Joining in the puerile media swoon for the new White House couple with a fawning puff piece (cover story, March 18), Peter Slevin ’78 focuses on the populist deceptions of the Obamas and ignores the preponderance of predatory Wall Street interests in the new administration, which is the strongest in many decades. Obama is disbursing about $10 trillion of public money (Fed and Treasury) to bail out the derivatives bubble, while he can find only about $300 billion for human needs and infrastructure; he thus favors the bankers over the people by more than 30:1.

As for Michelle Obama ’85, her job at the University of Chicago hospitals was that of a cost-conscious gatekeeper to discourage indigent patients, many of them black, from seeking treatment. Mrs. Obama is indeed a protégée of Valerie Jarrett of the corrupt Daley machine. For an opposition view of the Obamas from a New Deal standpoint, please see my books Obama — The Postmodern Coup and Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography.

Webster Griffin Tarpley ’66
Washington, D.C.