Obama's contempt for voters

Barack Obama emailed me again this week. His campaign did, that is.

In the arms race that is the presidential campaign, Obama for America sends out requests for support, by way of pleas for money, which is no surprise. But these emails treat his supporters, or Democrats (I am not one but I got the emails in '08 and they've kept up since then) or just its recipients as partisan fanboys/girls that root for the blue team, therefore they must believe the red team is pure evil, must be stopped and our president is the true defender of their values. The emails are reductive of its recipients and insulting to their intelligence given Barack Obama's actions in the White House are rarely consistent with his promises, nor of what progressives believe in and want to see from their standbearer. But maybe I'm projecting onto the Projection President.

For example, his latest:

(Recipient) --

We now know who our opponent is.

But what we're really fighting against is what our opponent has pledged to do if elected.

He would shower billionaires with more huge tax breaks, oppose setting a timeline to bring our troops home from Afghanistan, starve investments in clean energy research, and make it harder for students to afford to go to college. He'd outlaw a woman's right to choose and completely cut funding for Planned Parenthood.

We can't afford an endless war in Afghanistan, a return to policies that hurt the middle class, and a social agenda from the 1950s.

The stakes and the differences are profound. The outcome of this election will determine the course of this country for decades to come.

I need you by my side.

Make a donation of $3 or more today:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Ready

Thank you,

Barack

So the president points to Republicans', or, likely, Mitt Romney's, positions on serving the economic interests of the most wealthy Americans, a timeline in Afghanistan, clean energy, affordable higher education and reproductive rights.

Let's look at what has came out of Obama's administration in the last couple weeks on these issues.

Matt Taibbi on the JOBS Act, which Obama enthusiastically signed on April 5:

The "Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act" (in addition to everything else, the Act has an annoying, redundant title) will very nearly legalize fraud in the stock market.

In fact, one could say this law is not just a sweeping piece of deregulation that will have an increase in securities fraud as an accidental, ancillary consequence. No, this law actually appears to have been specifically written to encourage fraud in the stock markets.

Ostensibly, the law makes it easier for startup companies (particularly tech companies, whose lobbyists were a driving force behind its passage) to attract capital by, among other things, exempting them from independent accounting requirements for up to five years after they first begin selling shares in the stock market.

The law also rolls back rules designed to prevent bank analysts from talking up a stock just to win business, a practice that was so pervasive in the tech-boom years as to be almost industry standard.

Even worse, the JOBS Act, incredibly, will allow executives to give "pre-prospectus" presentations to investors using PowerPoint and other tools in which they will not be held liable for misrepresentations. These firms will still be obligated to submit prospectuses before their IPOs, and they'll still be held liable for what's in those. But it'll be up to the investor to check and make sure that the prospectus matches the "pre-presentation."

The JOBS Act also loosens a whole range of other reporting requirements, and expands stock investment beyond "accredited investors," giving official sanction to the internet-based fundraising activity known as "crowdfunding."

This Trojan horse is billed as a helping hand to the little guy, the ever-hailed small business. But as Taibbi pointed out, this is a giveaway to Silicon Valley that could cause major havoc later on and "invite a replay of the disastrous tech-stock bubble of the late nineties. That mess was made possible by a historic collapse in accounting standards, with the great investment banks the pioneers of the collapse."

What about Afghanistan? The Pentagon isn't taking the impending drawdown very well, as the AP reported Thursday.

WASHINGTON — Adm. Bill McRaven, the head of U.S. special operations, is mapping out a potential Afghanistan war plan that would replace thousands of U.S. troops with small special operations teams paired with Afghans to help an inexperienced Afghan force withstand a Taliban onslaught as U.S. troops withdraw.

While the overall campaign would still be led by conventional military, the handfuls of special operators would become the leading force to help Afghans secure the large tracts of territory won in more than a decade of U.S. combat. They would give the Afghans practical advice on how to repel attacks, intelligence to help spot the enemy and communications to help call for U.S. air support if overwhelmed by a superior force.

[...]

McRaven’s proposal amounts to a slimmed-down counterinsurgency strategy aimed at protecting the Afghan population as well as hunting the Taliban and al-Qaida. It’s not the counterterrorist plan advanced by Vice President Joe Biden, which would leave Afghan forces to fend for themselves while keeping U.S. special operators in protected bases from which they could hunt terrorists with minimum risk, according to a senior special operations official reached this week.

Thousands of U.S. troops could remain in harm’s way well after the end of combat operations in 2014, tasked with helping Afghans protect territory won by U.S. forces.

Let's not forget the administration did not want to stick to the BUSH TIMETABLE to leave Iraq, but the Iraqi government refused. So now Obama takes credit for ending the Iraq war, even though he didn't want to, it was Bush's plan and the sectarian violence continues there. Why should we think Afghanistan will be any different? Insulting.

Next, clean energy. I don't doubt the administration is committed to clean energy research. But I do doubt it is doing much to actively block oil and gas exploration. On April 9, TPM detailed Obama's "oil boom" in light of the GOP blaming him for higher gas prices because, they say, Obama refuses to allow for adequate oil drilling in the U.S. The argument is false, as TPM notes, not only because no president has that kind of power over oil prices but also because, well, the industry is doing just fine in this struggling economy. Oil and gas extraction has skyrocketed in the last year-plus.

Oil and gas extraction is a relatively small industry, but it has prospered in the weak economy, even as other industries climb slowly out of the great recession. Energy experts say that the oil boom itself is also due to factors outside of Obama’s control, but this gives the lie to the notion that Obama’s been actively squelching it.

So while the email's claim that the administration holds clean energy in high regard is clearly true, that doesn't tell the whole story. Obama cannot be legitimately considered the oil and gas sector's number one enemy.

How about affordable higher ed? Bloomberg broke this story in late March:

With $67 billion of student loans in default, the Education Department is turning to an army of private debt-collection companies to put the squeeze on borrowers. Working on commissions that totaled about $1 billion last year, these government contractors face growing complaints that they are violating federal laws by insisting on stiff payments, even when borrowers’ incomes make them eligible for leniency.

The Obama administration had no problem throwing drowning citizens to loan predators. It took the release of the story (which is a good read) for the administration to give a shit, claiming it will re-examine this practice and overhaul the system. But promises are often just words.

I guess he gets one and a half (clean energy) of five right, that one being reproductive rights.

But, hey, he's doing loads for the LGBT community, right? No. WaPo (April 12): "... White House officials revealed Wednesday that President Obama would not sign an executive order sought by activists to prohibit federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity."

Pretty words. Contempt for voters. Do what it takes to simply get re-elected. The liberal standardbearer.