The GOP Leadership is prepared to tell you that Barack Obama is the worst President in US History because they need a scapegoat for George W. Bush’s disastrous incumbency. Just consider the consequences of Bush decisions. Bush systematically ignored all the September 9/11 warning signs preventing his administration from ‘connecting the dots that blasted into the World trade Center Towers and changed American History and policy for decades. Bush literally and figuratively flew over the Katrina ravaged New Orleans setting a new standard for ignoring the needy.
Bush’s DOJ and other financial agencies were so crippled in fighting Wall Street excesses that the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 was made devastatingly worse. And Bush ceded so many military and foreign policy decisions to Dick Cheney that he, with his Gang of Draft Dodgers Neocons, conjured up the Iraq War myths and got the US embroiled in disastrous sectarian wars in the Mideast. So the GOP recriminations on Obamacare and Deficit Spending are wasted breath especially considering the GOP have some very legitimate targets – let us call them the 3 Obama Abominable Policy decisions.
3 Decisions by the President were early, awful … actually, abominable. First, Obama gave a pass on investigating and prosecuting the Bush administration for building up its false case for the Iraq War. Clearly there was evidence for malfeasance but the political wisdom in the name of bipartisanship was “do not prosecute”. The supreme irony is that as GOP’s reward for these “pardons” was to plot during Obama’s inauguration by the GOP Congressional leadership their brutally Partisan and largely successful NO Sabotage Strategy against Obama.
The second abominable decision was similar in scope. Presidential advisers Larry Summers and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner argued that the Wall Street Banks were too weak and so the Wall Street executives responsible for the Financial Bubble and the need to break up the banks and clear house of the financial wrong doers in effect had to be left left intact. Suffice it to say for these mercies the Obama administration was rewarded with very limited reduction in mortgage amounts by these same banks. And then to add to the insult, the Banks just bailed out to the tune of hundreds of billions of government dollars, committed a series of scandalous robosignings of mortgage foreclosures followed by LIBOR interest rate manipulations, massive illegal tax shelters for the wealthy and money laundering for drug lords and political tyrants. In essence this decision set the tone for the kid glove treatment accorded to Wall Street executives..
The third abominable Obama decision was the appointment of Eric Holder as Attorney General. Before he was appointed, Eric Holder had worked as Covington & Burling partner – “no law firm has done more to protect Wall Street executives from the consequences of their criminal activities than Covington & Burling. Their roster of clients includes every mega-bank in America: JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Bank of America.” And Eric delivered for his banking clients while Attorney General – no prosecutions or disqualification of HSBC executives for blatant money laundering; no action against banks executives at JPMorgan-Chase, Citigroup, Ally Financial, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and others for mortgage frauds and foreclosure illegal robosignings; no executive prosecutions just fines for Barclays, Credit Suisse , JPMorgan-Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland for Libor interest rate fixes; again just fines for Credit Suisse for tax evasion manipulations; just fines against BNP Paribas for evading financial sanctions, just fines for Bank of Americas for gross mortgage misconduct , and similar treatment of fines but no white collar prosecutions or disqualification of bank executives of ever working for any financial institutions for their financial crimes from 2007 thriough 2011. This is the US Attorney General aiding and abetting defiance of the Rule of Law by Wall Street executives.
So now what does the NYTimes tell us? The Justice Department after having the white collar crime barn door propped open for 6 long years by Attorney General Eric Holder is now going to be working hard to get white collar financial crime prosecutions. But who will be opposing the US Justice Department in getting those financial white collar convictions – why of course, ex-Attorney General Eric Holder who now works for his old law firm of Covington & Burling as a partner defending Wall Street Financial Executives.
Meanwhile the Justice Department under Eric Holder was responsible for allowing Police Actions against Blacks to get out of hand so we have the Black Lives Matter crisis. Congratulations Barack Obama you have not just General Shinseki at Veterans Affairs, Department of Health’s Katherine Sibelius, but most despicably Attorney General Eric Holder as proof that a)Government does not work, b)the Democrats can rival the GOP for government executive incompetence of the highest order, and c)most tellingly, big money talks bigtime in the Beltway shaping Democrats policies as much as for the GOP.
But even, more amazing is the fact that the GOP lets all these issues slide and rather emphasizes that Obama fails because “he is not born in the US”, Syria/Libya/Benghazi “failures”, Obamacare “sucks”, the Iran deal betrays Israel and false Deficit concerns. No wonder the American public is increasingly skeptical of the Beltway politicians as reflected in the latest Presidential polls. Bernie Sanders has hit the Beltway nail right on the head – by allowing unfettered corporate and wealthy elites to flood money into not just Beltway but politics at every level – government is subject to ever more corrupting and corrosive effects and has become ever more dysfunctional as it is increasingly bent to the wants of the 1% and unable to deliver good policy for the majority of Americans.