The pervasive influence of Goldman Sachs and its units (like Goldman-Robert Rubin funded Hamilton Project embedded in the Brookings Institution) in the Obama government are shown here. I have updated an older such list to include more Goldies, including Elena Kagan. This is the largest and most comprehensive list of such ties yet published.

This diary shows the pervasive influence of Goldman Sachs and Goldman created institutions (like the Hamilton Project embedded in the Brookings Institution) in the Obama administration.

Warning: At the end of this diary, I’m going to be asking for your support. Your financial support. Please consider making a donation today.

The Obama administration is infested with people with ties to Goldman Sachs and Goldman was Obama’s biggest campaign contributor in 2008 and as a senator. So how real is the Obama/Democratic party’s supposed new toughness on big banks?

Despite sounding like William Jennings Bryan briefly in Ohio, Williams Jenning Obama backs Ben Bernanke.

Robert Rubin and Goldman Sachs sponsored a free trade “think tank” called the Hamilton Project. Obama as a Senator from Illinois gave a speech at its opening that shows the real Obama: free trader, tied to Goldman Sachs, and an opponent of entitlements.

Robert Rubin and Goldman Sachs sponsored a free trade “think tank” called the Hamilton Project. Obama as a Senator from Illinois gave a speech at its opening that shows the real Obama: free trader, tied to Goldman Sachs, and an opponent of entitlements.

This morning the NYT reports President Obama’s ready to throw the public option under the insurance companies limousines.

According to The Associated Press, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is suggesting the White House is ready to accept nonprofit insurance cooperatives instead of a government-run public option in a health overhaul plan.

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Ms. Sebelius says Mr. Obama still believes there should be choice and competition” in the health insurance market — but that a public option is “not the essential element.”

WaPo op eds are getting increasingly irritating with the passage of time. Yesterday, this formerly great American newspaper in free fall ran an article by Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie called “What’s Next Mr. President – Cardigans?” Welch and Gillespie think that Obama’s less than stellar results thus far suggest that he may be reviewing the history of past Democratic administrations to find a “road map” out of his difficulties, and also that “he seems to be skipping the chapter on Bill Clinton and his generally free-market economic policies and instead flipping back to the themes and comportment of Jimmy Carter.” In this way, they begin a transparent framing exercise suggesting that Obama is at a turning point, and that he must stop “running government as a perpetual crisis machine,” and “. . . stop doing harm. Throwing money all over the economy (and especially to sectors that match up with Democratic interests) . . . “ And also that: “. . . there’s no question that Obama’s massively ambitious domestic agenda is at a fork in the road: One route leads to Plains, Ga., and early retirement, the other to Hope, Ark., a second term and the revitalization of the American economy.”

We activists have years to defeat corporatism: single payer is one front in that very long war. Many of the indigent patients I’ve seen these last years – like many of the other 40 million uninsured Americans – will perish during that long war. With a robust public option this year, most of these patients will survive.