The cynicism with which the administration approaches government can be seen in the political incest/hypocrisy with regard to some current main players or former players with whom the Anointed One has or has had connections. This amounts to a kiss-off of the average citizen in behalf of furthering whatever aims he has in mind, the most obvious being, as he himself has admitted, “spreading around the wealth,” otherwise known as redistributing the earnings of people without regard to how acquired, i.e., based on work, intelligence, risk, and preparation.
The cynicism is heightened when there’s evidence of an elitist attitude exhibiting the notion that those who “win,” as Obama would have it, can simply do as they please, the devil take the hindmost. His nomination of at least four people who were well-documented tax-cheats to high positions in government is an example of this elitism. One of them has been accepted by the Congress, the Treasury Secretary, of all people, and another has not excused himself, the meaning being that the majority in Congress are either so ambitious or unbelievably dumb that they don’t realize their own pathology – hypocritical elitism.
Richard Holbrooke is the Anointed One’s representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan, an important-sounding job that one assumes carries a very good salary. Since he reports directly to the president, as does the secretary of state, his salary is probably close to hers – $186,600 per year. Holbrooke has an interesting history. He joined AIG's board in February 2001 and resigned in July 2008, two months before the company nearly collapsed, according to the Associated Press of 19 March.
Over more than seven years as a board member, he may have earned as much as $800,000 in cash and company stock, according to AIG financial documents filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission. Since September, AIG has received $180 billion in taxpayer money to keep it from failing and causing more damage to the U.S. economy (at least according to the propaganda emanating from the White House). What a coincidence, but, as the Anointed One would have it, to the victor belongs the spoils! Holbrooke’s efforts will amount to zilch, but he will be well rewarded. The Pakistanis will have his lunch!
Though she had no training or experience in finance, Jamie Gorelick was appointed the Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae and served in the role from 1997 to 2003. During that six-year period, she earned over $26 million. During Gorelick's tenure, FNMA suffered a $10 billion accounting scandal, an ominous harbinger of the firm's looming troubles. One of the falsified transactions helped FNMA hit earnings targets for 1998, which triggered bonuses for top executives including nearly $800,000 to Gorelick, according to the Doug Ross @ Journal, Sept. 2008.
Gorelick will be remembered for her role in the Clinton administration’s prohibiting of government agencies such as the FBI and CIA to exchange the kind of information that might have helped in preventing 9/11. She’s mentioned here as the paradigm for the efforts of Attorney General Holder (provider of the pardon for tax-evader Marc Rich), Senator Leahy, and the Anointed One to rid the country of the absolutely necessary “Patriot Act” that allows surveillance on those who would sabotage this nation.
Obama’s economic adviser during the campaign, Franklin Raines pulled in some $90 million between 1998 and 2003, when he ran Fannie Mae, the majority from bonuses. And when OFHEO (Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight) began to ask uncomfortable questions, Raines actively lobbied Congress to cut its funding. In April, Raines agreed to disburse $24 million for his role in the accounting "errors." Under Raines' leadership, Fannie overstated earnings by a stunning $10.6 billion, all the while paying Raines and his senior management team massive bonuses, according to the Motley Fool, September 2008. Even the Anointed One probably does not possess the degree of cynicism as that of Raines, an outright liar who obviously paid-up to escape jail-time.
From the Washington Post of May 2006: “Good numbers kept Wall Street happy. They paid the light bills for more than 50 partnership offices that represented Fannie Mae around the country. And they made top executives multimillionaires. [Jim] Johnson received $21 million in his last year as chief executive and a consulting contract worth $600,000 a year.” From the New York Times of June 2008: "[Jim] Johnson was also involved in some of the more controversial executive compensation decisions in recent years, serving on the board of five companies that granted lavish pay packages to their executives -- and often playing a key role in approving them.”
The Jim Johnson noted in those excerpts was the man the Anointed One chose to join Holder and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg for the purpose of choosing a vice president. Johnson dropped out of that obvious bit of political incest almost immediately, however. He drew criticism over a report that he had received what may have been reduced rates on loans from disgraced Countrywide Financial Corp.(as did Senate Finance Chairman Dodd), a mortgage lender with business ties to Fannie Mae. Surprise! Surprise!
The latest: The Congressional Budget Office has just determined that Obama’s forecast concerning his budget statistics over the next decade represent a mistake of $2.3 trillion – toward the RED. The compliant, complicit Congress is hocking the nation up to its ears with debt that future generations will be unable to pay, the ultimate result being socialism, with everyone depending on government for everything. This is the Obama plan – just give money to government apparatchiks (the numbers pulled out of thin air) and let them bankrupt what has been the greatest economic machine in history. This is cynicism carried to the nth degree.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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