FROM TRUMAN’S FAIR DEAL TO OBAMA’S RAW DEAL FOR AMERICANS

If Republicans win control of both the House and Senate, "the interests of billionaires will come before the needs of the middle class,"  Barack Hussein Obama said at a October 8th $32,500 a plate fund-raiser at the $16 million Greenwich, Connecticut estate of a billionaire named (I’m not making this up) Rich Richman.

You can’t top that remark for hypocrisy, or the setting for irony.  President Hussein did the same thing last night (10/23), at yet another $32,500 a plate dinner at the home of that ultimate trust fund baby, Jay Rockefeller.

It isn’t the middle class who write $32,500 checks. Those who do expect something in return. They’ve been getting it.

The Obama administration "protected Wall Street. Not families who were losing their homes. Not people who lost their jobs. And it happened over and over and over," Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, told the liberal webzine Salon.

Fauxcahontas isn’t right about much, but she is about this. The administration’s fiscal and monetary policies rewarded Wall Streeters whose reckless lending magnified the subprime mortgage crisis.

The "D" in Democrat certainly no longer stands for Democracy as it did for Harry Truman.  Today under Obama it stands for Deceit, Duplicity, and Dishonesty.

"You’ve got Wall Street criminals walking free, sipping tea at the White House," said fellow left wing academic Cornel West.

Bupkes for most Americans, the $787 billion stimulus bill produced bonanzas for the politically connected. A disaster for consumers and taxpayers, Obamacare fattened the bottom line of insurance companies. Billionaire Tom Steyer figures to profit from Mr. Obama’s foot-dragging on the Keystone XL pipeline.

The top fundraisers for Mr. Obama raised $457,834 for his 2008 campaign – and were approved for federal grants and loans of $11.4 billion, according to Peter Schweizer of the Government Accountability Institute.

Selling access to the federal treasury has been a great way for Democrats to raise campaign funds. Since 1989, big donors have contributed $416 million more to them than to Republicans.

Seven of the ten wealthiest counties voted to re-elect the president. Democrats represent eight of the ten wealthiest congressional districts. There are more Democrats than Republicans among the 268 millionaires in Congress.

There were 9.63 million households last year with a net worth of $1 million or more, up from 6.7 million in 2008. The wealthiest one percent received 22.46 percent of the national income in 2012, up from 18.12 percent in 2009, calculated University of California-Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez.

The income of the bottom 99 percent shrank 0.4 percent, Prof. Saez said.  Adjusted for inflation, median household income was 8 percent lower in 2013 than before the Great Recession began.

The middle class (those who earn between the 30th and 70th percentiles) accounted for 53 percent of the national income in 1970, just 45 percent in 2012, according to demographer Joel Kotkin, who says "the biggest issue facing the American economy, and our political system, is the gradual descent of the middle class into proletarian status."

The average compensation of federal employees last year was 74 percent higher than for workers in the private sector.

Few would begrudge government workers higher pay and benefits – if they were earning it. But from the CDC to the VA, incompetence, neglect and corruption seem more the rule than the exception. Little wonder, when the chief consequences for malfeasance are a lengthy paid vacation, or retirement with full benefits. By shielding bureaucrats from accountability, Democrats have made "public servant" an oxymoron.

The middle class is shrinking because policies designed to benefit those who feed at the public trough clobber economic growth. The chief difference between the New Oligarchs and the robber barons of yesteryear is the robber barons had an interest in a vibrant middle class, Mr. Kotkin says in his new book. "Gentry liberals" don’t.

In the past, Democrats "recognized broad-based economic growth was a necessary precursor to upward mobility and social justice," Mr. Kotkin said. Now they adopt policies that restrict growth.

Truman Democrats stood up for working men and women. Obama Democrats provide the Oligarchs with cheaper servants and better views, at the expense of working men and women.  The rhetoric hasn’t changed much, but the gap between Harry Truman’s Fair Deal and Barack Hussein Obama’s Raw Deal couldn’t be wider.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Discuss this item on the forum. Click Here!