This country has become a blatant corporatocracy and two of the worse proponents and promoters of this shameful control of government of, by, and for the wealthy few and corporations: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and their administrations.

They apparently wanted to be in the ranks of the wealthy few, because they have become corporatist protectors to the detriment of regular Americans, especially the vast numbers of jobless and struggling workers.

It certainly explains the lack of fervor or desire to create 21st New Deal jobs in this terrible unemployment crisis. 

It also explains the deliberately historical myopia of the president who, in a bid to placate big corporations and Wall Street, declared that governments can't create jobs.   Dare I say it?  What a putz.

Duh. What about the WPA and other job programs during the New Deal?

Obama sounds more like Hoover than a supposed Democrat.   And it appears the US has reverted to the Hoover, Coolidge, Taft, and McKinley eras....hell for workers and massive unemployment but great for the wealthy few.

As Bob Herbert wrote at the NYTimes: "The treatment of workers by American corporations has been worse — far more treacherous — than most of the population realizes. There was no need for so many men and women to be forced out of their jobs in the downturn known as the great recession.

"Many of those workers were cashiered for no reason other than outright greed by corporate managers. And that cruel, irresponsible, shortsighted policy has resulted in widespread human suffering and is doing great harm to the economy.

“ 'I’ve never seen anything like this,' said Andrew Sum, an economics professor and director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. 'Not only did they throw all these people off the payrolls, they also cut back on the hours of the people who stayed on the job.' "

"As Professor Sum studied the data coming in from the recession, he realized that the carnage that occurred in the workplace was out of proportion to the economic hit that corporations were taking. While no one questions the severity of the downturn — the worst of the entire post-World War II period — the economic data show that workers to a great extent were shamefully exploited.

“ 'They threw out far more workers and hours than they lost output,' said Professor Sum. 'Here’s what happened: At the end of the fourth quarter in 2008, you see corporate profits begin to really take off, and they grow by the time you get to the first quarter of 2010 by $572 billion. And over that same time period, wage and salary payments go down by $122 billion.' "

"That kind of disconnect, said Mr. Sum, had never been seen before in all the decades since World War II.

"In short, the corporations are making out like bandits. Now they’re sitting on mountains of cash and they still are not interested in hiring to any significant degree, or strengthening workers’ paychecks."

And Clintonites are moaning about mistreated multinational corporations.

Roger Bybee at Working...In These Times explains:

"The notion that the U.S. government has been 'tak[ing] its multinationals for granted' and 'driving them overseas' is certainly a novel proposition, coming after three decades in which federal policy has been more closely aligned than ever with the demands of these huge global corporations.

"It is particularly revealing that this urgent concern is being expressed by Laura D'Andrea Tyson, a top economic advisor to President Bill Clinton and an influential voice in Democratic policy circles. Clinton's notable achievements included the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (job toll: over one million US jobs transplanted to Mexico and counting) normalization of trade relations with China, and China's admission to the World Trade Organization (2.2 million jobs lost and rising).

"Yet Tyson and her colleagues are advancing this argument for more solicitous treatment of multinational corporations at a particularly bizarre moment: Corporate profits are skyrocketing, employment remains sharply reduced with devastating human costs, and wages represent a record-low share of national income. 

"A key part of this success for multinational corporations, about whom Tyson and her fellow scholars are so deeply worried, is an emerging model of corporate globalization that is built on near-slave labor abroad and slashing wages in the U.S.

"In this context of rising profits, multinational corporations—envisioned by Tyson as somehow suffering and in dire need of federal assistance—see no need to invest in new equipment or hire new workers in the U.S., since other U.S. workers lack the spending power to move the products off the shelves.

"While we watch Republican members of congress proclaim the vast job creation that would be unleashed by more corporate tax cuts and extending Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, they are encased in their own private cocoon removed from the operating strategy of the corporate executives. As Harold Meyerson, further explains:

" 'Another part of that model is cash retention. A Federal Reserve report last month estimated that American corporations are sitting on a record $1.8 trillion in cash reserves. As a share of corporate assets, that's the highest level since 1964.

'Why invest in new plants, offices and workers, particularly here at home?' "

"Thus, it seems that the very transnational firms that worry elite Democratic advisors like Tyson, et. al. so much are "thriving" very nicely and choose to move abroad mainly to raise already-high profits. Meanwhile, both U.S. workers and consumers are no longer even "taken for granted," but are increasingly seen as irrelevant to the new economic model."

And Clinton and Obama are supposed to be leaders of the Democratic Party.

With DINOs like these.....