Makes you wonder what the results might have been on November 4 if the press had done its job in exposing Obama's radical economic beliefs rather than attacking Joe the Plumber for suggesting he had them, and how much differently his appearance on "Meet the Press" would have gone Sunday if the moderator wasn't completely on board with these left-leaning philosophies.
Such is important when considering Obama's comments previously reported by NewsBusters here and here as well as a truly telling statement by the president-elect that working for your own financial benefit is "not good for anybody" (video available here):
TOM BROKAW, MODERATOR: Your vice president Joe Biden said during the course of this campaign it would be patriotic for the wealthy to pay more on taxes. In this economy, does he still believe that?
BARACK OBAMA: Well, I think what Joe meant is exactly what I described which is that if, if our entire economic policy is premised on the notion that greed is good and what's in it for me, it turns out that that's not good for anybody. It's not good for the wealthy, it's not good for the poor, and it's not good for the vast majority in the middle.
Stop the tape. Worrying about one's own finances is not good for anybody? Have you ever heard a more socialist statement from a president or president-elect?
Why didn't Brokaw jump on this?
This man and his wife make an extraordinary amount of money compared to the average American. Did they ask "What's in it for me" when they negotiated their salaries before he moved into the public sector? Did he ask "What's in it for me" when he negotiated his million-dollar book deal? Has all that money THEY'VE MADE prior to him winning the White House hurt them?
And what about the record number of contributions he received during the campaign? When he was asking people to make these donations, wasn't it about HIM?
History will show him to be the first billion-dollar candidate. Wasn't his entire campaign therefore more a product and function of greed than any before it?
That Brokaw let this slide without any followup was disgraceful, as was Obama's almost incomprehensible elaboration:
If we've learned anything from this current financial crisis, think about how this evolved. You had a situation in which you started seeing home foreclosures rise, you had a middle class that was vulnerable, and couldn't make payments. Suddenly, all the borrowing that been, and, and, and, all the speculation that had been premised on those folks doing okay that starts evaporating. Next thing you know you've got Lehman Brothers going under. People used to think that, well there's no connection between those two things. It turns out that when we all do well then the economy as a whole is going to benefit.
Really? Is that what happened in the last eight years leading to this crisis.
Furthermore, is that we learned from the collapse of the Soviet Union? Is that what's going on in China, Cuba, North Korea, or Venezuela at the moment? Are the people in those countries faring better than Americans?
Maybe more importantly, should hundreds of years of successful capitalism in this country be ignored because a small percentage of folks in this country foolishly purchased homes that they couldn't afford, and a small percentage of financial service industry employees foolishly concocted a scheme that was based more on the principles of Charles Ponzi than sound business practices?
And what of the role of the government sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who gave more money to Sen. Barack Obama than to any other member of Congress except Christopher Dodd?
As the president-elect was pointing fingers at greed, looking out for number one, and Lehman Brothers, why didn't Brokaw bring up Obama's own connections to the two companies at the heart of this financial crisis? Or how about asking the president-elect what role his Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner played in the decision not to bail out Lehman Brothers?
Or questioning Obama about the role Geithner and then Treasury Secretary Larry Summers played in the Clinton-signed bills -- the Financial Services Modernization Act and the Commodities Futures Modernization Act -- which made what Lehman Brothers and others did to cause this financial crisis possible?
Sadly, no such inquiries were made by Brokaw, thereby allowing the president-elect to blame capitalism for the current financial crisis while advocating socialism as the solution.
Nice job, Tom. You've done your industry proud on your way out the door.
