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Losing The Propaganda War

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The propaganda war waged by corporatist news media against the Occupy Wall Street movement is rapidly deteriorating.  When the occupation of Zuccotti Park began on September 17, the initial response from mainstream news outlets was to simply ignore it – with no mention of the event whatsoever.  When that didn’t work, the next tactic involved using the “giggle factor” to characterize the protesters as “hippies” or twenty-something “hippie wanna-bes”, attempting to mimic the protests in which their parents participated during the late-1960s.  When that mischaracterization failed to get any traction, the presstitutes’ condemnation of the occupation events – which had expanded from nationwide to worldwide – became more desperate:  the participants were called everything from “socialists” to “anti-Semites”.

Despite the incessant flow of propaganda from those untrustworthy sources, a good deal of commentary – understanding, sympathetic or even supportive of Occupy Wall Street began to appear in some unlikely places.  For example, Roger Lowenstein wrote a piece for Bloomberg BusinessWeek entitled, “Occupy Wall Street: It’s Not a Hippie Thing”:

As critics have noted, the protesters are not in complete agreement with each other, but the overall message is reasonably coherent.  They want more and better jobs, more equal distribution of income, less profit (or no profit) for banks, lower compensation for bankers, and more strictures on banks with regard to negotiating consumer services such as mortgages and debit cards.  They also want to reduce the influence that corporations – financial firms in particular – wield in politics, and they want a more populist set of government priorities: bailouts for student debtors and mortgage holders, not just for banks.

In stark contrast with the disparaging sarcasm spewed by the tools at CNBC and Fox News concerning this subject, The Economist demonstrated why it enjoys such widespread respect:

So the big banks’ apologies for their role in messing up the world economy have been grudging and late, and Joe Taxpayer has yet to hear a heartfelt “thank you” for bailing them out.  Summoned before Congress, Wall Street bosses have made lawyerised statements that make them sound arrogant, greedy and unrepentant.  A grand gesture or two – such as slashing bonuses or giving away a tonne of money – might have gone some way towards restoring public faith in the industry.  But we will never know because it didn’t happen.

On the contrary, Wall Street appears to have set its many brilliant minds the task of infuriating the public still further, by repossessing homes of serving soldiers, introducing fees for using debit cards and so on.  Goldman Sachs showed a typical tin ear by withdrawing its sponsorship of a fund-raiser for a credit union (financial co-operative) on November 3rd because it planned to honour Occupy Wall Street.

The Washington Post conducted a poll with the Pew Research Center which compared and contrasted popular support for Occupy Wall Street with that of the Tea Party movement.  The poll revealed that ten percent of Americans support both movements.  On the other hand, Tea Party support is heavily drawn from Republican voters (71%) while only 24% of Republicans – as opposed to 64% of Democrats – support Occupy Wall Street.  As for self-described “Moderates”, only 24% support the Tea Party compared with Occupy Wall Street’s 45% support from Moderates.  Rest assured that these numbers will not deter unscrupulous critics from describing Occupy Wall Street as a “fringe movement”.

The best smackdown of the shabby reportage on Occupy Wall Street came from Dahlia Lithwick of Slate:

Mark your calendars:  The corporate media died when it announced it was too sophisticated to understand simple declarative sentences.  While the mainstream media expresses puzzlement and fear at these incomprehensible “protesters” with their oddly well-worded “signs,” the rest of us see our own concerns reflected back at us and understand perfectly.  Turning off mindless programming might be the best thing that ever happens to this polity.  Hey, occupiers:  You’re the new news. And even better, by refusing to explain yourselves, you’re actually changing what’s reported as news.  Because it takes a tremendous mental effort to refuse to see that the rich are getting richer in America while the rest of us are struggling.  Maybe the days of explaining the patently obvious to the transparently compromised are finally behind us.

By refusing to take a ragtag, complicated, and leaderless movement seriously, the mainstream media has succeeded only in ensuring its own irrelevance.  The rest of America has little trouble understanding that these are ragtag, complicated, and leaderless times.  This may not make for great television, but any movement that acknowledges that fact deserves enormous credit.

Too many mainstream news outlets appear to be suffering from the same disease as our government and our financial institutions.  Jeremy Grantham’s Third Quarter 2011 newsletter will be coming out in a few days and I’m hoping that he will prescribe a cure.  My wilder dream is that those vested with the authority and responsibility to follow his advice would simply do so.


 

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Too Smart For The Democrats

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This was bound to happen.  Now that the Occupy Wall Street protest has become a big deal, the Democrats are trying to claim it as their own franchise.  Fortunately, the protesters aren’t interested.  My October 6 posting focused on the hypocrisy of the pseudo-populist Democrats, who – as of that time – had failed to express any support for this new movement:

The Occupy Wall Street protest has exposed the politicians – who have always claimed to be populists – for what they really are:  tools of the plutocracy.  Conspicuously absent from the Wall Street occupation have been nearly all Democrats – despite their party’s efforts to portray itself as the champion of Main Street in its battle against the tyranny of the megabanks.  As has always been the case, the Democrats won’t really do anything that could disrupt the flow of bribes campaign contributions they receive from our nation’s financial elites.

The party-crashing Democrats are now attempting to advance their status from interlopers to hosts.  At the Occupy Wall Street website, this question was posted with an invitation for comments:

“Are you cool with the Democrats taking ownership of OWS?”

Not surprisingly, the responses were overwhelmingly negative.  Here are a few examples:

WorkingClassAntiHero (Manchester, NH):

Anyone thinking about this thing in the old terms of left, right, Democrat, Republican, etc…is either not paying attention or isn’t really involved.

IndpendentTX:

There needs to be more visible demonstration that this is not a Democrat movement but a movement by a non-partisan group against the corporate political machine.  More signs protesting Democrats people!

Also make more signs that clearly state that both parties can get lost.  They’re BOTH part of the problem.

1zouzouna:

We no longer accept the idea of political ownership.  It is the corporate media wolves trying to define us as Republicrat’s, because they want to deny there is a Revolution happening here and all over the globe.  They so desperately need to define us because they are scared shitless of us.  They pretend to not comprehend our agenda, they keep saying we don’t know what we want.  They only see in Republicrat terms.  Both parties Rep. and Dem. alike have had a direct hand in passing legislation that has aided in this ponzi scheme whereby we, the 99% have been robbed of our wealth and savings and dignity.  This is a global societal movement/revolution, which I am proud to be witnessing and participating in.  Together with all our brothers and sisters of the world we will effect global change so we can all enjoy our right to abundance.

Glenn Greenwald of Salon did a thorough job of trashing the notion that Occupy Wall Street could be turned into a Democratic Party movement:

Can the Occupy Wall Street protests be transformed into a get-out-the-vote organ of Obama 2012 and the Democratic Party?  To determine if this is likely, let’s review a few relevant facts.

In March, 2008, The Los Angeles Times published an article with the headline “Democrats are darlings of Wall St, which reported that both Obama and Clinton “are benefiting handsomely from Wall Street donations, easily surpassing Republican John McCain in campaign contributions.”   In June, 2008, Reuters published an article entitled “Wall Street puts its money behind Obama”; it detailed that Obama had almost twice as much in contributions from “the securities and investment industry” and that “Democrats garnered 57 percent of the contributions from” that industry.  When the financial collapse exploded, then-candidate Obama became an outspoken supporter of the Wall Street bailout.

After Obama’s election, the Democratic Party controlled the White House, the Senate and the House for the first two years, and the White House and Senate for the ten months after that.  During this time, unemployment and home foreclosures were painfully high, while Wall Street and corporate profits exploded, along with income inequality.  In July, 2009, The New York Times dubbed JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon “Obama’s favorite banker” because of his close relationship with, and heavy influence on, leading Democrats, including the President.  In February, 2010, President Obama defended Dimon’s $17 million bonus and the $9 million bonus to Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein – both of whose firms received substantial taxpayer bailouts – as fair and reasonable.

*   *   *

Would it not be a bit odd for a protest movement to “Occupy Wall Street” while simultaneously devoting itself to keeping Wall Street’s most lavishly funded politician in power?

At Washington’s Blog, we were informed about an attempt by the Democratic-aligned MoveOn organization to wrest control of Occupy Wall Street:

David DeGraw – one of the primary Wall Street protest organizers – just sent me the following email:

Top MoveOn leaders / executives are all over national television speaking for the movement.  fully appreciate the help and support of MoveOn, but the MSM is clearly using them as the spokespeople for OWS.  This is an blatant attempt to fracture the 99% into a Democratic Party organization.  The leadership of MoveON are Democratic Party operatives.  they are divide and conquer pawns.  For years they ignored Wall Street protests to keep complete focus on the Republicans, in favor of Goldman’s Obama and Wall Street’s Democratic leadership.

If anyone at Move On or Daily Kos would like to have a public debate about these comments, we invite it.

Please help us stop this divide and conquer attempt.

DeGraw – who is wholly non-partisan [like the writers at Washington’s Blog] – tells me that there are many political views represented, and that Occupy Wall Street is very diverse with opinions across the political spectrum (and see this.)

This mirrors what some of the original organizers of various “Occupy” protests in other cities have said as well:  MoveOn attempted to take credit for the events.

As I noted last week:

Everyone’s trying to cash in on the courage and conviction of the Wall Street protesters.

People are trying to associate Occupy Wall Street with their pet projects, in the same way that advertisers try to associate the goodwill of the Super Bowl, NBA playoffs, World Series or Olympics with their product.

But I hear from OWS organizers that the protesters come from totally diverse political affiliations.  Many protesters support Ron Paul, many like Obama, others are for other parties or candidates or don’t vote at all.

The protesters themselves are having none of it, tweeting today:

We don’t want to be the democratic tea party or liberal tea party. We want to be our own movement separate of any political affiliation.

Just as President Obama disregarded the opportunity to turn the economy around in 2009, his party scoffed at the opportunity to rehabilitate its tattered reputation in the wake of its failure to enact meaningful financial reform legislation.  The efforts by Democrats to jump the OWS train at this point are transparently specious.  They aren’t fooling anyone.


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Looking Beyond Rhetoric

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As a result of the increasing popularity of the Occupy Wall Street movement (which now gets so much coverage, it’s referred to as “OWS”) President Obama has found it necessary to crank up the populist rhetoric.  He must walk a fine line because his injecting too much enthusiasm into any populist-themed discussion of the economic crisis will alienate those deep-pocketed campaign donors from the financial sector.  Don’t forget:  Goldman Sachs was Obama’s leading private source of 2008 campaign contributions, providing more than one million dollars for the cause.

The Occupy Wall Street protest has now placed Obama and his fellow Democrats in a double-bind situation.  Many commentators – while pondering that predicament – have found it necessary to take a good, hard look at the favorable treatment given to Wall Street by the current administration.  A recent essay by Robert Reich approached this subject by noting that Obama is as far from left-wing populism as any Democratic President in modern history:

To the contrary, Obama has been extraordinarily solicitous of Wall Street and big business – making Timothy Geithner Treasury Secretary and de facto ambassador from the Street; seeing to it that Bush’s Fed appointee, Ben Bernanke, got another term; and appointing GE Chair Jeffrey Immelt to head his jobs council.

Most tellingly, it was President Obama’s unwillingness to place conditions on the bailout of Wall Street – not demanding, for example, that the banks reorganize the mortgages of distressed homeowners, and that they accept the resurrection of the Glass-Steagall Act, as conditions for getting hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars – that contributed to the new populist insurrection.

*   *   *

But the modern Democratic Party is not likely to embrace left-wing populism the way the GOP has embraced – or, more accurately, been forced to embrace – right-wing populism. Just follow the money, and remember history.

Another commentator, who has usually been positive in his analysis of the current administration’s policies – Tom Friedman of The New York Times – couldn’t help but criticize Obama’s performance while lamenting the loss a great American leader, Steve Jobs:

Obama supporters complain that the G.O.P. has tried to block him at every turn.  That is true. But why have they gotten away with it? It’s because Obama never persuaded people that he had a Grand Bargain tied to a vision worth fighting for.

*    *    *

The paucity of Obama’s audacity is striking.

As I recently pointed out, any discussion of our nation’s economic problems ultimately focuses on President Obama’s failure to seize the opportunity – during the first year of his Presidency – to turn the economy around and reduce unemployment.  Despite the administration’s repeated claims that it has reduced unemployment, Pro Publica offered an honest look of that claim:

Overall, job creation has been relatively meager during the Obama administration, particularly compared to the massive job losses brought on by the recession.  According to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, even if job creation were happening at pre-recession levels, it would take us 11 years to get back to an unemployment rate of 5 percent.

Ron Suskind’s new book, Confidence Men provided a shocking revelation about Obama’s decision allow unemployment to remain above 9 percent by ignoring the advice of Larry Summers (Chair of the National Economic Council) and Christina Romer (Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers).  I discussed that issue and the outrage expressed in reaction to Obama’s attitude on September 22.

At The Washington Post, Ezra Klein wrote an engaging piece, which provided us with a close look at how the Obama administration was fighting the economic crisis.  Klein interviewed several people from inside the administration and provided a sympathetic perspective on Obama’s decisions.  Nevertheless, Klein’s ultimate conclusion – although nuanced – didn’t do much for the President:

From the outset, the policies were too small for the recession the administration and economists thought we faced.  They were much too small for the recession we actually faced.  More and better stimulus, more aggressive interventions in the housing market, more aggressive policy from the Fed, and more attention to preventing layoffs and hiring the unemployed could have led to millions more jobs.  At least in theory.

Of course, ideas always sound better than policies.  Policies must be implemented, and they have unintended consequences and unforeseen flaws.  In the best of circumstances, the policymaking process is imperfect.  But January 2009 had the worst of circumstances – a once-in-a-lifetime economic emergency during a presidential transition.

*   *   *

These sorts of economic crises are, in other words, inherently politically destabilizing, and that makes a sufficient response, at least in a democracy, nearly impossible.

Klein’s apologia simply underscored the necessity for a President to exhibit good leadership qualities.  Despite a “Presidential transition”, the Democratic Party held the majority of seats in both the Senate and the House.  In July of 2009, when it was obvious that the stimulus had been inadequate, Obama was too preoccupied with his healthcare bill to refocus on economic recovery.  As I said back then:

President Obama should have done it right the first time.  His penchant for compromise – simply for the sake of compromise itself – is bound to bite him in the ass on this issue, as it surely will on health care reform – should he abandon the “public option”.  The new President made the mistake of assuming that if he established a reputation for being flexible, his opposition would be flexible in return.  The voting public will perceive this as weak leadership.  As a result, President Obama will need to re-invent this aspect of his public image before he can even consider presenting a second economic stimulus proposal.

Weak leadership is hardly a justifiable excuse for an inadequate, half-done, economic stimulus program.  Beyond that, President Obama’s sell-out to Wall Street by way of a sham financial “reform” bill has drawn widespread criticism.  In his March 29 op-ed piece for The New York Times, Neil Barofsky, the retiring Special Inspector General for TARP (SIGTARP) criticized the Obama administration’s failure to make good on its promises of “financial reform”:

Finally, the country was assured that regulatory reform would address the threat to our financial system posed by large banks that have become effectively guaranteed by the government no matter how reckless their behavior.  This promise also appears likely to go unfulfilled.  The biggest banks are 20 percent larger than they were before the crisis and control a larger part of our economy than ever.  They reasonably assume that the government will rescue them again, if necessary.

*   *   *

Worse, Treasury apparently has chosen to ignore rather than support real efforts at reform, such as those advocated by Sheila Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, to simplify or shrink the most complex financial institutions.

Running as an incumbent President presents a unique challenge to Mr. Obama.  He must now reconcile his populist rhetoric with his record as President.  The contrast is too sharp to ignore.


 

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Charade Ends For Pseudo-Populists

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The Occupy Wall Street protest has exposed the politicians – who have always claimed to be populists – for what they really are:  tools of the plutocracy.  Conspicuously absent from the Wall Street occupation have been nearly all Democrats – despite their party’s efforts to portray itself as the champion of Main Street in its battle against the tyranny of the megabanks.  As has always been the case, the Democrats won’t really do anything that could disrupt the flow of bribes campaign contributions they receive from our nation’s financial elites.

The “no show” Democrats reminded me of an article which appeared at Truthdig, written by Chris Hedges, author of the book, Death of the Liberal Class.  In his Truthdig essay, Chris Hedges emphasized how the liberal class “abandoned the human values that should have remained at the core of its activism”:

The liberal class, despite becoming an object of widespread public scorn, prefers the choreographed charade.  It will decry the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or call for universal health care, but continue to defend and support a Democratic Party that has no intention of disrupting the corporate machine.  As long as the charade is played, the liberal class can hold itself up as the conscience of the nation without having to act.  It can maintain its privileged economic status.  It can continue to live in an imaginary world where democratic reform and responsible government exist.  It can pretend it has a voice and influence in the corridors of power.  But the uselessness and irrelevancy of the liberal class are not lost on the tens of millions of Americans who suffer the indignities of the corporate state.  And this is why liberals are rightly despised by the working class and the poor.

If it had not been obvious before the 2010 elections, it should be obvious now.  Back in July of 2010, I was busy harping about how the Obama administration had sabotaged the financial “reform” bill:

As I pointed out on July 12, Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute documented the extent to which Obama’s Treasury Department undermined the financial reform bill at every step.  On the following day, Rich Miller of Bloomberg News examined the results of a Bloomberg National Poll, which measured the public’s reaction to the financial reform bill.  Almost eighty percent of those who responded were of the opinion that the new bill would do little or nothing to prevent or mitigate another financial crisis.  Beyond that, 47 percent shared the view that the bill would do more to protect the financial industry than consumers.

Both healthcare and financial “reform” legislation turned out to be “bait and switch” scams used by the Obama administration against its own supporters.  After that double-double-cross, the liberal blogosphere was being told to “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain”.

In an earlier posting, I discussed the sordid efforts of the Democratic-controlled Senate to sabotage the financial reform bill:

The sleazy antics by the Democrats who undermined financial reform (while pretending to advance it) will not be forgotten by the voters.  The real question is whether any independent candidates can step up to oppose the tools of Wall Street, relying on the nickels and dimes from “the little people” to wage a battle against the kleptocracy.

Since the Occupy Wall Street demonstration has gained momentum, a number of commentators have analyzed the complicity of hypocritical Democrats in ceding more unregulated power to the very culprits responsible for causing the financial crisis.  The most important of these essays was an article written by Matt Stoller for Politico.  Stoller began the piece by debunking the myth that the cancer known as “financial deregulation” was introduced to the American system by the Reagan administration:

Like President Bill Clinton before him, Obama and his team believe in deregulation and are continuing a “let them eat cake”-style social contract that solidified during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.  As this contract has fallen apart, so has the strong coalition behind Obama’s presidency.

We haven’t seen a challenge to the bank-friendly Democratic orthodoxy for 40 years.  The progenitor of this modern Democratic Party was Jimmy Carter. Though Reagan and Clinton helped finish the job, it was Carter who began wholesale deregulation of the banking industry – as Jeff Madrick details in his new book, “The Age of Greed.”

In signing the landmark Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980, which lifted usury caps, Carter said, “Our banks and savings institutions are hampered by a wide range of outdated, unfair and unworkable regulations.”

Stoller provided some hope for disillusioned former supporters of the Democratic Party by focusing on three Democratic state attorneys general, who have been investigating possible fraud in the securitization of trillions of dollars of mortgages.  Matt Stoller referred to these officials – Eric Schneiderman of New York, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Beau Biden of Delaware – as the “Justice Democrats”.  As Stoller observed, a number of other officials have been influenced by the noble efforts of these Justice Democrats:

There are other politicians following this path.  Jefferson Smith, an Oregon state representative now running for mayor of Portland, successfully fought legislation to make foreclosures easier in that state.  Register of Deeds Jeff Thigpen in North Carolina took on banking interests by fighting foreclosure fraud.  Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings has been dogged in his investigations of mortgage servicers.

It should not be surprising that these officials have been getting quite a bit of pushback from their fellow Democrats – including Delaware Governor Jack Markell as well as a number of high-ranking officials from the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Eric Hold-harmless.

When the Occupy Wall Street protest began on September 17, what little coverage it received from the mainstream media was based on the “giggle factor”.  With the passing of time, it becomes increasingly obvious that the news media and our venal political leaders are seriously underestimating the ability of the “little people” to fight back against the kleptocracy.


 

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Tempus Fugit

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If a Democrat wants to challenge Barack Obama for the Democratic Party’s Presidential nomination, time is quickly running out.  It takes a while to put a campaign together.  Aside from rounding-up enough money to challenge an incumbent – who is expected to have a $1 billion war chest – there are other logistic challenges.  For starters, a campaign team must be assembled, along with a network across the states.  Messaging strategy and a campaign theme must be established.  It’s a huge deal.  Nevertheless, if the Democrats believe that they can just sit back and watch Obama swagger his way to re-election – they’re going to be in for a big disappointment.

As I pointed out in my last posting, Obama’s problems have expanded beyond weak polling numbers.  The Solyndra scandal can be expected to receive at least as much television coverage as the Casey Anthony “Tot Mom” trial.  Ron Suskind’s new book about the President’s handling of the economy, Confidence Men, has provided us with an abundance of insights on Obama’s leadership failings.  Those observations will reverberate throughout the 2012 campaign until Election Day.

Obama’s mishandling of the economic crisis is useful only as evidence of the President’s ineptitude in the domestic policy arena.  Has Obama done any better with his foray into foreign policy?  Steve Clemons provided us with the answer to that question by way of an article which appeared in The Atlantic.  The essay is also available at his own blog, The Washington Note.  Mr. Clemons provided a great analysis of Obama’s influence on the Israel – Palestine peace process:

Obama continues to parrot the line that peace can only be achieved between the “two parties”, that only they can really bring this global ulcer to a close, when they decide to negotiate.  The fact is that the status quo of frozen negotiations is benefiting the dominant, settlement-expanding Israel — and the US, in promising to veto at the UN Security Council Palestine’s bid for official state recognition, is playing guarantor to one side, undermining the aspirations of others on the other side of the equation.  What if the US had said to Kosovo — no statehood, no recognition from the US until you resolve all of your ongoing issues with Russia?

*   *   *

Obama is assuring the further emasculation and perhaps final demise of Palestine’s moderates.  Obama is also treating the Israelis and Palestinians as if they are on equal footing, equally able to concede to each other’s demands.  What Obama doesn’t get is that a substantial portion of Israel’s population loves not having a deal and never wants one.  They are OK with a peace process to nowhere — but that is not acceptable for the less-endowed, less-powerful Palestinian side.  Hamas is in the rejectionist corner as well, seeing its fortunes rise as earnest efforts at peace go nowhere.

The world watched Barack Obama lose a battle in the last two years with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israeli settlement expansion in contested and occupied territories.  This is like the Soviet Union having lost a war of wills at the height of its power with Cuba.

The client state trumped the President of the United States — telegraphing to many around the world that President Obama ultimately didn’t have the courage of his convictions and wasn’t able to deploy power and statecraft to achieve the outlines of what he called for in his lofty rhetoric.  Obama’s UN General Assembly speech has done nothing to reverse the impression that Netanyahu is the alpha dog in the relationship with President Obama — and this is truly tragic and geostrategically consequential.

Well, at least Obama is consistent  .  .  .  equally inept and spineless on foreign policy issues as he is when challenged with domestic policy matters.

Will any Democrat step up to prevent the Republican Party from taking over the White House (any more than it already has with Obama in there)?  The President’s apologists can no longer dismiss criticism of this administration by characterizing it as propaganda from Fox News.  Matt Taibbi’s recent remark about Obama exemplifies how an increasing number of Americans – from across the political spectrum – feel about our current President:

I just don’t believe this guy anymore, and it’s become almost painful to listen to him.

Wake up, Democrats!  Time is of the essence.


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Obama Will Lose In 2012

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The criticisms voiced by many of us during President Obama’s first year in office are finally beginning to register with the general public.  Here’s an observation I made on December 14, 2009:

As we approach the conclusion of Obama’s first year in the White House, it has become apparent that the Disappointer-in-Chief has not only alienated the Democratic Party’s liberal base, but he has also let down a demographic he thought he could take for granted:  the African-American voters.  At this point, Obama has “transcended race” with his ability to dishearten loyal black voters just as deftly as he has chagrined loyal supporters from all ethnic groups.

On June 11 2010, Maureen Dowd gave us some insight as to what it was like on Obama’s campaign plane in 2008:

The press traveling with Obama on the campaign never had a lovey-dovey relationship with him.  He treated us with aloof correctness, and occasional spurts of irritation.  Like many Democrats, he thinks the press is supposed to be on his side.

The patrician George Bush senior was always gracious with reporters while conveying the sense that what we do for a living was rude.

The former constitutional lawyer now in the White House understands that the press has a role in the democracy.  But he is an elitist, too, as well as thin-skinned and controlling.  So he ends up regarding scribes as intrusive, conveying a distaste for what he sees as the fundamental unseriousness of a press driven by blog-around-the-clock deadlines.

The voting public is just beginning to digest the sordid facts of the Solyndra scandal.  Rest assured that the Republican Party will educate even the most intellectually challenged of those “low information voters” as to every detail of that rotten deal.  The timing of the Solyndra exposé couldn’t be worse for Team Obama.

On August 15, the Gallup Organization reported that during the week of August 8-14, Obama’s job approval rating dropped to 40% – the lowest it had been since he assumed office.  Another Gallup poll, conducted with USA Today during August 15-18 revealed that, for the first time, a majority of Americans – 53% – blame Obama for the nation’s economic problems.  Forty-seven percent still say he is “not much” (27%) or “not at all” (20%) to blame.

A new McClatchy-Marist poll, taken on September 14-15, revealed that Obama’s sinking popularity has placed him just 5 points ahead of non-candidate Sarah Palin (49-44 percent).  The Miami Herald noted that the poll results show the President just 2 points ahead of Mitt Romney (46-44):

Overall, the gains among Republicans “speak to Obama’s decline among independents generally, and how the middle is not his right now,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted the national survey.

“This will require him to find ways to either win back the middle or energize his base in ways that hasn’t happened so far,” Miringoff said.

By a margin of 49 percent to 36 percent, voters said they definitely plan to vote against Obama, according to the poll.  Independents by 53 percent to 28 percent said they definitely plan to vote against him.

With that sentiment permeating the electorate a little more than a year before the general election, most Americans think Obama won’t win a second term.

By 52 percent to 38 percent, voters think he’ll lose to the Republican nominee, whoever that is.  Even among Democrats, 31 percent think the Republican nominee will win.

The most devastating development for Obama has been the public reaction to Ron Suskind’s new book about the President’s handling of the economy, Confidence Men.  Berkeley economics professor, Brad DeLong has been posting and discussing excerpts of the book at his own website, Grasping Reality With Both Hands.  On September 19, Professor DeLong posted a passage from Suskind’s book, which revealed Obama’s expressed belief (in November of 2009) that high unemployment was a result of productivity gains in the economy.  Both Larry Summers (Chair of the National Economic Council) and Christina Romer (Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers) were shocked and puzzled by Obama’s ignorance on this subject:

“What was driving unemployment was clearly deficient aggregate demand,” Romer said.  “We wondered where this could be coming from.  We both tried to convince him otherwise.  He wouldn’t budge.”

Because of Obama’s willful refusal to heed the advice of his own economic team, our nation’s unemployment problem has persisted at levels of 9% and above (with worse to come).  As Ron Suskind remarked in that passage:

The implications were significant.  If Obama felt that 10 percent unemployment was the product of sound, productivity-driven decisions by American business, then short-term government measures to spur hiring were not only futile but unwise.

There you have it.  Despite the efforts of Obama’s apologists to blame Larry Summers or others on the President’s economic team for persistent unemployment, it wasn’t simply a matter of “the buck stopping” on the President’s desk.  Obama himself has been the villain, hypocritically advocating a strategy of “trickle-down economics” – in breach of his campaign promise to do the exact opposite.

Reactions to the foregoing passage from Confidence Men – appearing as comments to Brad DeLong’s September 19 blog entry – provide a taste of how the majority of Obama’s former supporters will react when they learn the truth about this phony politician.  Here are a few samples:

moron said…

.  .  .   This disgraceful shill for global capital has destroyed the Democratic party for a generation.

kris said…

The President sure does come across as awfully arrogant, dogmatic and not very smart from this excerpt (and as someone who does not like to listen to his advisors- especially the female ones.).

mike said…

Wow. Romer was oh so right. And Obama was oh, so so wrong… What a pathetic display of arrogance and bad leadership.      .   .   .

Th said…

And I was always joking about Obama as the “Manchurian Candidate” from the U of Chicago. Productivity? Really?

Dave said…

I’ve lost any last shred of respect for Mr. O.

Now that Confidence Men and the Solyndra scandal are getting increased publicity, we can expect that large numbers of voters will be losing their “last shred of respect” for Mr. Obama.  It’s past time for the Democratic Party to face reality:  If they seriously want to retain control of the Executive branch – someone will have to ask Obama to step aside.  DNC Chair, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is obviously not up to this task.


 

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Hurricane Rick

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Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, there has been plenty of criticism directed at efforts by the media to amp-up the danger threat during the days before the storm made landfall.  Despite the fact that eleven people were killed by the hurricane, a wide assortment of commentators has seen fit to complain about the “hurricane hype”.  Here is a bit of what Howard Kurtz had to say at The Daily Beast:

But the tsunami of hype on this story was relentless, a Category 5 performance that was driven in large measure by ratings.  Every producer knew that to abandon the coverage even briefly – say, to cover the continued fighting in Libya – was to risk driving viewers elsewhere.  Websites, too, were running dramatic headlines even as it became apparent that the storm wasn’t as powerful as advertised.

The fact that New York, home to the nation’s top news outlets, was directly in the storm’s path clearly fed this story-on-steroids. Does anyone seriously believe the hurricane would have drawn the same level of coverage if it had been bearing down on, say, Ft. Lauderdale?

In fact, here in south Florida, we have become accustomed to the scare-mongering, which runs ahead of any tropical depression appearing west of the Cape Verde Islands.  Our local newscasters have an incentive to overstate the threat:  If they can scare the local politicians into ordering a mandatory evacuation – the story goes national and the networks provide some face time for the local correspondents.  At The Weather Channel, the incessant drumbeat warns:  Keep watching us or die!  I would be more than happy to cooperate if only they would feature Stephanie Abrams as often as they have Jim Cantore or Bryan Norcross on camera.

A similar fear-mongering strategy is becoming apparent in the Presidential campaign.  Before Rick Perry jumped into the race, disgruntled former Obama supporters saw the 2012 campaign as a choice between two nearly-indistinguishable corporatists.  With the ever-increasing likelihood that Rick Perry could become the Republican nominee, those ex-Obama fans are being constantly bombarded with reasons to be afraid  … be very afraid.  Are you going to just sit back and watch when President Perry declares war on Switzerland?

The most-frequently quoted observation about Rick Perry came from Bruce Bartlett, who served as deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department, in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.  During a recent appearance on CNN’s American Morning, Bartlett remarked:

“Rick Perry is an idiot, and I don’t think anybody would disagree with that.”

At the Huffington Post, the fixation on Rick Perry’s intellectual limitations resulted in the publication of some information from the candidate’s college transcript:

A source in Texas passed The Huffington Post Perry’s transcripts from his years at Texas A&M University.  The future politician did not distinguish himself much in the classroom.  While he later became a student leader, he had to get out of academic probation to do so.  He rarely earned anything above a C in his courses — earning a C in U.S. History, a D in Shakespeare, and a D in the principles of economics.  Perry got a C in gym.

Perry also did poorly on classes within his animal science major. In fall semester 1970, he received a D in veterinary anatomy, a F in a second course on organic chemistry and a C in animal breeding.  He did get an A in world military systems and “Improv. of Learning” — his only two As while at A&M.

Josh Harkinson wrote an article for Mother Jones, recounting some episodes from Perry’s tenure as Governor of Texas.  In addition to discussing the infamous Trans-Texas Corridor fiasco, the essay provided these factoids:

In 2004, whistleblowers repeatedly informed Perry’s office that the Governor’s Texas Youth Commission hires and protects “known child abusers.”   His office ignored the warnings.  Three years later, the story broke that top officials with the TYC had learned of and done nothing to stop widespread child molestation at a juvenile detention facility in West Texas.

*   *   *

Last year, Perry called the BP oil spill an “act of God.”

*   *   *

Perry has accepted $1.2 million from Texas billionaire Harold Simmons, who is building a nuclear waste dump in West Texas over the objections of some of the state’s own environmental regulators.  In January, Texas’ Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission opened the door to allowing the dump to accept nuclear waste from around the country.  Six of of the commission’s seven members were appointed by Perry.

The passage from Harkinson’s article, striking fear into the hearts of Democrats, concerns a bit of history, which might repeat itself in the event that progressives should decide to support a third-party candidate:

Perry’s political associates, including top adviser Dave Carney, have been repeatedly accused of helping the Green Party qualify for the ballot in order to siphon votes away from Democratic candidates.

Could something similar happen in November of 2012?  Rick Perry is counting on it — and the media will incessantly remind you of that.

You’ve been warned!


 

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Left Out

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Support for President Obama’s re-election bid is in disarray.  His sinking poll numbers have left many Democrats hoping for a miracle (i.e. some degree of economic recovery before November of 2012).  A significant component of the party’s progressive bloc is looking for a challenger to step forward – as can be seen at the StopHoping.org website.  One of the bloggers at Corrente – Hugh – recently had a good laugh at those who were anticipating a possible Primary challenge to Obama from former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold.  Here is some of what Hugh had to say:

The point is that Feingold could have been, and should have been, if he were legit, a focus for progressive organizing.  But he wasn’t.  . . . Feingold could have been the voice of opposition to Bush and his policies, but the silence from the Wisconsin Senator’s office was deafening.  He could have played the same role opposing Obama’s right wing corporatist agenda.  He did not.  Indeed he lost his Senate seat largely because of his failure to distance himself from Obama.

There are other reasons to dislike Feingold and question his progressive credentials.  He voted for John Roberts as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He voted for Obamacare.  And he is a deficit hawk.

Many left-leaning commentators have been offering suggestions to the President as to what actions he should be taking – as well as what message he should be delivering.  Experience has demonstrated that Obama never pays attention to well-intentioned, sensible advice.  How many times has Robert Reich written a roadmap for the President to use toward saving the economy as well as Obama’s own Presidency – only to be ignored?  As the campaign drags on, try to keep count of how many commentaries are written under the theme:  “What Obama Needs to Say and Do Right Now”.  Rest assured that he won’t say or do any of it.

Meanwhile, Republican voters are currently flocking to the standard-bearer du jour, Texas Governor Rick Perry.  Alexander Cockburn of CounterPunch wrote a great essay about Perry’s unmatched political instincts and the challenges ahead for both parties in the upcoming Presidential race:

The obvious question is whether Perry, having won the right, can clamber back along the kook branch towards something vaguely resembling the solid timber of sanity, to capture the necessary independents and disillusioned folk who bet on Obama in 2008.  Hard to say.  Perry is pretty far out on the limb.  Reagan, with the strenuous help of the press, managed the crawl back in 1980, amid widespread disappointment and disgust with Jimmy Carter.  Disappointment and disgust with Barack Obama?  The president has slithered down in the most recent polls, and now is just above the 50 per cent disapproval rating.  There are still around 30 million Americans without work, or enough work. There’s the endlessly cited observation that no president presiding over more than a 7 per cent jobless rate can hope for a second term.

The progressive sector is already rallying the Obama vote by pounding out the unsurprising message that Perry is a shil and errand boy for corporate America, Amazing! Imagine that a conservative Texas Republican would end up in that corner, arm in arm with Barack Obama, messenger of hope and change, also shil and errand boy for corporate America, starting with the nuclear industry, the arms sector, the ag/pesticide complex and moving on through Wall Street and the Fed, and equipped with truly noxious beliefs about fiscal discipline, the merits of compromise.  He’s a far more dangerous man to have in the Oval Office than Perry.  We need a polarizer to awaken the left from its unending, unbreakable infatuation with our current president, despite all the horrors he has perpetrated and presided over, most significantly the impending onslaught on Social Security and Medicare.

Any Republican who wants to maintain a viable candidacy will be forced to start taking some hard swings at Rick Perry.  Jon Huntsman has already started to do so.  Michele Bachmann might not, if she wants a shot at becoming Perry’s running mate.  It won’t matter what Ron Paul says … because the mainstream media are pretending as though he doesn’t exist.  If you haven’t seen it yet, Jon Stewart ran a superb piece, exhibiting how all of the major news outlets – including Fox – were apparently reading from the same script after Congressman Paul came within 100 votes of beating Michele Bachmann in the Iowa Straw Poll.  Watching those reports could have led one to believe that Ron Paul had dropped out of the race.  On August 17, Tara Sartor of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism provided this analysis of how the television news organizations squelched Ron Paul’s near-victory in Iowa:

In a further attempt to gauge the post-straw poll attention to Paul’s campaign, PEJ also used the Snapstream server’s closed captioning capability to assess the candidates’ television coverage in the first few days after that balloting.

The sample included the three network Sunday morning panel shows on August 14, the morning and evening network news programs on August 15 and four hours of prime-time cable and one hour of daytime from each of the three major cable news networks on August 15.

According to that analysis, Paul was mentioned just 29 times. By comparison, Perry was mentioned 371 times, Bachmann was mentioned 274 times, and Romney was mentioned 183 times.

I hope that the anti-Paul conspiracy helps to energize those voters who had been ambivalent about supporting the “other Texan” in the race.

At some point, the progressive Democrats are going to be faced with the ugly reality that they don’t have a candidate in the 2012 Presidential campaign.  As has been the case with Ron Paul and his supporters – the Left will be left out.


 

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Drew Westen Nails It Again

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Dr. Drew Westen is a Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University.  After receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree at Harvard, Westen picked up a Master’s in Social and Political Thought from the University of Sussex in England.  He earned his PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of Michigan.

In 2007, Dr. Westen wrote a book entitled, The Political BrainHere’s how the book was described by the publisher, PublicAffairs:

The idea of the mind as a cool calculator that makes decisions by weighing the evidence bears no relation to how the brain actually works.  When political candidates assume voters dispassionately make decisions based on “the issues,” they lose.      .   .   .

In politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins. Elections are decided in the marketplace of emotions, a marketplace filled with values, images, analogies, moral sentiments, and moving oratory, in which logic plays only a supporting role.     .   .   .   The evidence is overwhelming that three things determine how people vote, in this order:  their feelings toward the parties and their principles, their feelings toward the candidates, and, if they haven’t decided by then, their feelings toward the candidates’ policy positions.

The people at Fox News have been operating from this premise for years.  On Fox, the news is presented from an emotional perspective (i.e.  fear and outrage about terrorism, indignation about government spending, patriotic devotion to whomever or whatever principle is singled out for such allegiance).  Opposition political candidates (Democrats) are usually portrayed as contemptible, flawed individuals.  As a result, Fox has enjoyed tremendous success at shaping public opinion and influencing the electorate.  Dr. Westen’s book appears likely to help one understand why.

The 2008 candidacy of Barack Obama presented a unique challenge to Fox News:  A Democrat finally had a campaign based on an emotional appeal, conveyed with the single word, “Hope”.  Despite the rational campaign strategy developed by Mark Penn for Hillary Clinton, (and continued by the McCain campaign) which posed the question:  “Who is Barack Obama?” – the voters followed their emotions and voted for “Hope”.

At this point in the Obama Presidency, people from across the political spectrum (especially the Left) are still pondering Mark Penn’s 2008 question:  “Who is Barack Obama?”  As I have frequently pointed out on this website, Obama has been repeatedly criticized (by his former supporters) as a cynical, narcissistic individual, who has carefully created a Rorschach-esqe public image, shaped by whatever characteristics the individual audience members would choose to project back onto their perception of the man himself.  Obama has been able to conceal his flexible, mercenary agenda behind the Rorschach screen and until recently, few have bothered to peek behind it.

David Sirota recently wrote an insightful essay about Obama which began with these words:

Barack Obama is a lot of things – eloquent, dissembling, conniving, intelligent and above all, calm.  But one thing he is not is weak.

I was particularly impressed by an essay about our President, written by the aforementioned Dr. Drew Westen, which appeared in The New York Times on August 6.  The article was entitled, “What Happened to Obama?” and it was absolutely magnificent.  Dr. Westen began by taking us back to January of 2009, when we were still in the depths of the financial crisis, shocked by the unemployment tsunami and looking to our new President for effective leadership through a gauntlet of bank bailout schemes and economic stimulus proposals.  Unfortunately, what America heard from Barack Obama during his Inaugural Address was a big nothing.  As Dr. Westen explained, the disappointment of Obama’s Inaugural Address was emblematic of the disappointment we experienced throughout the ensuing months:

The president is fond of referring to “the arc of history,” paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”  But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics – in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time – he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.

*   *   *

When Dr. King spoke of the great arc bending toward justice, he did not mean that we should wait for it to bend.

*   *   *

IN contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it.  He never explained that decision to the public – a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it.  Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century.  He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work.  He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it.  But the arc of his temperament just didn’t bend that far.

But why did Obama turn out to be such a disappointment?  Is he simply weak – or is Obama actually the inverse Franklin Delano Roosevelt described by David Sirota as “Bizarro FDR”?  From his unique perspective as a clinical psychologist, Dr. Westen is well-qualified to provide us with a valid opinion.  After first expressing the requisite ethical disclaimer (rarely heard from TV and radio “shrinks”) that he would “resist the temptation to diagnose at a distance”, Westen put on his “strategic consultant” hat to “venture some hypotheses”:

The most charitable explanation is that he and his advisers have succumbed to a view of electoral success to which many Democrats succumb – that “centrist” voters like “centrist” politicians.  Unfortunately, reality is more complicated.  Centrist voters prefer honest politicians who help them solve their problems.  A second possibility is that he is simply not up to the task by virtue of his lack of experience and a character defect that might not have been so debilitating at some other time in history. Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography:  that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted “present” (instead of “yea” or “nay”) 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues.

A somewhat less charitable explanation is that we are a nation that is being held hostage not just by an extremist Republican Party but also by a president who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election.

*   *   *

Or perhaps, like so many politicians who come to Washington, he has already been consciously or unconsciously corrupted by a system that tests the souls even of people of tremendous integrity, by forcing them to dial for dollars – in the case of the modern presidency, for hundreds of millions of dollars.

With the passing of time, the likelihood that Barack Obama will be a single-term President increases dramatically because Americans are now scrutinizing him from a more judicious perspective.  Who will become the Independent candidate to return that forgotten emotion of hope to the disillusioned electorate?


 

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Giving Centrism A Bad Name

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It seems as though every time some venal politician breaches a campaign promise while attempting to grab a payoff from a lobbyist, the excuse is always the same:  “I’ve decided to tack toward the center on this issue.”  “The Center” has become stigmatized as the dwelling place of those politicians who lack a moral compass.

I get particularly annoyed by those who persist in characterizing Barack Obama as a “centrist”, who is mimicking Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” strategy.  During his campaign and throughout the early days of his Presidency, Obama successfully posed as a centrist.  Nevertheless, his track record now demonstrates a policy of what Marshall Auerback described as “gutting the Democratic Party of its core social legacy.”   I particularly enjoyed reading the comments to Auerback’s above-quoted piece about Obama entitled, “Worse Than Hoover”.  Most of the commentators expressed the opinion that Auerback went way too easy on Obama.  Here are some examples:

Sandra:

We have to stop comparing Obama to these iconic American figures. Obama is an opportunistic corporatist. There is no there there.

Rex:

I’m beginning to wonder if we are still giving Obummer too much credit.  Common view seems to be trending toward he’s a manipulative scumbag.

Wasabi:

He’s very useful to the plutocracy.  A Repub president could never persuade Dems to cut SS, Medicare, and Medicaid and all sorts of other essential programs.

Z:

He got the glory and the thrill of winning the election to become the 1st black president and I suspect that’s all the narcissio-path ever really wanted as far as the presidency is concerned.  He certainly doesn’t look like he’s enjoying himself right now.  I think he’s ready to cash out and is trying to create a scenario where he becomes an untenable candidate.  He also wants to maintain his celebrity appeal so he’s going to try to posture as the adult of adults that was just too good for dc …

Steelhead23:

From a more technocratic perspective, I tend to see Obama as a consummate politician – able to inspire – but sadly lacking in intellectual curiosity and overflowing with ego, thus unable to quench his ignorance.  This leaves him extremely susceptible to “experts” whom he parrots with enthusiasm.  It was experts who helped him pick his advisers and now his expert advisers are misleading him and making him complicit in this quest toward neo-feudalism.

Keep in mind that those comments were not posted at Fox News or some right-wing website.  They were posted at Naked Capitalism, where the publisher – Yves Smith – offered a comment of her own in reaction to Marshall Auerback’s “Worse Than Hoover” posting.

Yves Smith:

Obama is an authoritarian narcissist, an ugly combination.

He also seems unaware of the limits of his knowledge.  That can render many otherwise intelligent people stupid in their decisions and actions in their blind spots.

Obama’s foremost critic from the Left is Glenn Greenwald of Salon.  Mr. Greenwald has frequently opined that “… Obama wants to be attacked by liberals because of the perception that it politically benefits him by making him look centrist, non-partisan and independent . . .   It’s not merely that he lacks a fear of liberal dissatisfaction; it’s that he affirmatively craves it.”  Greenwald emphasized the foolishness of following such a course:

But that’s a dangerous strategy.  U.S. presidential elections are very closely decided affairs, and alienating the Left even to some degree can be lethal for a national Democratic campaign; shouldn’t the 2000 election, along with 2010, have cemented that lesson forever?

I doubt that Obama is attempting to follow anything similar to Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” strategy.  If Obama had been attempting such a plan, it has already backfired to an embarrassing degree, causing irreparable damage to the incumbent’s reelection prospects.  Barack Obama has lost his credibility – and in the eyes of the electorate, there is no greater failing.

To get an appreciation for how much damage Obama has caused to his own “brand”, consider this article written by Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs for the Huffington Post:

Thus, at every crucial opportunity, Obama has failed to stand up for the poor and middle class.  He refused to tax the banks and hedge funds properly on their outlandish profits; he refused to limit in a serious way the bankers’ mega-bonuses even when the bonuses were financed by taxpayer bailouts; and he even refused to stand up against extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich last December, though 60 percent of the electorate repeatedly and consistently demanded that the Bush tax cuts at the top should be ended.  It’s not hard to understand why.  Obama and Democratic Party politicians rely on Wall Street and the super-rich for campaign contributions the same way that the Republicans rely on oil and coal.  In America today, only the rich have political power.

*   *   *

America is more militarily engaged under Obama than even under Bush.  Amazing but true.

*   *   *

The stimulus legislation, pushed by Obama at the start of his term on the basis of antiquated economic theories, wasted the public’s money and also did something much worse.  It discredited the vital role of public spending in solving real and long-term problems.  Rather than thinking ahead and planning for long-term solutions, he simply spent money on short-term schemes.

Obama’s embrace of “shovel-ready” infrastructure, for example, left America with an economy based on shovels while China’s long-term strategy has given that country an economy based on 21st-century Maglev trains.  Now that the resort to mega-deficits has run its course, Obama is on the verge of abandoning the poor and middle class, by agreeing with the plutocrats in Congress to cut spending on Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and discretionary civilian spending, while protecting the military and the low tax rates on the rich (if not lowering those top tax rates further according to the secret machinations of the Gang of Six, now endorsed by the president!)

*   *   *

America needs a third-party movement to break the hammerlock of the financial elites.  Until that happens, the political class and the media conglomerates will continue to spew lies, American militarism will continue to destabilize a growing swath of the world, and the country will continue its economic decline.

The urgent need for a third-party movement was also the subject of this recent piece at The Economic Populist:

If the country had a legitimate third party to vote for, the Democrats and Republicans would be in serious trouble.  Of course, the political system is geared to prevent third parties from emerging, so the country flounders about, looking for leadership from pusillanimous Democrats or ideological Republicans who consider raising taxes a mortal sin.  The voters are probably a few steps away from concluding what is meant to be hidden but by now should be obvious:  American democracy doesn’t exist, and the political system in Washington is beyond repair.  What is worse: there are people and organizations who like things just the way they are and will fight any attempts at reform.

*   *   *

None of this suggests that Barack Obama is even considering abandoning his servitude to corporate interests.  He’s merrily going along from one fundraiser to the next, raising millions of dollars each week from hedge fund managers and corporate lobbyists, so that he can get reelected as a “centrist” and bipartisan deal maker.  This is based on his reading of what The People want – an end to the divisiveness in Washington – but Obama is fundamentally misreading the problem in Washington.  It isn’t the rancor, name-calling, and petulance that is constantly on display which worries the American people.  It is the backroom deals, the hidden bailouts, the tax evasions, the deregulation initiatives, the lack of prosecution for criminal behavior, that is more than frustrating Americans, because the beneficiaries of all this are wealthy people and corporations who have shifted power and money to themselves.  Voters want this system overthrown – even the Tea Party voters, who keep searching for Republicans who will finally say no to corporate money.

In the mean time, we are stuck witnessing America’s demise.  If you think that Obama’s critics from the Left are the only people voicing a dispirited attitude about our country’s future, be sure to read this essay at Counterpunch, “An Economy Destroyed”, written by Paul Craig Roberts – Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the Reagan Administration and the co-creator of Reaganomics:

Recently, the bond rating agencies that gave junk derivatives triple-A ratings threatened to downgrade US Treasury bonds if the White House and Congress did not reach a deficit reduction deal and debt ceiling increase.  The downgrade threat is not credible, and neither is the default threat.  Both are make-believe crises that are being hyped in order to force cutbacks in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

*   *   *

The US economy is driven by consumer demand, but with 22.3 per cent unemployment, stagnant and declining wages and salaries, and consumer debt burdens so high that consumers cannot borrow to spend, there is nothing to drive the economy.

Washington’s response to this dilemma is to increase the austerity!  Cutting back Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, forcing down wages by destroying unions and offshoring jobs (which results in a labor surplus and lower wages), and driving up the prices of food and energy by depreciating the dollar further erodes consumer purchasing power.  The Federal Reserve can print money to rescue the crooked financial institutions, but it cannot rescue the American consumer.

As a final point, confront the fact that you are even lied to about “deficit reduction.”  Even if Obama gets his $4 trillion “deficit reduction” over the next decade, it does not mean that the current national debt will be $4 trillion less than it currently is.  The “reduction” merely means that the growth in the national debt will be $4 trillion less than otherwise.  Regardless of any “deficit reduction,” the national debt ten years from now will be much higher than it presently is.

The longer you think about it – the more obvious it becomes:  We really need to sweep all of those bastards out of Washington as quickly as possible and replace them with intelligent, honest individuals who are willing to represent this country’s human inhabitants – rather than its corporations, lobbies and “special interests”.


 

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