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OBAMA, THE POSTMODERN COUP -- MAKING OF A MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE |
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ILLINOIS SENATOR HELPED BLOCK EMERGENCY LIHEAP MONEY FOR MAINE THIS WINTER Obama to Maine: "Drop Dead" Augusta, Maine, Feb. 8. Barack Obama's chief economics adviser Austan Goolsbee today boasted that the Obama campaign had helped to prevent emergency heating assistance for low-income families from being included in the just-approved economic stimulus package which is now on its way to President Bush's desk for signature. An increase in federal low-income heating assistance (known as LIHEAP), Goolsbee pointed out, had been championed by Obama's opponent, New York Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton. Goolsbee's remarks came in an interview this morning with Carl Quintanilla of CNBC business news television. Goolsbee stressed that the main difference between Obama and Clinton was that Obama was "more respectful of market forces." Goolsbee was adamant that Obama was opposed to expanding the stimulus package to include "money for low-income heating assistance through a bureaucratic program." Goolsbee's statements came just one day after leaders of the Maine legislature had convened in Augusta to face the dire situation of low income families who cannot afford to heat their homes this winter, partly as a result of the sky-high price of heating oil. Some influential members of the Legislature spoke of taking money from Maine's Rainy Day reserves to help people who are running short of heating oil this winter. Supporters of the proposed move said the high price of heating oil is cutting into the size of deliveries to households receiving Low Income Home Energy Assistance (LIHEAP), with many low-income families not being able to afford a full tank. This puts many Maine residents in danger of going without heat, as House Speaker Glen Cummings of Portland noted. Cummings and other Democratic and Republican lawmakers want to take $5 million from the state's reserve funds to make sure that LIHEAP deliveries fill the tank. "With Maine facing a large-scale budget crisis, this is money that we can ill afford to spend. We need help from the federal government to face the consequences of George Bush's obscene love affair with Big Oil," said independent U.S. Senate candidate Laurie Dobson. "Mrs. Clinton wanted to send us some help right away, but Obama's circle of right-wing elitist economics professors stepped in to block that help. By bragging about this criminal swindle on CNBC to the Wall Street crowd, Obama's man Goolsbee is in effect saying to Mainers, 'Drop dead.' Many here will want to use the Maine Democratic caucus on Sunday, Feb. 10 to send Obama and Goolsbee a message and tell them what they think of this chiseling. I understand that Goolsbee like Bush is a Skull and Bones member, and a follower of Milton Friedman's Chicago School, the ones who worked with Pinochet in Chile. If this is what Obama will do in the White House, we don't want any part of it," Dobson added. Goolsbee also used his CNBC interview today to repeat that Obama is opposed to solving "the mortgage crisis by freezing interest rates," a freeze which Wall Street is lobbying against. Such a "teaser freezer" would prevent rapacious mortgage bankers from re-setting upward the interest rates on Adjustable Rate Mortgages which they sold to unsuspecting homeowners. If there is no such freeze, monthly mortgage payments will suddenly rise for millions of current homeowners, forcing many of them out on the street through foreclosure because of their inability to pay the new, higher rate. "Mrs. Clinton has proposed a five-year freeze on mortgage interest rates," commented Senate candidate Dobson, "but that seems to be a voluntary program so far. I am proposing a compulsory federal law to block interest rate hikes and outlaw all foreclosures for at least five years, or for as long as this depression lasts. Once again, Mrs. Clinton goes in the right direction, but Obama's right-wing economists are offering nothing to the hard-pressed homeowners of Maine. Paul Krugman, a real economist, is right: the choice between Clinton and Obama could not be clearer," she concluded. For the proposal to dip into the Maine Rainy Day fund, see: www.wmtw.com/politics/15245493/detail.html?rss=port&psp=news For the Goolsbee interview, see: http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=643470081&play=1 DOBSON: FIRE GOOLSBEE! On February 12, 2008, responding to postings on Undernews, including two allegedly by Goolsbee himself, Laurie Dobson replied with a call to fire Goolsbee: By calling attention to Obama's cynical maneuver in blocking LIHEAP money for Maine and other states, I am trying to call attention to a human tragedy in the making. Goolsbee has responded with a mixture of cruelty and pedantry. In case the professor has not noticed, we are in the middle of a harsh winter up here. Money sent out through LIHEAP is sure to spent immediately -- on urgently needed fuel deliveries to poor families. Goolsbee's sophistries will not be much comfort to a parent whose child freezes to death this winter for lack of fuel. This man is clearly a heartless incompetent who should not be allowed anywhere near the White House. I call upon Senator Obama to fire him without delay. If Obama should fail to do so, voters in many states will learn something important about what lurks behind Obama's soaring rhetoric.
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