The President Aims For the Skyboxes

I keep telling myself I’m going to stop picking on President Obama and his administration because I don’t want to sound like a broken record.

One reader even suggested I might even be giving comfort to the Republicans.

Which, believe me, is not my intention.

But then the president and his people do something so clueless it seems to demand attention.

The latest example is the news that his campaign is contemplating moving the final extravaganza of the Democratic Party convention this summer in Charlotte, Bank of America’s corporate headquarters, to a stadium named for the country’s largest too big to fail bailed out bank.

You know, the one that wanted to charge its customers to use their debit cards, before the huge public outcry stopped them. Even the president slammed the bank’s debit card debacle. I wrote about some of the bank’s numerous other fiascoes here.

Now, the president and his campaign need to switch to the B of A stadium, according to the president’s people, because they need more luxury skyboxes for their big-money donors.

Remember when President Obama stirred the nation on election night in 2008? Speaking before a crowd of 240,000 in a public park in Chicago as well as a huge televised audience, Obama assured the country that “change had come to America.”

In 2008, the president spoke in Grant Park, which has been public space since the 1840s. Bank of America Park is an NFL stadium, home of the Carolina Panthers. They sell the naming rights for millions of dollars a year.  Local residents call it the BofA, or the Vault. Before the name belonged to Bank of America it belonged to the cell phone company Ericsson.

Imagine what a different impression the speech would have made if the president gave it surrounded by advertisements for the country’s banks.

We might have been better prepared for his economic policies if he had. The president has gone from shooting for the stars that night in Grant Park to aiming for the skyboxes.

I’m sure the president’s people will make sure that there are no actual advertisements on display while he speaks. But the symbolism, or optics, couldn’t be more powerful.

If the president and his party want to perform a public service, they should arrange to have the amount Bank of America, has contributed to each of the presidential candidates and their parties up on the scoreboard, along with the amount of bailout money, low-interest loans and loan buyouts the bank received from taxpayers.

If there was room, the party could display the names of its top donors.

If the BofA donations were displayed today, you might wonder why the president didn’t find somebody else’s stadium to give his speech from.

So far, the bank has forked over $126,500 to Romney and a measly $39,024 to the president.

But don’t cry for the president and his party. I’m sure they’ll more than make up the difference in the skyboxes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All the President's Millionaires

While there’s some shuffling of desks close to President Obama, the most important factor isn’t changing ¬– the 1 percent is retaining a tight grip on the administration.

Exit Bill Daley (income from J.P. Morgan in 2010 = $8.7 million). Enter Jacob Lew (income from Citigroup in 2010 = $1.1 million). Lew was CEO of the Citigroup division that invested in credit default swaps, among other risky investments that sank the economy. But the bank, which survived only thanks to taxpayer generosity, paid Lew a $900,000 bonus.
Were they really paying him for overseeing the investments that nearly sank the bank – or were they compensating him for the work he did for the bank while he served in the Clinton administration, betting that Lew would serve again?
And who can forget Daley’s predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, who got paid $16.2 million during a 2 1/2/ year as an investment banker, and remained a hedge fund favorite?
Meanwhile, still firmly in place near President Obama’s ear as his closest outside adviser on creating jobs is Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric. The Center for Public Integrity’s i-watch news is out with a devastating investigation into how GE under Immelt lost more than $1 billion getting into the subprime loan business, ignoring its own whistleblowers who were trying to tell their bosses how the irresponsible pursuit of profits led to widespread fraud.
This is more than just inside baseball – with these people in charge of the Democrats and the Republicans as well, there’s little hope that the administration will come to grips with the foreclosure crisis – or hold bankers accountable for looting and tanking the economy. Only a huge public outcry, much larger than the Occupy has mustered so far, can hope to change that.