Now is the time to force major, progressive changes. It is not a time for timidity.
For the first time in years, more Americans than not say the country is headed in the right direction, a sign that Barack Obama has used the first 100 days of his presidency to lift the public's mood and inspire hopes for a brighter future.
Intensely worried about their personal finances and medical expenses, Americans nonetheless appear realistic about the time Obama might need to turn things around, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll. It shows most Americans consider their new president to be a strong, ethical and empathetic leader who is working to change Washington.
Now how to we get people like Sens. Harry Reid and Mark Warner out of the way?
I’m not sure what CNBC’s Mary Thompson was trying to say in this piece. At first, she suggests CNBC was among General Electric’s media properties criticized by shareholders for being too liberal! CNBC? Liberal? But then she is asked about this by Maria Bartiromo and Thompson’s answer is muddled. I think what she’s suggesting is that Jeff Immelt, GE’s CEO, was criticized by shareholders for telling his media outlets that they were too hard on Obama. Well, we know he couldn’t haven’t been talking about MSNBC. Maybe you can figure out what she’s saying.
And it is impossible to think that, if he was criticized for telling his media outlets they were too hard on Obama, he was talking about CNBC. Listen to the report below which followed the one above. It’s about corporate tax rates of U.S. companies operating abroad. The conservative argument is invariably that to tax them as they would be taxed in the U.S. would mean the loss of U.S. jobs because these companies would move their HQ abroad. Listen carefully for Maria Bartiromo’s editorial comments during the interview.
After Greg Valliere, who is opposed to corporate taxes, makes his comments, Bartiromo says, “You make a good point.” And then she says in a accusatory manner to the hapless woman on the progressive side of this argument, “You said [Obama] should go ahead and do this!”
When Valliere criticizes tax equality, his ridiculous argument that people move from state to state to avoid taxes goes unchallenged by Bartiromo (or the hapless progressive -- Nicole Tichon, of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group -- for that matter; I think CNBC tries to find the most feckless progressives to represent the side CNBC hates.)
When Valliere makes the other well-worn canard that our corporate tax rates are the highest in the world, Bartiromo laughs. Then when Tichon (now regaining her legs) says that’s debatable. Bartiromo says “Whoa, Whoa, why is that debatable?”
Tichon gives a halting but accurate answer, and then Valliere changes the subject, saying that companies won’t be able to create jobs, Bartiromo says, “Right, Yep, Yep.”
Bartiromo wouldn’t know a journalistic ethic if hit her on her collagen inflated lips.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner gave a dismal performance this morning before the TARP Oversight Panel. The chairwoman, Elizabeth Warren, asked the first question, which as I said this morning, was right on. Geithner gave an answer that is sure to make Joe Six-Pack throw beer cans at the TV. It was the kind of non-response that more than obfuscates the truth; it crystallizes for the listener that the inference of Warren’s question is obviously true: The banks are getting a better deal than the American manufacturing worker.
I was never comfortable with Geithner as the architect of this economic recovery, and while he has improved his public performances in that he no longer looks like a deer in the headlights, he now just looks shifty.
Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard professor chairing the TARP oversight committee is now conducting hearing with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. You can see it on CNBC. She’s been profiled in a couple of places. Here’s one.
She’s a bit dorky but homes in on the critical point. Her first question to Geithner: Why was the auto industry held to harsh standards while the banks got very different treatment, and does Geithner think the banks were better managed?
The phone rang and I missed most of his answer, but I heard enough of it that it seemed to come down to “the banks are too big to fail.”
I write for food. Since 1989, I've had my own practice providing communications services to corporations, entrepreneurs, professional firms, associations and nonprofit organizations as well as political candidates, action committees and grassroots organizations.
