Another way Obama’s let us down, nicked from last Monday’s Democracy Now which included an interview with Jeffrey Sachs, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia:
But if you look at what we really need to have a normal country, we would have to be 23, 24 percent of GNP—that’s just basic arithmetic—to cover our core costs and to be able to face the needs of the American people for education, for roads that don’t collapse, for a climate that doesn’t get wrecked, for a modern energy system, for science and technology, for our competitiveness. So, this means tax—taxes on the rich and on the companies have to go up, if we’re going to have a normal country. But the Republicans are dead set against it. And until now, Obama has just compromised, compromised, compromised.
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His job in our constitutional system is to help show a way forward and help to explain, help to say why we need to go this way, not to stand in the back and then announce how historic an agreement is to slash taxes on the rich or how historic an agreement is to cut $38.5 billion that’s going to slash programs for the poor. That’s not his job. His job is to lead.
I don’t understand why Obama is only interested in compromise. Doesn’t he want to stand up for anything?
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