Barack Obama Facts - Fact #2

Barack Obama favors privatizing Social Security.

That's fact number two that I'm certain most of the US public had no idea was a position of Barack Obama.

From Paul Street's new book, "Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics", this on page 25:

"In the fall of 2007, Obama concerned many progressives by telling an interviewer from The National Journal that major government action was required to prevent what he called 'the Social Security crisis.' Earlier in the same year, Obama had claimed that 'everything should be on the table' when it came to 'fixing' Social Security, including raising the retirement age. He thereby became linked to the Republican Party's long-standing deceitful propaganda campaign, heavily underwritten and advanced by Wall Street's leading investment houses, to 'reform' - meaning dismantle and privatize - Social Security on the spurious pretext that it is approaching a terrible fiscal calamity. The widely accepted notion that a major catastrophe looms in the foreseeable future is a corporate and Republican concoction disseminated through a sophisticated propaganda effort that 'compares well,' Noam Chomsky noted in 2006 'with...the government-media campaign to convince Americans that Saddam Hussein was an immediate threat to their survival.'"

Recall what I've been saying about Goldman Sachs being a top (actually number two) financier of Barack Obama, to the tune of nearly $900,000.

Now have a look at OpenSecrets.org's summary of just what Goldman Sachs wants:

"Goldman Sachs is one of Wall Street’s most prestigious investment banks. Like others in the securities industry, it advises and invests in nearly every industry affected by federal legislation. The firm closely monitors issues including economic policy, trade and nearly all legislation that governs the financial sector. It has been a major proponent of privatizing Social Security as well as legislation that would essentially deregulate the investment banking/securities industry. In August 2002, following months of corporate scandals, congressional investigators launched a probe into whether stock analysts at Goldman Sachs issued biased investment advice in order to protect corporate clients. The firm tends to give most of its money to Democrats. Goldman Sachs' former chief executive, Jon Corzine, served in the U.S. Senate as a Democrat from New Jersey. He's now the state's governor."

Seems pretty clear to me that Barack Obama knows where his bread is buttered.

How about you?

Again, I ask progressives, does this sound like a progressive? And I ask conservatives if this sounds at all like a socialist?

I don't think so.