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MIKE PAPANTONIO: Welcome back to Ring of Fire. I'm Mike. When he first came into office,
President Obama made it clear that he would end years of corporate influence decision
making that dominated the Bush years, but his actions have shown that he won't be keeping
that promise, and I've got attorney Howard Nations with me now to talk about Obama's
descent into corporatism right here in the America. Howard, the Obama corporate administration
-- I mean, you're reading it everywhere. I mean, it used to be that just a couple of
media outlets, progressive media outlets, would be critical of this president to say,
"You know, really? Enough is enough with this whole corporate thing. You come in as a populist
and you leave like just a corporate one of the guys on Wall Street." What's your take
on it? HOWARD NATIONS: Well, I think it's best exemplified
by the most recent appointment of Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker from the Hyatt
Board, a billionaire out of Chicago. You know, Pritzker owned Superior Bank, where she pioneered
subprime operations that targeted the poor and the working middle class minorities. She
crashed it for a billion dollars, which was bailed out by the taxpayers, destroyed the
lives of numerous families who lost their savings there, and she has a vile antiunion
record. This is the president's choice for secretary of commerce. It's pretty depressing,
actually. MIKE: Well, Tom Wheeler. What is your take
on Tom Wheeler, Howard? Isn't it the same kind of deal? This is a guy who comes -- he's
a mega fundraiser for Obama, he's supposed to be in charge of the FCC, critically important
for the average person out there, and this is a guy making decisions. This guy has a
bad history. HOWARD: Well, Tom Wheeler -- Nicholas Johnson,
who was the previous chairman of the FCC, described his appointment as bizarre, because
the ultimate public interest is how the FCC is defined by Congress, that it's supposed
to be run for the ultimate public interest. They control the Internet, the airwaves, digital
communications, and what does President Obama put in charge? A lobbyist, just like we had
a previous discussion on how the lobbyists go in to run the very agencies where they've
lobbied for years. But Wheeler's also a venture capitalist who does business with those people
who are doing business with the FCC, and it doesn't bode well for us that he was a member
of the president's advisory committee on the intelligence board, and we know what Obama's
policy has been on privacy. So, tying that in to the FCC doesn't work. It's kind of like
Bloomberg appointing Trump to be head of the New York Real Estate Board. It's classic fox
in the henhouse. MIKE: Yeah. But what you have here, you still
have progressives out there, it's almost like suspension of disbelief, isn't it, Howard?
I mean, even after Mary Jo White was appointed as SEC chair, you still have progressives
going, "Oh, well, no, that's okay." Well, no, it wasn't okay. Mary Jo White was somebody
who was in charge of stopping critical investigations of Wall Street. When the administration should've
been investigating for stealing money, Mary Jo White was there to say, "No, we're going
to shut down the investigations totally." At some point, don't progressives have to
say, "You know, we get it now, we were lied to, he's a great stump speech speaker, but
when it comes to delivering reality, the two are very different." I mean, at what point
do we say let's admit this? HOWARD: Well, in defense of the president
on Mary Jo White, he had to appoint her to head the SEC because Bernie Madoff.
MIKE: [Laughs] But we're seeing this trail that at some point, we have to say it's time
to act. You know, here's one problem, Howard. When you have a president in the position
that's making these corporatist appointments, we saw the same thing with Bill Clinton, if
you recall, his first term. We saw huge corporate appointments, and the whole Democratic Party
moved right with him. Isn't that just a continuation of what's happening here? We have the Democratic
Party that we used to say, "These are people that are going to take care of us. They're
people that are going to take care of the have-nots, and they're going to take care
and make sure we have health, education, the public welfare is always going to be good."
But we can't say that anymore because we have a part that has become just as corporatist
as the Republicans, when you really start taking a close look at this.
HOWARD: That's very true, and it's really embarrassing for the Democrats that the corporate
-- take for example the Bank of America, the absolute poster child for corporate welfare,
and they're getting support completely. Matt Taibbi, for whom I have great respect -- I
think he's maybe the best investigative journalist out there right now -- refers to Bank of America
as the de facto ward of state. They are so thoroughly propped up by the Obama administration
with the support of the Democrats, despite all their scandals, the mismanagement, despite
all the corruption, the fact of the matter is that Bank of America should have been liquidated,
its viable units sold off, so that those units at least could be held accountable and responsive
to the local people, but they're falling into this "too big to fail," and the "too big to
fail" is supported completed by the progressives, unfortunately, as well as the leadership of
Obama. MIKE: Well, when we take a look, if you go
section by section, whether it's the energy companies that have corporations telling Americans
what to do because of the appointments by Obama, or whether it's issues with the military,
where you have corporations in charge of what's happening in America, the theme continues.
It's not getting any better, Howard. It's getting worse. I appreciate you joining me
on this story. It's an important story, and hopefully, it's one that we'll start being
realistic about. Thanks for joining me, Howard. HOWARD: My pleasure. Thanks, Mike.