{"id":6889,"date":"2010-09-21T18:40:36","date_gmt":"2010-09-22T01:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=6889"},"modified":"2010-09-21T18:45:17","modified_gmt":"2010-09-22T01:45:17","slug":"obamas-town-hall-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2010\/09\/21\/obamas-town-hall-meeting\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama’s Town Hall Meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m somewhat sympathetic to the cold-hearted answer given by Reason<\/a> to the “Still waiting” woman, which is to point the pitfalls of the “personal situation” question to political actors.\u00c2\u00a0 It is not even an assessment on\u00c2\u00a0whether\u00c2\u00a0Obama has “Done Enough” in tilling and forming and getting through beneficial policies for economic benefit.<\/p>\n

Then again, it doesn’t take toolong to wade into Reason blog commenters to get the crux of their problem<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Getting the fuck out of the way and letting the economy recover on its own would be a start.<\/em><\/p>\n

Hm.\u00c2\u00a0 Won’t work.\u00c2\u00a0 I guess a crop of “Tea Party” candidates will push to repeal the twentieth century for that effect.<\/p>\n

Still, at least she is connected to worldly relatable concerns.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0This Hedge Fund Manager <\/a>is clueless.\u00c2\u00a0 Just call him Mr. Pinata Guy.<\/p>\n

At one point, however, a hedge fund manager stepped to the microphone to complain on behalf of Wall Street that the financial community was tired of being treated like a pinata. In his response, Obama pointed out that last year, the top 25 hedge fund managers earned an average of a billion dollars apiece. A billion bucks apiece. And he also suggested that a bit of perspective might be in order.
\n<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Now, you know, I have been amused over the last couple years, this sense of somehow me beating up on Wall Street. I think most folks on Main Street feel like they got beat up on. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be honest with you. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s probably \u00e2\u20ac\u201d there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a big chunk of the country that thinks that I have been too soft on Wall Street. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s probably the majority, not the minority\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a two-way street. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re making a billion dollars a year after a very bad financial crisis where 8 million people lost their jobs and small businesses can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get loans, then you shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel put upon.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

At that point, the CNBC moderator jumped in to note that in the cover story in Forbes magazine, Obama is described as having an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153anti-colonial attitude\u00e2\u20ac\u009d toward business and that<\/em> Steve Schwarzman, a prominent hedge-fund manager, had likened Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s proposed tax treatment of hedge-fund earnings as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a war \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

Obama responded by pointing out that the hedge fund manager and his colleagues are paying a tax rate of 15 percent on what they earn, which is a considerably lower rate than their secretaries have to pay.
\n<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The notion that somehow, me saying \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMaybe you should be taxed more like your secretary, when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re pulling home a billion dollars or a hundred million a year,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think is me being extremist or anti-business,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Obama said.<\/em><\/p>\n

Anthony Scaramucci<\/a>, huh?\u00c2\u00a0 No, I’m not for Class Warfare — at least as<\/em> Properly Defined<\/em>, but he was the one who brought up the Pinata Metaphor.<\/p>\n

In other news of that Scarmucci type, Ben Stein is not you<\/a>.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m somewhat sympathetic to the cold-hearted answer given by Reason to the “Still waiting” woman, which is to point the pitfalls of the “personal situation” question to political actors.\u00c2\u00a0 It is not even an assessment on\u00c2\u00a0whether\u00c2\u00a0Obama has “Done Enough” in tilling and forming and getting through beneficial policies for economic benefit. Then again, it doesn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6889"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6895,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6889\/revisions\/6895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}