The economic crisis deepens with the failure of WaMu and all the tap dancing by our elected officials is not doing much to quell the fears of the people.  Recently, in my writings I have been critical of the bailout, but not so much on Obama.  For that I have been accused of being in the tank for Obama.

First of all that accusation is CRAP!  I am in the tank for none of the above.  But I have been reading and making notes and I will pass on what I have found about Obama and the bailout.

Backing away from one more of his meager campaign promises, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has said he would reconsider his proposal to rescind the Bush administration’s tax cuts for the rich when he takes office if the US economy is in recession.

That Obama is backing away from even the minimal changes to the tax giveaways to the rich calls into question his entire platform and is a powerful indication that his semi-populist appeals to anger over the economic conditions confronting the vast majority of the population are nothing but empty campaign rhetoric.

Under conditions in which millions of American workers are confronting the loss of their jobs as well as their homes, the Democratic candidate failed to explain why an economic crisis would make untenable any increase in the tax rates for the super-rich.

At a hearing Tuesday, Democratic members of the Senate Banking Committee assured Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke that they would move quickly to pass legislation authorizing the Bush administration to launch a trillion-dollar-plus bailout of Wall Street.

The hearing was billed by the media as a confrontation between angry and skeptical senators and the top financial regulators in the Bush administration. But it was held in the midst of intense closed-door negotiations between the administration and congressional leaders and repeated assurances from the Democratic and Republican congressional leadership that progress is being made toward rapid passage of the bailout legislation.

Dodd, other Democrats and some Republicans are appealing to Paulson and the Bush administration for marginal amendments to their initial proposal, which they hope can be used to diffuse popular anger and make the bailout appear more “fair.” These include some form of oversight of the treasury secretary, “conflict of interest” provisions regarding the Wall Street firms that will manage the program, language to limit—or give the appearance of limiting—executive pay of companies that offload their financial junk to the government, a requirement that companies hand over stock or stock warrants as collateral, and some form of minimal relief for distressed homeowners.

Obama has basically signed on to this plan with the proper amendments.

In a further demonstration of his subservience to Wall Street, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said that the $700 billion bailout of US financial institutions now moving through Congress would force a delay in additional spending by an incoming Democratic administration.

The new spending Obama has proposed on programs like education, infrastructure and health care is so minimal, compared to the vast social need, that it doesn’t deserve the label “reform.” It is barely a sop. But even this is likely to be withheld initially, and then canceled outright once the cost of the Wall Street bailout mushrooms, as it inevitably will.