The measly 69,000 private-sector jobs added last month and the shrinking job count over the past few months illustrate our "new normal." At this snail's pace it will take a couple of decades (assuming there are no new crises) before we get back to the "good old days" of the 2005 unemployment rate. Combine this with the bipartisan denuding of the public sector in the form of cutbacks and layoffs (mostly of school teachers), and it's no surprise that we're in store for a long period of economic insecurity and malaise.
Like Bill Clinton, who normalized Ronald Reagan's trade, deregulation, anti-trust, and welfare policies, giving them the bipartisan sheen of Washington orthodoxy, Barack Obama has normalized George W. Bush's Wall Street, education, and "anti-terrorism" policies (among others).
A common narrative circulating among progressives today is that President Obama moved steadily away from our positions because we didn't stay organized to press him to engage in more bold reforms. Obama didn't betray us; we betrayed him by "going home" after the election of 2008 and, in effect, demobilizing the social movement that attempted to counter the authoritarian right-wing surge of the George W. Bush years.
But this argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Progressives were ready to fight alongside Obama on all the key policy choices of his first year in office: holding Wall Street banks accountable for fraud; winning a "public option" in the health-care bill; enacting the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would bolster labor unions' organizing ability; swiftly ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; reasserting the rule of law in anti-terrorism cases; closing Guantanamo; even ridding the U.S. Senate of the filibuster rule that cornered Obama into the absurd position of having to line up supermajorities to get anything passed.
It was unconscionable that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and his fellow Senate Republicans abused the filibuster in a time of crisis on purely partisan and ideological grounds to prevent the federal government from working. But President Obama chose not to deploy his rhetorical skills and use the "bully pulpit" to rally his foot soldiers to beat his opponents in the Senate. Did he go on television and ask his progressive supporters to hit the streets and demand that Wall Street be held accountable? Or call for a bigger "stimulus bill"? Or a "public option"? Or EFCA? Or to change the filibuster rule? Did he travel to obstructionist senators' states and make a show of it?
Progressives didn't expect Obama to do the heavy lifting in Washington without the power of a social movement behind him. But it was Obama's many "compromises" with the same people whose policies ruined the economy and destroyed the United States' reputation that reached a point where his base was no longer "Fired Up and Ready to Go." In 2010 the Democrats got walloped largely because Obama failed to keep his base mobilized going into the first midterm election he faced as president.
During his first year in office, Obama's single biggest catastrophic error was to lose the handle on the Wall Street criminality narrative. The Obama "brand" was irredeemably tarnished when he coddled and conspired with Wall Street at a time when the electorate wanted justice. He also botched the narratives on the "stimulus" and health-care bills. (Now, Bill Clinton is criticizing the Obama campaign for using Romney's days as a vulture capitalist at Bain Capital against him. According to many big-shot Democrats, Obama's embrace of Wall Street wasn't strong enough!)
But another failure that gets little attention was Obama's education policy. By allowing his basketball buddy from Chicago, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, to continue the George W. Bush education policies under a new name, he showed continuity between his administration and Bush's that was devastating to a significant part of the Democratic base. Secretary Duncan kept up the Bush-era teacher bashing even when about 300,000 of them were being handed pink slips. Not only is teaching a highly feminized public-sector profession but teachers and their unions comprise a vital component of the Democratic base. Midterm elections are base elections. Obama and his political geniuses should have known that by denigrating teachers, they were beating down people who walk precincts, phone bank, and lick envelopes for Democratic politicians at the local level. Their demobilization helped cause the shellacking of 2010 and Obama being reduced to a lame duck. Organized money defeated organized people in 2010 because so many of the people whom Democrats needed to win had gotten fucked for two years. Now the president has a much more difficult task to get reelected, because Speaker of the House John Boehner and the House Republicans have been killing him politically ever since.
And then there's the abject betrayal of Obama's supporters among civil libertarians who value the rule of law in the nation's anti-terrorism policies. Obama has normalized or expanded some of the worst excesses of executive power from the Bush-Cheney years. It's now "normal" for a president to assume the role of judge, jury, and executioner against any person deemed a "threat" to the realm: foreign nationals living anywhere in the world; U.S. citizens, their friends and relatives, passers-by, and associates; people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (like at an Afghan wedding party) -- all are considered "legitimate" targets for liquidation by the state at the Chief Executive's whim. The "kill lists," the crackdown on whistleblowers like Pfc. Bradley Manning, a flourishing Guantanamo prison, and the National Defense Authorization Act's sanctioning of the throwing of U.S. citizens into the federal pen without due process are now normal fixtures of American life.
This new normal, where Wall Street criminals go free and whistleblowers are prosecuted, has been brought to us by a Chief Executive whose political enemies call him the most radical left-wing socialist president in our history. Wall Street banks should be pouring money into Obama's reelection since he's been so good to them, and the neocons should be rejoicing in his establishing precedent for more unchecked executive power. And either next year or four years from now, when the Republicans get their guy back in the Oval Office, he'll be able to point to the Obama years as justifying an even greater expansion of presidential powers.
Follow Joseph A. Palermo on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JosephPalermo1
Tom Engelhardt: Praying at the Church of St. Drone
Michael Brenner: "Just War" or Just War?
Ed Crego, George Muñoz and Frank Islam: Bain Capitol?
 |
 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
had been fully vetted by the oligarchs (so had McCain), and was doing as he was told.
Our last unfettered president was JFK. One doesn't cross the oligarchy without severe
reprisal. Mr. Kennedy tried it when he signed the bill to abolish the Federal Reserve Bank,
and paid for it three months later. When Mrs. Kennedy said "they", she knew who they
were. You wrote about Republican obstructionism on "purely partisan and ideologic
grounds." I read it differently. The more venal of the Repuglicans relied on egocentrism
and hubris to go on the road of self-enrichment. Conscience had nothing to do with it.
That leaves us with the unpalatable decision between bad and worse, although quite
honestly, the effect will be the same. At least we know what to expect.
Bad = Obama.
Worse = Romney.
Cast your ballot.
Taxpayers Now Stand Behind Derivatives Clearinghouses
http://www.dailypaul.com/236175/taxpayers-now-stand-behind-derivatives-clearinghouses
Little noticed is that on Tuesday Team Obama took its first formal steps toward putting taxpayers behind Wall Street derivatives trading -- not behind banks that might make mistakes in derivatives markets, but behind the trading itself. Yes, the same crew that rails against the dangers of derivatives is quietly positioning these financial instruments directly above the taxpayer safety net.
Paul Krugman wrote an interesting column the other day reflecting that in fact we are still living in a Republican economy. It is too bad Obama didn't realize what any liberal Democrat knew when he was elected, namely that the House and Senate Republicans are obstructionists, ideological hypocrites in the extreme, and liars.
It says a great deal about the degradation of the Republican Party's perceived benefit to the people of this nation and the appalling quality of it's candidates that such a weak, disappointing, distrusted, and achievement-less president as Obama will probably be reelected.
Sorry, but nothing President Obama has done or failed to do can even be spoken of in the same sentence, paragraph, chapter, or book as the inconceiveable failure that was George Bush.
and faved
It's not a pendulum system that swings back and forth between Left and Right. It's a ratchet system that jerks hard to the right and then the Democrats hold what they got until the Republicans can jerk us to the right again.
President Obama has the Backs of the Middle class and the Displaced. The tax breaks for the rich have not created any worthwhile job numbers in 10 years!! How the rich Republicans can continue to say that if their taxes are raised this will curtail job creation...? Show us the numbers!! Time to elect a Democratic congress and Senate majorities so the Country can get back on track. Unreal how the Presidents civility and compromise attempts were used to make him look weak and indecisive. His heart and mind are in the right place and it seems to me the prudent thing to do would be to give him a real chance for change by rejecting the Conservative and Tea party Agenda which is completely funded by super rich Conservative types who would sell out their Country for the sake of the mighty dollar. Congress needs to be changed so that the representatives are not beholding to their rich Master who are the ones running the country into the ground. You know it.
He for too long assumed that Republicans would come around to him. He refused to take his arguments directly to the people as FDR did. He underestimated the Tea Party and let that movement be quickly hijacked by the far right and GOP. The follies in his first two years might mean he gets no fifth year.
We needed a street fighter but we got too much Harvard Debate Team instead.
I also agree with President Obama that health care has become such a huge part of our economy that it is part of solving our economic problems.
On the other hand, you make some good points - he failed to be the educator in chief and he failed to take strong stands against too many right wing policies that will naturally end up as failures.
It reminds me of pre-9/11 America (I was in Chicago), or perhaps the Wild West.
It's not easy. It's never boring. Some days you'll want to pack up and go, and other days you'll be happy you came here.
Bottom line: I'm glad I came. It's been the hardest 5 years of my life thus far, but also the most adventurous and educational. In terms of business....no comparison. Business opportunities abound.
I wish you well!
Even if you could force China to allow its currency to float against the USD on the currency markets, without imposing tariffs, at this point it probably wouldn't help. Monetary policy is no substitute for trade policy, and no, switching to the gold standard wouldn't work. The one thing that has always worked throughout history is tariffs, and we can see over the past couple of decades what happens without them.