IS THIS A CHANGE-of-TEAM WE CAN BELIEVE IN?
Dave Lindorff, reporter for Salon, the Nation and Businessweek, writes: :”Just two weeks after his historic inauguration ceremony, Obama's presidency is lurching towards failure, and not because three of his administration picks have been found to be tax cheats, but because nearly all of his administration picks are corporate whores and shills”. Lets look at the list:

William Lynn: A former Raytheon Co. lobbyist, confirmed today as deputy secretary of defense, (the department’s chief operating officer – which includes overseeing acquisitions). He has agreed to sell his stock in the military contractor but will not be forced to step back from decisions related to Ratheon, the Defense Department said Friday. Instead, Obama wrote Lynn a special permission slip to exempt him the new revolving door ban. Allowing Lynn to do business with his former employer makes a mockery of Obama’s new ethics rules.

Tom Daschle: Nominated as Secretary of H&HS – dropped out after acknowledging that he had belatedly paid more than $128,000 in taxes owed to the federal government.

Nancy Killefer: Intended to become the government's first “chief performance officer”, bowed out, after admitting she never paid payroll taxes for her household employee.

Timothy Geithner: a key official of the Bush years, has now been confirmed at Secretary of the Treasury, although he admits not having paid the Social Security and Health Care taxes he owed to the US Treasury., while working at the IMF. He had avoided paying them, despite his signed acknowledgement that he owed theses taxes and hid behind the 3 year statue of limitations, thus had saving himself $41,000. He only paid up after his nomination was confirmed. And this guy will supervise the IRS?

Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) dropped out today after having accepted the job of Commerce Secretary. A deeply conservative man, he is opposed to the very existence of the Commerce Department he will head. To top it off, Obama had worked out a deal to have the Democratic governor of New Hampshire fill Gregg's vacated Senate seat with a Republican appointee, thereby forfeiting the right to add a Democrat to the Senate and eliminate any chance of Republican filibusters. Gregg explained that he didn't like Obama's economic stimulous program. It sounds like his ego got ahead of his ability to keep current on the news.

Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture: A Strong supporter of Monsanto's genetically-engineered crops and of unsustainable ethanol manufacture from corn and soy beans.

Senator (D-Co) Ken Salazar, Obama's choice for Secretary of Interior: a loyal servant of the big ranching, and mining interests. Energy stocks climbed over 10% on expectations that his taking charge of Interior would assure continued opening up of federal lands for minerals exploitation”. WSW.org 12/18/08. However, on February 10th, he surprised us by extending the review period for oil and gas leases in western states by 6 months. Should we wait and see it this leopard changes his spots?

Arne Duncan (currently CEO for the Chicago Public School System) will become Education Secretary. He is seen as a strong supporter of the “No Child Left Behind” initiative of the Bush administration.

Dr. Steven Chu has headed the Lawrence Berkeley Labs these past 4 years and is a scientist, not a businessman. His lifelong support for the nuclear power industry is why he'll be DOE Secretary.

THE GEITHNER BAILOUT – JUST MORE PAYOFFS TO THE BANKERS
As reported by Paul Krugman, and WSWS.org, the Geithner Plan outlined on Tuesday Feb. 10th is actually a massive expansion of the program announced back last November to provide cheap loans and subsidies to hedge funds, private equity firms and other speculators to encourage them to buy bank securities backed by auto loans, credit card debt, student loans, commercial real estate and small business loans. Like the Bush administration plan, it is geared to protecting the interests of the financial elite and shoring up its ownership and control of the banking system. It assiduously avoids imposing any cost to bank shareholders or bondholders in return for government handouts and is designed to limit government equity in banks that receive cash injections, requiring the firms to recompense the government in convertible preferred securities rather than common stock. It does not require the banks to increase their lending to other businesses or consumers as a condition for receiving government funds. To second these remarks, Martin Wolf in the normally quite conservative Financial Times Feb 11th asks: “Has Barack Obama's presidency already failed? He suggests that Tim Geitthner's $2.5 trillion Financial Stabilization Plan is basically an extension of the Bush-Paulson giveaway.

Like Obama, Geithner attempted to portray the new financial rescue plan, dubbed the Financial Stability Plan, as a sharp departure from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) instituted by Bush’s treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, claiming it included extensive provisions for transparency and accountability and harsh restrictions on banks that receive additional bailout funds. The supposed limits on executive pay and other requirements on the banks are, in fact, largely ephemeral, designed to assuage public opinion and obscure the reality of a vast new windfall for the financial elite.
The bogus nature of this pretense is underscored by the fact that Geithner, in his former position as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, played a central role alongside Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke in devising the TARP program, which he now admits failed to resolve the financial crisis and merely handed over hundreds of billions to Wall Street without any controls over the banks’ use of the taxpayer money.
The New York Times on Tuesday reported that Geithner opposed Obama political aides who were pushing for more serious restrictions on executive pay and costs to shareholders in a new bailout plan, out of concern over public anger and worries that the administration might be unable to secure congressional approval when it returns for new legislation to commit more taxpayer funds to rescuing the banks.

GUEST COLUMN: HAVE THE DEMOCRATS REALLY CHANGED?
The 110th Congress went along with Bush on just about everything. Their excuse was that they didn't have enough votes in the Senate to override a veto.  Even though the Democrats had a majority in the House, and a de facto majority in the Senate, with two Independents voting with their 48, they gave Bush war funding, bank bailout money, tax cuts for the rich, ecological degradation for the corporations- you name it.  Everything was for Bush, his wealthy friends and corporate clients.
 
The Democrats in the Senate had plenty of votes for a filibuster.  They only attempted it once, to block approval of some judicial appointments.  Bill Frist, the Republican Senate majority leader threatened to use something called "the nuclear option", whereby the majority can end a filibuster with a simple vote.  The Democrats backed down. Now the Democrats have a Democratic president and a clear majority in the Senate- 59 including independents Lieberman and Saunders.
 
So why is MoveOn raising money for an ad to pressure Senate Republicans? Why am I getting urgent messages from True Majority?  Why did SaveOurEnvironment just send me a warning that key clean energy and water initiatives are at risk of being cut from the bill.  Is it to make the threat of a Republican filibuster seem likely, to give the Democrats an excuse to "negotiate" away the people's money?  Is this how they will maintain the appearance of being the party of We the People, while continuing to benefit their wealthy friends and their corporate clients? Is this why Obama bargained away a Democratic Senate nominee from New Hampshire? Now that the Democrats have a majority, they could easily use the "nuclear option".  So they do not have to compromise away whatever hope the stimulus package offers regular people to help weather the hard times ahead. Many of us have been saying that the Democrats and Republicans are in fact a single party, hired via campaign money by the wealthy, with the job of plundering the middle class and poor to enrich the wealthy.
 
Even more sinister, does Obama already know that his package won't pass without more concessions to Wall Street, or is he merely there as a placebo, to make the people think change is on the way, while the Senate Republicans continue to get their way? We all want to hope.  We all want to believe in the change Obama promised.  We all want to take heart from his early pronouncements and from this first significant piece of economic legislation.
 
But where will the money come from to pay for all this stimulus?  The tax base is shrinking, as the people are impoverished.  The corporations and banks continue to get bailout money with no strings attached, although Obama at least has expressed outrage over executive salary increases and bonuses on taxpayer money. 
 
There are several obvious places to get the money.  1) Defund the Pentagon.  Make peace, stop the wars, stop the war machine that has gobbled up our economy; 2) Restore progressive taxation.  One government study showed that the tax breaks for the rich are the single biggest reason for the huge federal budget deficit; 3) Prosecute the war criminals and confiscate their ill-gotten gains.  How many billions, or trillions, have Halliburton and Carlyle, the Cheney and Bush family enterprises, made from the Iraq war?
 
Has any legislation in this direction, sensible legislation to start rebalancing the federal budget and restoring the value of the American dollar, been proposed by the Democrats?  Not that I'm aware of.  One of Obama's campaign pledges was to INCREASE the Pentagon budget. 
 
Is business as usual still going on in the halls of our elected officials?  If so, we better notice it pretty quickly, and decide what to do about it. By Carol Wolman, Green Party Candidate for Congress in California's 1st District in 2008. Dr. Wolman is an evironmental activist and a practicing psychiatrist in Mendocino and in Oakland, California.