Obama's New Advisors

After hearing President Obama's speech about the budget, where he said, "A few months ago, I was able to sign a tax cut for American families because both parties worked through their differences and found common ground. Now, the same cooperation has made it possible for us to move forward with the biggest annual spending cut in history," I had to look to see just who the heck his advisors are that would make him thing this is what was good for the American people.

Gene B. Sperling, a Jewish gentleman, who wrote the book "The Pro-Growth Progressive" and who earned $887,727 from Goldman Sachs in 2008 and $158,000 for speeches, mostly to financial companies, tried to anticipate what Republicans would accept and what they would reject and prepared alternatives that could offer both sides a political victory. He was the top negotiator in the China-WTO agreement in Beijing in 1999, paving the way for China to enter the World Trade Organization in 2001.  He is now  the director of the National Economic Council.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0111/47185.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/07/politics/main7222940.shtml

William Michael Daley, American lawyer and former banker, a Roman Catholic most recently served on the Executive Committee of JPMorgan Chase & Co., where he was paid as much as $5 million a year and supervised the Washington lobbying efforts of the nations second-largest bank.  He also served on the board of directors at Boeing, the giant military contractor, and Abbott Laboratories, the global drug company, which has billions
of dollars at stake in the overhaul of the health care system.  He coordinated President Clinton's efforts to institute debt reduction, Save Social Security First, and reform Medicare policies which reduced benefits for those on Social Security and Medicare.  He is now White House Chief of Staff.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/william_m_daley/index.html

Jacob "Jack" J. Lew, who practices Judiasm, defended his nearly $1 million bonus from Citigroup last year even as his former employer took a massive taxpayer bailout. Lew was named chief operating officer of Citigroup's Alternative Investments unit in 2006.  Lew co-chaired the Advisory Board for City Year New York. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institution Hamilton Project Advisory Board, and the
National Academy of Social Insurance.  He was nominated by Obama to serve on the Council of Economic Advisers on his first day in office and concurrently served as chief economist at the Economic Recovery Advisory Board. He recently told a Senate panel last week that deregulation didn't lead to the recent financial crisis.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/23/lew-defends-1m-citi-bonus/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/21/obama-nominee-jacob-lew-f_n_732594.html

http://www.allgov.com/Official/Lew_Jacob

#1 advisor: Bruce Reed served as executive director of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which Obama created to fashion a bipartisan compromise on long-term deficit reduction, and is also known as the Bowles-Simpson Commission, after its co-chairs. "Reed is someone who has been very open for a long time in his desire to see
Social Security and Medicare rolled back," says Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.

http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-gaggle/2011/01/14/bruce-reed-biden-s-new-chief-of-staff-i
s-another-centrist-choice.html

#2 advisor: Bill Daley, a Roman Catholic, was a top executive at J.P. Morgan following its acquisition of Bank One Corporation and consistently urges the Democratic Party to pursue a corporate agenda that alienates both Independent and Democratic voters.

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-01-06/news/27086787_1_william-daley-bill-daley-democratic-party

#3 advisor: David Axelrod, a master of "Astroturfing" who has a second firm that shapes public opinion for corporations.  In the political application, "Astroturfing" can be defined as follows.

"The origin of the word shill is uncertain; many believe it might be an abbreviation of the Yiddish shillaber. Apparently, the word originally, maybe as far back as 1914, denoted a carnival worker who pretended to be a member of the audience in an attempt to elicit interest in an attraction.  Both illegal and legal gambling industries also use shills to make winning at games appear more likely than it actually is. These shills also often aid
in cheating or disrupting the game if the mark is likely to win.

Fast forward to the computer age of marketing. In online discussion media,  parties may express specific opinions in order to further the interests of an organization in which they have an interest, such as a commercial vendor or special interest group.

Sometimes shills may be used to downplay legitimate complaints posted by users on the Internet."

http://ethicalnag.org/2010/03/22/shill-game/

With advisors like these, is it any wonder that people who rely on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid have been discarded like old shoes?