Daddy Scares Us

David Sanger illustrates in the NY Times today the exact problem with the Village and with Republicans on Obama, the oil spill, and BP.  One one hand, they complained bitterly for weeks that he hasn't done anything.  Now they are complaining that Obama's $20 billion escrow fund is dangerously close to the Imperial Presidency.

The Wall Street executives who needed the government to prop them up, but still thought their services were worth millions a year, were cast by Mr. Obama as a shameless privileged class. Toyota was described as seeking profits over safety; Wellpoint, the insurance giant, was castigated for seeking to insulate itself from the new health care legislation by taking actions that the law will soon prohibit.

Against that backdrop, forcing BP to take a $20 billion bath — even before the inevitable lawsuits are filed — seemed an easy decision. Mr. Obama had no legal basis for the demand, but concluded he did not need one. “He had a power other presidents have used — you call it jawboning,” Mr. Emanuel said.

The question is whether the cumulative effects of these actions create an impression that, over the long run, may make it harder to persuade both American and foreign corporations to cooperate with Mr. Obama’s program to reinvest and reinvigorate the American economy.

“He’s walking a very fine line here,” said Jeffrey Garten, a professor of trade and international finance at the Yale School of Management and a former top official in the Clinton administration’s Commerce Department. “He is taking each case on the merits as he sees it, but he runs the risk of sowing a level of mistrust about all big companies. And it’s those companies — not small businesses — that he will need to invest and innovate for the kind of recovery he wants.” 

It's laughable, watching Sanger defend these huge multinationals and chiding Obama on using the bully pulpit, not days after his colleagues smashed Obama for not doing enough to suspend the notion that he too was in the pocket of big business and that he worked for corporations, not the people.  Obama's going to scare off the big companies!  They'll leave for China and take millions of jobs with them if they can't get away with fleecing the American people!

The only person bought and paid for here is Sanger.

There are plenty of Villagers and folks on the left suffering from Obama Derangement Syndrome too, folks.  It's starting to get a little ridiculous.