They call it "Murphy's Law," when "everything that can go wrong, actually does go wrong." That's the kind of first three weeks on the job that President Obama just had. If he touched it, it fell apart. If he talked about it, it disintegrated.
If you run into him out there in your travels, tell him its "okay" to "call home," now. No matter what, we'll still take the call. We still "have his back." That's how we are. We stick by our chosen candidates, even when they act like they don't know us.....or remember us.
This is the President who didn't have time during the campaign to talk directly to us, the one who took great pains to remind the country's voters that he wasn't running to be President of "Black America," the one whose "people" kept telling us that he would eventually get around to our issues, AFTER he got elected. So, we obediently waited our turn.
We weren't waiting for him to turn his back on the rest of America, that's not our style. We certainly didn't expect him to stop being responsive to the "fat cats" who wrote most of the checks to his campaign.
In that regard, did you know that on the President's list of ten largest campaign contributors you'll find Goldman Sachs ($955,223), J.P. Morgan Chase ($642,958) and Citigroup ($633,418)?
Did you know that the fourth-largest contributing organization to the Obama campaign was Harvard University ($779,460)? Now, one in every four persons appointed by Obama is a Harvard graduate, a far greater percentage than any other university.
Please don't be surprised if law firms, teachers, the business community, and the securities and investment industry all get their phone calls returned right away by the new administration, or even by the President, himself, while you're still waiting for the Obama Team to get back to you. After all, just those four groups contributed $94.9 million to the campaign.
No, we're not dumb enough to think that President Obama would stop representing the interests of such institutions. We just kind of "hoped" that he would get around to us, on or about January 21, just like his "people" had promised. Some of us, however, are starting to get a little nervous.
When he won the election, the President enjoyed an 83 percent approval rating. A recent Gallup poll, the first since he was elected, showed that he is now at 68 percent. At the same point in their terms, according to Gallup, John Kennedy was at 72 percent, Dwight Eisenhower was also at 68 percent, Jimmy Carter, an almost-Obama-level 66 percent.
The last two weeks certainly haven't helped.
Tim Geithner, who, so far, seems to be one of the most seriously overrated and over-hyped Cabinet selections in modern history, unveiled his seriously deficient next-phase bank bailout plan earlier this week and was promptly and universally "trashed" by economists, Wall Street executives, media and everybody wondering when the credit crunch will finally end.
On Monday, President Obama gave his first prime-time Presidential Press Conference and received good initial reaction until we learned that the black press was systematically denied opportunities to ask any questions and that all participating journalists had been carefully screened by the administration. By the way, the day after the news conference, the Dow Jones Industrial Index dropped by a disastrous 388 points.
Meanwhile, the Stimulus Bill has been reduced to being just the latest in a seemingly never-ending series of partisan, political footballs. Now, those pushing back against the bill's dramatically watered-down street-level economic impact include the House Progressive Caucus and the newly invigorated and constituent-focused Black Caucus.
In fact, the version of the Stimulus bill that emerged from the Senate's approval process, is reportedly light on jobs, heavy on tax reductions and (Surprise! Surprise!) does not include the salary caps on executive compensation or bonuses for "bailed-out" company executives that Obama promised.
By the way, despite the new President's commitment to bipartisanship, not one, single, Republican congressman voted in favor of the package and only three Republican senators have been supportive.
Regrettably, with so much at stake for all Americans and, especially, for those in the country's most historically depressed communities, it seems that the new administration is inclined to accept virtually any version of the bill that comes out of Congress, just to be able to claim an early "victory."
In addition to having lost several, recent high-level appointees to scandals, now the President's star Republican Cabinet nominee, Judd Gregg, so symbolic of his now-faltering "bipartisan" agenda, has turned down the Commerce Secretary job, citing what he called "irresolvable conflicts" with Democratic handling of the Stimulus Bill.
As a further sign of how the ground may be shifting, about a week ago, black CNN correspondent, Roland Martin, Obama's fellow Chicagoan, and a former, unabashed cheerleader, wrote that the Obama Press Office, is sadly lacking in diversity. Commenting on the issue, Martin said, "I don't believe there is even one African American or Hispanic who is the primary spokesperson, or number two, at any of the major departments, such as Treasury, State and Justice."
"Various reports have stated," Martin went on to say, "that Obama was bothered by the lack of diversity among his campaign team, yet he wasn't moved to do anything about it. Now I am hearing the same when it comes to his senior staff....."
Recently, the Washington Post reported that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), currently has a backlog of 73,951 cases, a 35 percent increase, as compared to a year ago, but its staff has been reduced 25 percent. With its huge backlog, the agency filed just 290 lawsuits last year against private-sector employers, down from 371 in 2006.
The Post went on to say that the agency's recent requests to hire support staff, investigators, attorneys and mediators "have been largely unheeded."
And sadly, in November -- after the Obama election-- the agency was forced to move from its former offices in the "heart of downtown" Washington to a converted warehouse, north of Union Station, an area charitably described as "dicey." Looks like the administration is making a statement about where it stands on workplace diversity.
After less than one full month in office, the Obama media "honeymoon" appears to be over, the people he wanted to impress the most -- the Republican Party -- have rejected his outreach in a clear end emphatic way.
The President is now having problems finding qualifiable key appointees. Who, for example, would now have the lack of self-esteem to accept being the President's "third choice" as Commerce Secretary?
It seems that, at almost every turn, the President is earning a growing reputation for backing off from campaign promises, on key issues such as health care, financial institution regulation, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran policies, etc., etc.
Here's the question: If President Obama has so casually backed away from so many campaign promises he made to get elected, what do you think will happen to our issues, on which he has promised absolutely nothing? For example, where is the absolute, top-level assurance that black contractors, vendors and workers will participate in the upcoming Infrastructure package?
Unless we step up and get at least equally vocal with others who are fighting for their fair share of the "political pie," it may be a very long four years ahead for the national black community.
"Change," more and more every day, is starting to feel like "business as usual."
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