Sad but true.....President Obama, his corporatist White House and the other millionaires that constitute the elected officials on Capitol Hill aren't listening to us anymore, not that they ever did.

They only pretend to listen when they're campaigning and need regular Americans' votes.

Hell, some don't even bother giving lip service to the common good.

Those mulitmillionaire Senate (so called) Dems (no different than their GOP colleagues) apparently needed a psychology professor to tell them to be more populist (or at least to pretend they are).   What a hoot!  They should declare what they actually are: closet members of the GOP.

As Michael Winship writes about progressive populist Jim Hightower:

"...One big difference between real populism and... the tea party thing is that real populists understand that government has become a subsidiary of corporations. So you can't say, 'Let's get rid of government.' You need to be saying, 'Let's take over government.'"

"As Hightower's fond of saying, the water won't clear up until we get the hogs out of the creek. "I see the central issue in politics to be the rise of corporate power," he reiterated. "Overwhelming, overweening corporate power that is running roughshod over the workaday people of the country. They think they're the top dogs, and we're a bunch of fire hydrants, you know?"

"Of President Obama he said, 'It's odd to me that we've got a president who ran from the outside and won, and now is trying to govern from the inside. You can't do progressive government from the inside. You have to rally those outsiders and make them a force... Our heavyweight is the people themselves. They've got the fat cats, but we've got the alley cats...' "

Unfortunately, Jim, Obama never really was a progressive, a populist, or a real Democrat.

So, the corporatist Obama administration and most of the elected Democratic denizens on Capitol Hill who are primarily millionaires don't really give a damn about regular Americans and the catastrophic unemployment in this country.    As Hightower correctly noted, they are subsidiaries of corporations, controlled by their corporate masters.  Therefore, they will ignore the following even though it has been repeated countless times by others.

Dave Johnson at Our Future writes:

"Things are good for the plutocrats. Stock market soaring, bonuses are big... Things are going mighty fine. So fine, in fact, that the urgency of extending unemployment, COBRA and programs to help the people harmed by the financial disaster is moving off the table.

"But out here on Main Street we need jobs, jobs, jobs. And we need jobs, too. You just hear people say this over and over, and it's like we're told in response,  'OK go to bed now, children.'

"We need a real economy, and real jobs for real people. If the plutocrats think they can have an economy without all of those people who are right now losing their benefits, losing their homes, losing their dignity, then we might all be in for a surprise. We need jobs. And that requires government action. If the available money goes instead to deficit reduction, you can't create the jobs. You can't create the green jobs that will drive the economy of the future, you can't keep the teaching jobs, and you won't keep the stimulus jobs.

"Why isn't the Local Jobs For America bill on the front burner of the Congress?

"We need a new WPA program to directly create jobs.

"We need unemployment benefits and COBRA extended -- both the subsidies and COBRA itself.

"What is the matter with these people? Do they really think an economy of, by and for the rich and only the rich can really work? It's been tried, and the results aren't usually pleasant...."

Yes, Dave, the Democratic Party of Clinton and Obama is just like the GOP. 

Ignore the thespian rhetoric and concentrate on their actions which prove they believe that government and the economy are of, by, and for the rich (among whom they count themselves)....and it has been working wonderfully well for them for many decades.  Even when they greedily gamble and cause disaster for this country and most of its regular people, they are bailed out and rewarded by their subsidiary, the government.