Is talking about income inequality enough at this point?

President Obama gave a speech yesterday that discussed income inequality, looking back 100 years ago to the time of the robber barons and Teddy Roosevelt. It's all interesting and quite a few people in America get it. The problem is, is this enough? The ugly collapse of the middle class didn't start yesterday, it started decades ago. The rise of the ultra rich didn't start yesterday, it's been a trend for decades. We know all of this and we're disgusted by it. That's why the Occupy movement has been so popular.

Now that Obama is looking very soft in key states such as Pennsylvania, now we're seeing interest in this problem? Unfortunately it's been Obama who continued the Bush/Paulson (and Geithner) banking policies, not to mention irresponsible and expensive wars. For the Obama supporters, go ahead and point to the so-called banking reform (Dodd-Frank) which was not what anyone serious would ever consider substantial reform. It was more about having a PR spin about doing something instead of actually doing something about Wall Street.

There's a track record here that includes hiring one of the key architects of the Wall Street bailout (Geithner), giving up on prosecuting Wall Street (ignore the new chatter and look at the history) as well as continued big money campaign donation events on Wall Street. Even during the worst environmental disaster in US history, we had a president that was providing cover for BP. We don't need just another corporatist in Washington. Team Obama ran hard on "hope" in 2008 and then did a great job of crushing that idea since coming to office. Sorry if I'm not buying into the populist talk at this point.

Show me some action but until that time, don't expect any support based on promises and shiny new speeches. That bridge was burned by the White House long ago. If you're going to run on "hope" and "change", you need to deliver and not be just another run-of-the-mill politician as we've witnessed since 2008. If you're not going to run on those ideas, you better have some results to show and so far, results are seriously lacking.