”
Asked by the liberal website Slate.com if he sees the Occupy Wall Street protests as helpful in moving the president’s jobs bill through Congress, White House Chief of Staff William Daley — a former executive at J.P. Morgan Chase, one of Wall Street’s most prominent investment houses — proved more circumspect than his boss.
“I don’t know,” Daley said.
Fox News’ Joy Lin, Steve Centanni, and Chad Pergram contributed to this report.
