100 Day Assessment

In accordance with our policy of handling the tough issues, and to recognize the 100 day mark on the Obama presidency Robbinsense will address our present economic situation and assess the new administration.

As for the economy, the present economic and financial situation is very complicated; the world’s best economic minds are in discord over how to handle it. Republicans hypocritically oppose anything that the Obama government proposes, after supporting similar measures for years when advanced by the Republican administrations. Republicans are motivated by fear or dread that Obama might be successful; if they support him, they have no base, whereas by opposing him they can claim to have been right if the policies fail.

Being a fiscal conservative, myself, it has been difficult to get on board with massive government spending programs; but who are we to claim that what occurred in the 30s isn’t around the corner? Is there safe haven for our savings with all crashing around us; or what will hyper-inflation do to our economy after spending our way to prosperity, devaluating the debt and the currency?

I believe the government must step in and take charge. We’ve seen that the financial industry is motivated by greed and willing to enrich their top management through fraudulent means. Who will clean up the mess if government simply allows these banks to collapse, leaving the financial soup to congeal in the muck? How do we handle our massive foreign debt if government steps aside?

On the other hand, The Prompt Correction Action Law mandates that FDIC-insured banks go into receivership when they become insolvent. In violation of this law, the Obama Administration has continued the Bush policy of giving money to our largest banks to keep them afloat---without substantive changes in their operation and leadership. This is old-time politics, catering to powerful, industrial mucky-mucks.

I believe three things are necessary: one is to find out exactly who and what was responsible for the mistakes made by these banks; two is to take measures to ensure that the mistakes won’t be repeated; three is to present transparency in the industry.

Shortly after she was named to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 1996, Brooksley E. Born was invited to lunch by Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. Born, a very good regulator, had been trying to do the right thing to regulate one of the exotic derivatives (credit default swaps). While Greenspan couldn’t stop Born’s crusade, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, and Phil Gramm worked together to block this particular regulation. They also pushed a law through congress to prevent regulation. It's this type of derivative that is most involved in the AIG scandal. AIG alone cost as much as the entire Savings and Loan debacle of the 80s. (Rubin and Summers were treasury secretaries for Bill Clinton, while Gramm was John McCain’s principal economic advisor.)

It’s not that we couldn’t see this coming! In 2004 the FBI issued a warning of “an epidemic of mortgage fraud”. The Bush administration, meanwhile, had moved 500 agents from white collar crime investigation to “Homeland Security”. The agents were never reposted, and the fraud continued unabated. These are precisely the kind of things that need to be brought to light and corrected, this time forever.

Competent or not, the men who ran these companies into the ground have a vested interest in preventing the truth from emerging. How can we get to the bottom of this mess if we allow the failed executives who ran their ships aground to remain at the helm? And who could claim that they’re competent in regard to anything except fraud when they took part in the greatest Ponzi scheme in history? (see Financial Disservices in this blog, February ’09.) We believe these men belong in jail.

We need executives in these failed companies who will get to the bottom of what’s happened. Initial resources poured into the industry were swallowed up, disappeared into the black hole of their toxic asset portfolios, as well as into bonuses for these scoundrels. Ledgers and balance sheets need to be exposed, scrutinized and straightened out. It’s only after the toxic assets are purged and proper accounting is restored that the public (and the world) will be able to again trust our financial system.


So on this 100th day of the Obama Administration, how do we rate the new president? Since most of the media pundits have gone on record, Robbinsense will follow suit.

The President is definitely a breath of fresh air. It feels good to have a man with dignity, who can speak English running our country. There is a long list of executive orders and new legislation that have been pushed through congress to steer us back on track. For an abbreviated list: ending torture, impending closure of The Guantanamo Bay Prison, “morning after” pill okayed for distribution to all over 16, stem cell research given fast track approval, $15Billion boost to veteran’s health programs (the largest increase in history), environmental measures reversed, opening up diplomacy with Iran, Cuba, Venezuela. I could go on with an impressive list of small accomplishments, but our editorial staff deems them to be small potatoes.

We feel the president’s patient efforts at “bi-partisanship” are noble, but we take exception to the appearance that the Obama Administration is “playing politics” with the Republicans, trying to appease them into co-operating. This is the same old-time politicking that has led us to this brink. The GOP is in disarray and politically irrelevant at this time. Their agenda is driven by interests of the Republican Party, rather than the interests of our country.

1) As discussed above, we are dissatisfied with the political maneuvering going on in efforts to get the economy on track. Keeping the old brokers in power is playing the old political game. These rascals have NO interest in changing anything. They are only interested in keeping themselves in power and in clover.

2) On his 100th day the president answered a question in his press conference about torture. He said it was wrong to use torture because we could have gotten the information by other means. What!!?? No, it is wrong to use torture because 1) It violates national and international law, 2) it violates explicit terms of treaties to which we are signatory, 3) it is an affront to anyone’s morality, and 4) it violates the essence of what this country stands for. Torture is criminal activity. The president's answer was designed to disarm Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney, while in reality, those two titanic jerks are comfortably in the process of destroying the Republican Party. Let them rant!

Soft-pedaling the torture issue to avoid pissing off Republicans is not the way to restore the shattered integrity of our country---especially when most of the developed world is hungry for a piece of our hide after we’ve sent world economies as well as personal savings and retirements into the black hole of our economic melt-down.

The world has seen countless people come to enormous power who should never have arrived at the throne. Many have been good, intelligent men, like Alexander (Greece), who once in power became obsessed by the opportunity to expand their power. We’ve also seen capable, yet totally improbable leaders with little or no ambition (such as Claudius and Truman) arise from circumstances that impel them to power.

We’ve seen evil, mad men, such as Hitler and Caligula who end up in the seat of great power because of a combination of intense ambition and bizarre circumstances. We’ve seen rulers with little desire and no leadership capabilities, such as Millard Fillmore and Warren G. Harding, come to power by accident. Andrew Johnson and Woodrow Wilson were petty, mean and incapable leaders. Franklin Roosevelt was thrust back into office for his fourth term, a dying man, by the power elite behind him who intended to use Truman for their political agenda.

It might appear that we’re too sophisticated to continue making great mistakes such as these, but our political system and voter naiveté make misrule inevitable. George W. Bush, like Tiberius, was a man of little ambition who was thrust into power by his station in life and strong political force behind. In Tiberius’ case, it was his mother, while for Bush it was Carl Rove and the Republican establishment, indifferent to his lack of intellectual qualifications. Once in power, both men morphed into despots, driven to excess on whatever level was available.

There was no reason to believe that once in power, Bush wouldn’t be a boring technocrat, adhering to the will of the forces behind him. He appeared to be bland and harmless, but he used a tragedy (9/11) to thrust himself to the world stage as emperor, using lies and deceit in an effort to re-shape the world, obsessed by possible immortality (legacy), impelled by the limitless military might of this country and scornful of the strictures of our Constitution. By his own admission, Iraq was only the first conquest in the region that we would attack and consume.

It is a virtual certainty that we will have more incompetent, corrupt, "ambitious" leaders running this country. We face an opportunity, right now, to put a lid on such abuse. We can tell the world that we are a better country than this. We can tell our posterity and every future president who swears to uphold The Constitution that they can’t get away with what Mr. Bush did. Mr. Obama has that opportunity; and if he doesn’t have the political stomach for it, he should not stand in the path of any political force that chooses to do the work. The integrity of our country, along with Robbinsense, call out for national atonement.

3) In that regard, Robbinsense supported Mr. Obama on the assumption that on his 100th day our military mission in Iraq would have ended---that withdrawal would have commenced. Instead, we have vague promises that withdrawal will commence sometime next year! The killing goes on, with our soldiers on the delivery and on the receiving end. With the $100 Billion annual budget for that war, we could begin earnest war reparations. The Iraqi government is never going to “get their act together” as long as we are there shepherding them around, handing out largess like it’s Easter candy. A previous Republican president brought us out of Viet Nam with our tails between our legs 35 years ago; who but rabid, right-wingers second-guesses that decision?

4) We are increasing our military commitment in Afghanistan. This is madness in our opinion. We need to extricate ourselves from that mess in any way possible. We cannot kill all the terrorists---the more we kill, the more we spawn! We need to minimize our military presence in the region; this may be the only way to deflect terrorism and to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

5) We now have a new front opened up in the war. President Obama has embraced an escalation in the raids over western Pakistan that were approved by Mr. Bush. In the first months of his administration we have carried out at least 16 Predator attacks, killing at least 161 people. Compared to 36 total attacks in 2008, this is a marked escalation in a disgusting policy that is not even publicly acknowledged. This is the equivalent of Nixon expanding the Viet Nam war into Laos and Cambodia. It’s anybody’s guess how few of these people were actual terrorists, and how many more terrorists will be spawned by this war of the drones. The government claims to have killed16 al Qaeda leaders and 700 civilians. Who are the terrorists here, anyway? Beyond the killing, [our] terrorist attacks anger the people, placing enormous pressure on the Pakistani government, which supposedly we support!!! Go figure. Those people just want us out of their country and out of their lives so they can go back to fighting each other.

6) On political appointments, how can we have so many glitches? It’s nice that he has admitted errors, but why so many? Why can’t he get proper advice on such small items as appropriate gifts for foreign dignitaries?

We recognize that there are political exigencies that require consideration. With each of these matters there is a price to pay for confronting the right wing. We also recall that in 1977, upon taking office, Jimmy Carter canceled every (of approximately 83) water project on the federal docket. Since water projects are the “mother’s milk” of political largess, this pissed off practically every legislator in the congress, including those of his own party. Carter also pushed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act through congress, another high-minded measure which put our exports at disadvantage (since bribery is routine and legal in other countries). Carter lost legislative leverage in the face of such bold gestures, and though 82 of the water projects eventually resumed, this was a significant contributing factor in what is considered to be an ineffective presidency.

In the mid nineties President Clinton, in his move to the political center, seemed to be adopting the Republican agenda. Among other things, he balanced the budget and initiated welfare reform. He also pushed an anti-crime agenda that would make any Republican proud, expanding the scope of the war on drugs and imposing mandatory sentencing guidelines. The fallout from these measures was a dramatic increase in the rate of incarceration on the federal level. With a prison population of 2 million, we have achieved the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Where the percentage of violent offenders in the prison system was 30 to 35%, it is now 7 to 8%. Prisons are over-flowing with with non-violent offenders; zealous law enforcement officials interdict drug offenders because they are a safe and easy mark, while the number of arrests advances their individual careers. This leaves violent offenders free on the streets and releases thousands more to make room for drug offenders. (We will discuss this matter in more depth next month.)

So did these measures bring political capital to the Clinton Administration from the right? Absolutely not! For stealing their agenda they hated Clinton all the more, becoming more obstreperous, more obstructionist. They hammered the man over ethics issues and their cultural agenda.

It’s easy to be high-minded when looking in from the outside. We recognize that political expediency may be necessary, and we applaud him for doing what’s necessary to get things done, but we elected Mr. Obama to straighten out our political and economic mess, which means changing the way Washington operates. (Change: remember that word from the election?) We will be increasingly vexed by continued capitulation and slow progress on these enormously important matters.

So to assess the president’s performance through 100 days: If John McCain had won the election and had performed equally, I would be ecstatic over his (unexpected) performance and grant him a B. But for Mr. Obama, though he looks very “presidential” and has done many commendable things, in the face of high expectations, on the big ticket items we find his performance lacking. We give Mr. Obama a C, with a plus for political considerations.

As of May 13, we discover that Mr. Obama has reversed his position on releasing pertinent material implicating wide-spread complicity in torture by American forces. This is illegal, hypocritical, and an outrage. This administration is looking more and more like our previous one. We are down-grading our assessment of Mr. Obama's performance to C minus, with no political considerations; and we're watching a bit more closely for further downgrades.