CatherineRhodes.com

All relationships are a constant process of damage and repair, and ours with our president is no different. Some of us had felt abandoned by him. We volunteered our time and donated money to help him win the election and little of his platform seemed to get done. Instead, he authorized 30,000 more troops for Afghanistan and let healthcare reform wither. Our great communicator seemed to have been absorbed into Washington. Last night he explained himself. He thought that if he kept his head down and worked on policy he didn’t need to be in front of the TV cameras. As my BFF Jon Stewart said, who does he think we are? We’re the ones who pushed the timeslot of the president’s annual speech to Congress to make room for the premier of “Lost.”

All that aside, last night, Mr. President, you made me remember why I spent Sunday mornings doing my volunteer booth in Larchmont — because you WILL bring hope and change to Washington. It will just take time.

Nice slam on the Supremes and overturning 100 years of precedent with their shocking ruling on corporate money. Sitting there smugly in their robes, not emoting, hopefully smarting.

I cannot overstate how distraught I am about the SCOTUS ruling that corporate money = speech. This is going to change the country forever. McDonald’s doesn’t like the FDA restrictions on the safe handling of beef, sponsor their own candidate! Cigna wants pre-existing conditions, sponsor their own candidate! Exxon wants to squash mass transit, sponsor their own candidate! Corporations are constructed entities, not human beings. Why should they have 1st Amendment protections?

Goodbye democracy, hello plutocracy. And now with Scott Brown, is healthcare reform officially dead or just on life support?  It’s starting to feel like we never had an election, that we’re stuck in the Bush years forever — consider, we have 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan, the banks are making record profits, healthcare reform is unlikely to pass, Guantanomo is still open, and now this SCOTUS radical ruling on corporate money. Sigh…

They stand no chance against the wall of campaign money

Jon Stewart got it right, again. On his Jan 12, 2010 show, he said, “the only people who have recovered from the financial meltdown are those who caused the financial meltdown.” How is this possible?

Major U.S. banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their people about $145 billion for 2009, a record sum that indicates how compensation is climbing despite fury over Wall Street’s pay culture. An analysis by The Wall Street Journal shows that executives, traders, investment bankers, money managers and others at 38 top financial companies can expect to earn nearly 18% more than they did in 2008—and slightly more than in the record year of 2007.

POTUS doesn’t seem to be able to do much. His comment on 60 Minutes denouncing “the fat cats on Wall Street,” was like a squirtgun against a forest fire. Last week he lined up with his economic advisors for a press conference announcing a risk tax on the five top banks, which the bankers will absolutely, positively outfox. Overarching banking reform is in jeopardy. Even a prez as charmismatic as Obama can’t seem to fight the wall of campaign contributions, especially in an election year.

There’s an invincibility to these bankers, a let-them-eat-cake quality to their excess. Our nation is seeming less like a democracy and more like a monarchy where the masses of starving paupers gaze at the bejeweled royals in the distance and there’s just nothing to be done. Notice how coverage on the obscene banking profits was front page news for a couple of days, and was starting to pick up traction from populists groups, even the tea baggers? But then notice how those reports were knocked from the headlines by the earthquake in Haiti.

What, do these fat cats even control the teutonic plates?!