While reading through Saturday’s Links at the Naked Capitalism website, I came across a posting by Jane Hamsher entitled, “Hillary Clinton Hosts ‘Iraq Opportunities’ Party For War Profiteers”. I was reminded that a war, initiated under the pretext of finding Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction”, was really all about creating “Iraq Opportunities”. Using the “good cop / bad cop” routine, the “bad cops” of our One-Party System (the “Republican” branch of the Republi-cratic Corporatist Party) promoted a war, which the “good cop” Democrat branch of the Republi-cratic Corporatist Party claimed it was “forced” to support. Just because Saddam wasn’t really stockpiling any weapons of mass destruction, doesn’t mean we can’t find any “Iraq Opportunities”.
Sure, there’s been a “changing of the guard” since the Iraq war began, but a look at the guest list for Hillary’s “Iraq Opportunities Party” will reveal the identities of some corporations, which expect to benefit from the expenditure of human lives and trillions of taxpayer dollars on the Iraq war effort. Of course, Halliburton and KBR were invited to send some partygoers to the fete. But don’t forget – the Obama Administration has been in charge for over two years . . . so Alex von Sponek of Goldman Sachs was on the guest list. As you can imagine, a Tupperware Party just wouldn’t be a Tupperware Party without a representative from Tupperware in attendance. Accordingly, Rick Goins, the company’s CEO, received an invitation.
News of this event confirmed my worst suspicions about the Iraq war. I wasn’t simply reacting to what Jane Hamsher had to say about Hillary’s Tupperware Party:
Ben White of Politicodescribed the event as an expansion of Wall Street’s tentacles:
FIRST LOOK: WALL STREET IN IRAQ? – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Deputy Secretary Tom Nides (formerly chief administrative officer at Morgan Stanley) will host a group of corporate executives at State this morning as part of the Iraq Business Roundtable. Corporate executives from approximately 30 major U.S. companies – including financial firms Citigroup, JPMorganChase and Goldman Sachs – will join U.S. and Iraqi officials to discuss economic opportunities in the new Iraq.
While most of us have been conditioned to think of the Iraq War as a product of the neoconservative agenda, several commentators have discussed the role of neoliberalism as a motivator for the invasion of Iraq. In a great essay entitled, “On Neoliberalism”, Sherry Ortner of the Anthropology Of This Century website, discussed the role of what Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, called “disaster capitalism” in bringing us to that moment of “shock and awe”:
If social or natural disasters do not offer themselves up, Klein shows convincingly that they will be manufactured, the war in Iraq being the latest case in point. Let us follow the Iraq war thread into David Harvey’s 2007 book, A Short History of Neo-Liberalism, where it is his opening example. Like Klein, Harvey sees “the management and manipulation of crises” (p. 162), whether floods, wars, or financial melt-downs, as part and parcel of establishing the neoliberal agenda. And like Klein, he provides abundant evidence to show that the war in Iraq was a crisis manufactured to “impose by main force on Iraq… a state apparatus whose fundamental mission was to facilitate conditions for profitable capital accumulation”(p. 7).
Harvey offers a clear definition of neoliberalism as a system of “accumulation by dispossession,” which has four main pillars: 1) the “privatization and commodification” of public goods; 2) “financialization,” in which any kind of good (or bad) can be turned into an instrument of economic speculation; 3) the “management and manipulation of crises” (as above); and 4) “state redistribution,” in which the state becomes an agent of the upward redistribution of wealth (159-164 passim).
Harvey places particular emphasis on the last point, the upward redistribution of wealth. He takes issue with other writers who argue that the enormous growth of social inequality since the beginnings of neoliberalization in the 1970s is an unfortunate by-product of what is otherwise a sound economic theory. Instead Harvey sees the vast enrichment of an upper class of capital owners and managers at the expense of everyone else as an intrinsic part of the neoliberal agenda: “Redistributive effects and increasing social inequality have in fact been such a persistent feature of neoliberalization as to be regarded as structural to the whole project.” (p. 16).
The only real surprise to me was the revelation that the elite “upper class of capital owners and managers” likes to attend Tupperware parties.
Well, it’s that time once again! The 2008 competition brought us a robust field of candidates, probably because it was an election year. This year, I’ve decided to ignore the one-event wonders and stick with nominees demonstrating a consistent pattern of jackass behavior. The isolated exhibitions of foolishness illustrated by Richard Heene’s “balloon boy” hoax and Janet Napolitano’s “the system worked” gaffe, just don’t rise to the level of an award-winning honor. I’m also avoiding individuals categorized as “the usual suspects” — the media darlings who are already getting beaten-up in the 2009 retrospective shows. That list includes such notables as Tiger Woods, Carrie Prejean and “The Undiebomber” (Umar Mutallab).
This year I have narrowed the competition down to two people.
In just a few short weeks, our first nominee will be celebrating the anniversary of his inauguration as President of the United States. During his early days in office, he enjoyed an approval rating as high as 69 percent, according to Gallup. By early December, Gallup reported that his approval rating had taken a 22-point drop to 47 percent. At that time, Rasmussen Reports revealed that not only had the President’s approval rating dropped to 48 percent — his disapproval rating actually reached 52 percent! On December 9, Quinnipiac University published the results of a poll conducted during December 1 – 6. The results gave the President a job approval rating of only 46 percent, and those disapproving Obama’s performance amounted to 44 percent. The Ipsos/McClatchy Poll taken during that period, disclosed that the President received his highest “unsatisfactory” rating on the issue of “jobs and the economy” with 45 percent giving the President an unsatisfactory grade (D or F) while only 36 percent gave him a satisfactory grade (A or B) and 19 percent gave him a C.
Many commentators have pondered over the reasons for President Obama’s decreasing approval ratings. I have previously discussed the subject here, here and here. In doing so, I found the criticism of Obama’s performance as expressed by Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns, to be particularly insightful. In his December 27 posting, Mr. Harrison posed a question that has obviously been on the minds of many disappointed Obama supporters:
The question is this:
Did President Obama sell out (i.e. he was a good guy but has been corrupted in short order) or;
Did Obama find out he couldn’t change the status quo so easily (i.e. he was a good guy who was naive about the President’s real power)or;
Did the President simply bamboozle us (i.e. he was a bad guy who tricked the electorate with his silver tongue)?
Mr. Harrison contended that the foregoing inquiry is actually irrelevant because it involves ascribing an intent behind the President’s behavior, when we should be looking at either motive or outcome. Mr. Harrison eventually focused on a recent op-ed piece by Ross Douthat of The New York Times entitled: “The Obama Way”. Obama’s track record of broken campaign promises, including “no more trickle-down economics” and those documented on The Obameter, is something that obviously weighs on the minds of dispirited Obama supporters. Ross Douthat explained how the President’s leadership style is itself a broken campaign promise:
He’s a doctrinaire liberal who’s always willing to cut a deal and grab for half the loaf. He has the policy preferences of a progressive blogger, but the governing style of a seasoned Beltway wheeler-dealer.
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It’s also puzzling because Obama promised exactly the opposite approach while running for the presidency. He campaigned as a postpartisan healer who would change the cynical ways of Washington — as a foe of both back-room deals and ideology-as-usual. But he’s governed as a conventional liberal who believes in the existing system, knows how to work it and accepts the limitations it imposes on him.
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The upside of this approach is obvious: It gets things done.
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The downside, though, is that sometimes what gets done isn’t worth doing. The assumption that a compromised victory is better than no victory at all can produce phony achievements — like last week’s “global agreement” on climate change — and bloated, ugly legislation. And using cynical means to progressive ends (think of the pork-laden stimulus bill or the frantic vote-buying that preceded this week’s Senate health care votes) tends to confirm independent voters’ worst fears about liberal government: that it’s a racket rigged to benefit privileged insiders and a corrupt marketplace floated by our tax dollars.
Ross Douthat’s conclusion implied that it’s still too early determine whether Obama’s political approach will ultimately result in success or failure. By this time next year, the mid-term elections will be over. If the careers of many Democratic politicians are over at that point, we will then have to assess whether President Obama’s leadership style helped to bring them down. As a result, we will have to defer to next year’s competition before deciding whether our new President rates the title “Jackass of the Year”.
Our second nominee is the so-called “Supreme Leader” of Iran, Ali Khamenei. Khamenei decided to rig the June elections to ensure that his tool, the equally crazy Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, would be re-elected. The resulting public outrage was escalated by Khamenei into a bloodbath. Since that time, Khamenei’s ham-handed tactics in attempting to squelch opposition have only made things worse. A recent New York Times editorial entitled “Iran’s War on Its People” put it this way:
Iran’s leaders are so desperate to repel a rising tide of popular unrest that even Ashura — which marks the death of Shiite Islam’s holiest martyr — is no longer sacred.
The anniversary, which fell on Sunday, is supposed to be a time of peaceful commemoration. Even during war, Iranian governments have honored the prohibitions against violence during a two-month period surrounding Ashura. Tehran’s current rulers have proved again that their only belief is in their own survival.
On Sunday, the police opened fire on a crowd of protesters, reportedly killing at least 10 people, and arrested hundreds more. Government forces are also believed to be behind the assassination of Ali Moussavi, nephew of the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi, the leading candidate in June’s fraudulent presidential election.
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The government still appears to have firm control of the main levers of power, including the brutish Revolutionary Guard and the Basij militia. But Ayatollah Khamenei — who helped lead the 1979 revolution against the shah — should not ignore the echoes of history when protesters defy the death blows of security forces and chant “Death to the dictator” on the streets of Tehran.
Al Jazeera’s Teymoor Nabili reported that Baqer Moin, London-based analyst and Ayatollah Khomeini biographer, explained that Iran’s opposition party, the Greens, would still settle for modest reform, if the regime would compromise. Nevertheless, Mr. Nabili’s report quoted other sources who expressed concern that the upcoming anniversary of the revolution could be “the next potential spark”. Will the Supreme Leader negotiate? Based on his record over the past six months, there is no reason to believe that he will. His strategy of cracking down on the Greens with more deadly repression is exactly the approach that could lead to the regime’s demise. Mr. Nabili added this insight to an already gloomy picture:
A contact in Iran tells me that, given the arrests over the past two days, the trend points to the possibility that the regime is slowly tightening the screws, and that before then we might see martial law and the arrest of Mousavi and/or Karroubi/Khatami/Rafsanjani’s daughter (Rafsanjani himself is still beyond the pale, it would seem.)
Brilliant plan, huh? Another Al Jazeera report revealed that the Iranian government’s desperate actions are a sign of weakness that could ultimately lead to the end of Khamenei’s days as “Supreme Leader”:
Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former member of the Iranian parliament, told Al Jazeera that the government faced a fundamental crisis.
“They can’t control the events so they made the Ashoura incidents as a scenario that could give [them] enough confidence to crack down on the [Green] Movement,” she said from Massachusetts in the United States.
“They think that if they could use more violence, they can stop the movement … if this strategy continues I think we could see the collapse of the government.”
After George W. Bush overthrew the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, many commentators expressed concern that this development could bring about an era of Iranian hegemony in the Middle East. Nevertheless, Iran’s relentless efforts to create a nuclear arsenal and the craziness of its Supreme Leader, who would likely detonate an atomic bomb in Israel if he had such a weapon, have apparently made the Iranian people more than a little uncomfortable with their government. The events since June could only serve to underscore fears that the Khamenei regime would attempt a nuclear strike on Israel, resulting in a retaliatory move that would wipe Tehran off the map. The Iranian people are obviously not going to sit on their hands and wait for that to happen. Al Jazeera’s Teymoor Nabili provided us with some insight on the current mood of the Iranian protesters:
To outside observers, though, the protestors have defied expectations. Their continued willingness to make themselves targets has been a surprise; now it seems as if they are willing to take it even further, protesting not only against the election result but against the very essence of the regime.
Although it may be too early to celebrate the demise of the Khamenei regime, the time is certainly right to honor Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, with TheCenterLane.com‘s Jackass of the Year Award. Congratulations, Jackass!
We the people, who voted for Barack Obama, are about to get ripped off by our favorite Hope dealer. Throughout the recent controversy arising from the huge bonuses paid to AIG executives, President Obama has done quite a bit of hand wringing over the fact that the government is rewarding “the very same people who got us into this mess”. Treasury Secretary, “Turbo” Tim Geithner is now rolling out the administration’s so-called Financial Stability Plan, wherein once again, “the very same people who got us into this mess” will be rewarded with our tax dollars. Over a trillion dollars of taxpayer money will be used to either buy back or insure an arbitrarily-assigned value for the infamous mortgage-backed securities. The purpose of this exercise will be to prevent the bankers themselves from losing money. The country’s top economists, including two Nobel Prize winners (Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz) have advocated a different solution: placing those banks that are about to fail into “temporary receivership”. However, this process would result in a significant reduction of the stock prices for those banks, in addition to replacement of the management of those institutions. The big-shot bankers won’t put up with this.
In Sunday’s New York Times, Frank Rich referenced a reader’s observation that this is President Obama’s “Katrina Moment”. How the new President responds to this crisis will likely shape “the trajectory of his term”. I prefer to call it Obama’s “Yellow Cake Moment”, since he and his administration are bent on selling a lie (the likelihood that the Financial Stability Plan can succeed) to the public in order to further assist the bad bankers. It is similar to when George W. Bush convinced many in Congress and the public, that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase yellow cake uranium to make atomic bombs (with Bush’s ultimate goal being widespread support for the invasion of Iraq).
It should be no coincidence that the Financial Stability Plan is rewarding the bad bankers, since it was prepared by some of “the very same people who got us into this mess”. I am specifically referring to Larry Summers and Turbo Tim himself. Frank Rich covered this point quite well in Sunday’s article. As a result, Obama’s attempt to chastise “the very same people who got us into this mess” is quite specious, in light of the fact that some of those people have shaped his latest bank bailout.
Back during the campaign, Candidate Obama caught quite a bit of flack for talking about “putting lipstick on a pig”. Nevertheless, his continued promotion of the various incarnations of what is essentially the same ill-conceived plan floated by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, demonstrates that Obama himself is now putting lipstick on a pig. As Paul Krugman pointed out:
Why was I so quick to condemn the Geithner plan? Because it’s not new; it’s just another version of an idea that keeps coming up and keeps being refuted. It’s basically a thinly disguised version of the same plan Henry Paulson announced way back in September.
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But Treasury is still clinging to the idea that this is just a panic attack, and that all it needs to do is calm the markets by buying up a bunch of troubled assets. Actually, that’s not quite it: the Obama administration has apparently made the judgment that there would be a public outcry if it announced a straightforward plan along these lines, so it has produced what Yves Smith calls “a lot of bells and whistles to finesse the fact that the government will wind up paying well above market for [I don’t think I can finish this on a Times blog]”
Nevertheless, “public outcry” is exactly what is warranted in response to this soon-to-be fiasco. Most economists favor the “temporary receivership” approach, rather than the continued bailouts of insolvent banks. The Administration’s Financial Stability Plan is just another way to reward “the very same people who got us into this mess”. This plan is expected to cost at least one trillion dollars. As a result, the government is about to bilk the taxpayers out of an amount in excess of 20 Bernie Madoff Ponzi schemes.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has recently vilified Senator Evan Bayh’s caucus of moderate Democrats, whom she calls “Conservadems” because they have been offering some resistance to a few of Obama’s proposals. These Senators are actually smart people who can detect the distinctive odor of snake oil. They know better than to tie their political futures to a bank bailout plan that can destroy their own credibility with the voting public. They know that public support of Obama’s broader agenda is hinged on how he deals with the banking problem. As Ben Smith and Manu Raju reported for Politico:
But many lawmakers made clear Tuesday their view that voters’ willingness to trust Obama on some subjects will be determined by their view of how well he handles the economic crisis.
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“Unless we can instill some trust back with the American people that these people who brought on this problem, who risked our 401K funds and hard-working people’s money, aren’t going to be able to profit from their folly, I think we are at risk of losing their trust,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).
Meanwhile, there’s an ill wind a-blowin’ and it’s coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The efforts by many pundits to blame the flawed financial policy on Geithner are misplaced. If President Obama weren’t on board with this plan, it would have never made it outside of the Oval Office. The problem is with Obama himself, rather than Geithner. Unfortunately, the decision our President has made will likely turn a two-year recession into a ten-year recession. To him, the corresponding benefit of helping out the bankers must apparently be worth it.
Most of the criticism directed against Barack Obama this past week concerned what has been described as his “Celebrity” status. The McCain camp actually believes that this theme hurts Obama. Greg Sargent reported in TalkingPointsMemo.com that McCain is spending over $140,000 per day to run the ad featuring Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. This, according to Sargent, amounts to roughly one third of McCain’s TV ad spending. Meanwhile, many of us in the audience are wondering whether this ad campaign may actually be helping Obama. Given America’s fascination with celebrities, might some people be motivated to vote for Obama simply to put a celebrity in the White House?
For his part, Obama disappointed many of us last week with his “flip” on the issue of offshore oil drilling. There is unanimous consensus among experts on the point that planning new offshore oil rigs will do nothing to effect the availability of gasoline for approximately ten years. By then, we will likely have the infrastructure and technology available for cost-effective electric cars. Nevertheless, Obama appeared to be reacting to mounting pressure from the Republicans to allow for more offshore drilling. Worse yet, new poll results reveal that a majority of Americans actually believe that enacting legislation to permit more offshore drilling would reduce the price of gasoline now. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released on July 30 revealed that 69% of the respondents favored offshore drilling, with 51% actually believing that legislation approving increased offshore drilling would lower oil prices within the next year. The people participating in these polls were probably the same poll participants who expressed belief (and who probably still do believe) that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the September 11 attacks. Rather than attempting to educate those “low information voters” on the futility of planning more oil platforms to solve today’s problems, Obama has chosen to drink the Kool Aid favored by McCain and announce that he supports expanded offshore drilling. One would have expected this issue to die when McCain had to cancel a speech he was going to give on an oil rig, because of Hurricane Dolly on July 24. If he wanted to, Obama could have chosen to ridicule McCain for this failed stunt and criticize McCain’s claim that Hurricanes Rita and Katrina did not damage any oil rigs located in the Gulf of Mexico. As reported by Michael Shear of The Washington Post on July 23, those hurricanes actually destroyed 113 oil rigs, contrary to McCain’s claim.
The article by Adam Smith and Wes Allison of The St. Petersburg Times on August 1, contrasted Obama’s earlier campaign promise with his current position. Quoting a speech given by the candidate early this summer, they included this passage:
“And when I am president,” Obama said in June in Chicago, “I will keep the moratorium in place and prevent oil companies from drilling off Florida’s coasts. That’s how we can protect our coasts and still make the investments that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and bring down gas prices for good.”
Obama’s new position on this subject goes back to that same type of compromise we saw him demonstrate by voting in favor of the FISA “wiretap” bill. The voting public is not likely to see this type of weak compromise as the sort of “change” promised by the sign on the podium.
Looking back to Jonathan Darman’s July 11 article for Newsweek, he discussed the results of their poll taken on July 9 – 10. Senator Obama voted in favor of the controversial FISA bill on July 9 (after having discussed his intention to do so a week earlier). This poll revealed that the Democrat lost his 12-point lead among independent voters and fell behind McCain among independents by 7 points. The people “sitting on the fence”, the independents, are the voters tracking Obama’s campaign moves with the most scrutiny. They are also the voters he needs most. This latest “flip” in favor of offshore oil drilling could have the same effect on the independent voters as his vote in favor of FISA. Given Obama’s concern about the poll results concerning the popularity of offshore drilling, the next poll results to show the impact of his position change on this subject, particularly from the perspective of independent voters, might give him a good scare.
TheCenterLane.com offers opinion, news and commentary on politics, the economy, finance and other random events that either find their way into the news or are ignored by the news reporting business. As the name suggests, our focus will be on what seems to be happening in The Center Lane of American politics and what the view from the Center reveals about the events in the left and right lanes. Your Host, John T. Burke, Jr., earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Boston College with a double major in Speech Communications and Philosophy. He earned his law degree (Juris Doctor) from the Illinois Institute of Technology / Chicago-Kent College of Law.