Barack Obama's New Advisers Please 'The Sun,' Enrage Those Who Read 'The Sun' To Get Mad
Barack Obama made two moves recently that leave him open to charges of selling out. One, his selection of James Johnson to help select a running mate. Johnson is a former CEO of Fannie Mae, where he helped usher in the subprime lending crisis. Also he's a Bilderberg attendee! The other new hire, though, will surely upset many more liberal stalwarts: Obama named Jason Furman as his economic policy director. Furman is a former Clintonite economist who loooooooves giant retailer Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart, he says, is a boon to poor Americans, because their prices are so low. They keep their prices low, critics charge, by fucking over their non-union workforce and aiding the export of manufacturing jobs overseas, but Furman argued in a 2005 paper that consumers saved enough money shopping at the store to offset the impact on wages. Obama's never quite been a champion of organized labor, but this selection does throw him open to accusations of pretty blatant hypocrisy (hooray electoral politics!):
During the primary campaign, Mr. Obama was sharply critical of the company. He has said he will not shop there and that Wal-Mart should pay "a living wage."
At a January debate, Mr. Obama seemed to play to Wal-Mart's critics when he suggested that Senator Clinton's six-year stint on the company's board paled in comparison to his record as a community organizer in Chicago. "While I was working on those streets watching those folks see their jobs shift overseas, you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart," Mr. Obama said, in one of his sharpest jabs at Mrs. Clinton.
That reporting comes from the Sun, by the way, New York's least-favorite conservative daily newspaper. They are thrilled by this appointment, as an editorial reveals: "Senator Obama's choice of the left's most prominent defender of Wal-Mart, Jason Furman, as his campaign's economic policy director is a sign of hope for the Democrat of Illinois."
Well, we're glad they're happy.