Monday, January 10, 2011

Dear Mr. President,

There went another moral imperative. The one about restrictions on hiring lobbyists as aides. I come back from a week off and there’s the head lobbyist for JPMorgan Chase named as your new chief of staff! I know, I know, if you split hairs and play semantic games he’s not a registered lobbyist, but still, he’s in charge of all the lobbyists for his bank and one of the guys who fought tooth and nail against financial reform and regulation, not to mention his ties to the drug industry. Hoo boy, talk about the fox guarding the henhouse! I knew even before your ascendancy to the throne back in 2009 we’d been conned, soon as you announced Rahm Emmanuel as your first chief of staff. Then Gates, Geithner, Summers, Clinton.... Daley’s just another sell-out in a long list of sell-outs, another right turn on the road to 2012. So much for transformation and change. There’s a real strong pattern here, Mr. President: your appointments, your caving in on single payer health care and the Bush tax cuts for millionaires. Even the nuclear treaty had eighty-five billion tucked away to upgrade nuclear weapons. I thought the point was to get rid of nuclear weapons not upgrade them, but I guess that’s what it took for the Republicans to vote for it. Pragmatism the pundits call it, but out here on the hustings it looks like sell-outs and cave-ins. So now you’ve got a Daley running the show. A lobbyyist, a banker, a corporate type. The Repubs feel real comfortable with him, approve of the appointment, and when they approve of something that’s a sure sign it’s bad news for us lefties who voted for you back in November of 2008, the ones you left twisting in the wind after the election. Mr. President, I don’t think the Republicans need a presidential candidate in 2012. I think they’ve got the best one they could find sitting in the White House right now. A Republicrat. That’s you, Mr. President. Nothing’s changed. Nothing will change. There is no Hope. Boy, are you ever a disappointment.