President Obama on CNBC's "Investing in America": Full Session:

New York Times: "It was billed as 'Investing In America,' a live televised conversation between President Obama and American workers, students, business people and retirees on the state of the economy, a kind of Wall Street to Main Street reality check. But it sounded like a therapy session for disillusioned Obama supporters." AND here's a page of CNBC links about the town hall meeting.

When Greed Became Good

          Sacrifice is for the little people. -- Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman writes, "Political rage is coming not from the jobless, but from the very privileged, who are furious at the thought of their tax cuts expiring."

The Constant Weader add another reason to be furious at the greedy, self-pitying rich:

Tiny Violins, Please.

This country changed dramatically when the fictional characters Ronald Reagan & Gordon Gecko made greed “good.” We went from being a country where the majority believed they were their brothers’ keepers to a country that proudly perverted the Golden Rule: “Do unto others before they do unto you.” We became, seemingly overnight, avaricious & characterless. The “Greatest Generation” and the “Make Love, Not War” generation faded or adapted to the new cynicism. The federal government, which had pulled the nation out of the Great Depression, became the enemy, not the source and defender of the nation’s welfare.

The great irony in this disgusting transformation is that its leaders effected it on the completely false claim that they spoke for the “Moral Majority.” There was nothing moral about them. Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a city so misnamed that it was the exact opposite of a “city of brotherly love.” It was the city that was the center of American apartheid, where civil rights workers were murdered & the juries of their peers let their murderers off. Reagan knew what he was doing: he was telling the white bigots they could count on him to end the push for racial equality. They could. And he did. Although Reagan increased the size of government, he and his enablers did everything possible to end federal protections for all ordinary Americans, not just black Americans. They abandoned civil rights legislation. They deregulated financial institutions. They ran roughshod over federal lands, treating them as resources for mining, logging and ranching interests. They waged war on unions, even firing some of the most critical workers in the nation – air traffic controllers. As for their protection of children -- they said school lunch programs could consider ketchup to be a vegetable. Moral? More like stomach-churning.

The result of the Reagan/Gekko Revolution was both predictable and catastrophic for the average American. Last week Bob Herbert cited statistics Robert Reich gathered about those whiney super-rich Americans. Herbert, via Reich, noted that the share of the national income that has gone to the top one percent of income-earners was 8 or 9 percent in the 190s, rose to 10 to 14 percent in the 1980s, went to 15 to 19 percent in the late 1990s, and in 2007, the last year for which figures are available, Americans in the top one percent of income were “earning” more than 23 percent of all income going to all Americans.

And now. And now. Those inglorious bastards – who instead of taking in 8 percent of national income as they did in pre-Reagan/Gekko days, are hoarding 23 percent of national income -- are complaining that they might have to pay a little more in taxes on their unprecedented windfalls. Everything about these greedy, “entitled,” super-rich Americans is despicable. Everything. Their enablers in the Congress are beyond despicable. They have all earned their places in Dante’s Ninth Circle. But before their descent, instead of “subjecting” the whiners to Obama’s wimpy proposal to merely allow tax cuts for the wealthy to lapse, I suggest Congress tax income above $250,000 at 95 percent. 

The Commentariat -- September 20

Cheer Up! Chris Bowers, writing in the Daily Kos, argues that, despite the right-wing backlash, the country is really moving to the left. Via AlterNet.

Jackie Calmes & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "White House and Congressional Democratic strategists ... see openings to exploit after a string of Tea Party successes split Republicans in a number of states, culminating last week with developments that scrambled Senate races in Delaware and Alaska." ...

... BUT Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post: voters don't like either party.

... AND Politico Update: "The White House is pushing back hard against a New York Times report that the president's political team is considering a national ad campaign that would cast the GOP as taken over by tea party extremists. The story is '100 percent inaccurate,' a White House official told Politico." CW: the Times has since drastically modified their story, linked above.

David Herszenhorn & Carl Hulse of the New York Times: does the Republican party have any room for moderates like Olympia Snowe & Susan Collins of Maine? "Senator Jim DeMint ... made it clear in the aftermath of the Delaware upset [of Republican moderate Mike Castle] that he would prefer losing a seat to Democrats than having Republican colleagues who stray from the conservative line and erode party unity and image by voting for policies supported by the Obama administration."

Nelson Schwartz of the New York Times: "Even after taxpayer bailouts restored bankers’ profits and pay, the great Wall Street money machine is decelerating.... The activities at the heart of what Wall Street does — selling and trading stocks and bonds, and advising on mergers — are running at levels well below where they were at this point last year...."

Neil King, Jr. & Janet Adamy of the Wall Street Journal: "Eyeing a potential Congressional win in November, House Republicans are planning to chip away at the White House's legislative agenda—in particular the health-care law—by depriving the programs of cash."

They Have No Shame. Zaid Jilani of Think Progress: when a GM auto engines plant held a reopening ceremony in Spring Hill, Tennessee, "Sens. Bob Corker, Lamar Alexander, and Rep. Marsha Blackburn [attended]. Ironically, all three ... opposed the plans to save General Motors and other U.S. auto companies. This didn’t stop Corker from taking credit for the federal rescue, anyway.” The auto workers booed Corker.

Catherine Rampell of the New York Times: "The recession officially ended in June 2009, according to the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of such dates. As many economists had expected, this official end date makes the most recent downturn the longest since World War II. This recent recession, having begun in December 2007, lasted 18 months." ...

... Motoko Rich of the New York Times: "... because it will take years to absorb the giant pool of unemployed at the economy’s recent pace, many of these older [over-50] people may simply age out of the labor force before their luck changes." ...

... Conor Dougherty of the Wall Street Journal: "It's not only that the college educated earn more, but that they are far more likely to keep their jobs when times get tough."

Melissa Taylor & Warren Strobel of McClatchy News: the U.S. Agency for International Development continues to award defense contracts to U.S. firms it knows or suspects have defrauded the government of huge sums, & the Justice Department aids & abets the contractors.

James Warren in the New York Times: a newly-released audio tape of President Kennedy, Republican Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen & Democratic Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield is a good example of how the parties used to work together to solve national problems.