Political & Economic Reality vs. Rightwing Propaganda, Part II

All,

Both Paul Krugman (Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics in 2008) and Bob Herbert are 100% correct. The heartless, braindead Republican Party is a national menace and disgrace and really don't care if the country goes belly up or not so long as the rich and arrogant continue to thrive at our collective expense. President Obama, the Democratic Party, and the rest of us will have to fight these rightwing demagogic bullies tooth and nail for the entire duration of the President's stay in the White House, and if we don't--mark my words--this country will be destroyed...

Kofi

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/opinion/06krugman.html?em=&pagewanted=print

February 6, 2009
OP-ED COLUMNIST
On the Edge
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times

A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.

It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated.

Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.

It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world.

Consumers, their wealth decimated and their optimism shattered by collapsing home prices and a sliding stock market, have cut back their spending and sharply increased their saving — a good thing in the long run, but a huge blow to the economy right now. Developers of commercial real estate, watching rents fall and financing costs soar, are slashing their investment plans. Businesses are canceling plans to expand capacity, since they aren’t selling enough to use the capacity they have. And exports, which were one of the U.S. economy’s few areas of strength over the past couple of years, are now plunging as the financial crisis hits our trading partners.

Meanwhile, our main line of defense against recessions — the Federal Reserve’s usual ability to support the economy by cutting interest rates — has already been overrun. The Fed has cut the rates it controls basically to zero, yet the economy is still in free fall.

It’s no wonder, then, that most economic forecasts warn that in the absence of government action we’re headed for a deep, prolonged slump. Some private analysts predict double-digit unemployment. The Congressional Budget Office is slightly more sanguine, but its director, nonetheless, recently warned that “absent a change in fiscal policy ... the shortfall in the nation’s output relative to potential levels will be the largest — in duration and depth — since the Depression of the 1930s.”

Worst of all is the possibility that the economy will, as it did in the ’30s, end up stuck in a prolonged deflationary trap.

We’re already closer to outright deflation than at any point since the Great Depression. In particular, the private sector is experiencing widespread wage cuts for the first time since the 1930s, and there will be much more of that if the economy continues to weaken.

As the great American economist Irving Fisher pointed out almost 80 years ago, deflation, once started, tends to feed on itself. As dollar incomes fall in the face of a depressed economy, the burden of debt becomes harder to bear, while the expectation of further price declines discourages investment spending. These effects of deflation depress the economy further, which leads to more deflation, and so on.

And deflationary traps can go on for a long time. Japan experienced a “lost decade” of deflation and stagnation in the 1990s — and the only thing that let Japan escape from its trap was a global boom that boosted the nation’s exports. Who will rescue America from a similar trap now that the whole world is slumping at the same time?

Would the Obama economic plan, if enacted, ensure that America won’t have its own lost decade? Not necessarily: a number of economists, myself included, think the plan falls short and should be substantially bigger. But the Obama plan would certainly improve our odds. And that’s why the efforts of Republicans to make the plan smaller and less effective — to turn it into little more than another round of Bush-style tax cuts — are so destructive.

So what should Mr. Obama do? Count me among those who think that the president made a big mistake in his initial approach, that his attempts to transcend partisanship ended up empowering politicians who take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. What matters now, however, is what he does next.

It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.


Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/opinion/07herbert.html?th&emc=th


OP-ED COLUMNIST
Playing With Fire
By BOB HERBERT
New York Times
February 6, 2009

It was good to see the president, ordinarily so cool, so accommodating, exhibiting some real fire the other night. It seems to have done some good.

With the economy in deep, deep trouble, and Americans suffering by the tens of millions, the Republicans spent much of the week doing their same-old, bad-faith Neanderthal two-step: trying their best to derail the economic stimulus package working its difficult way through Congress.

“This bill is stinking up the place,” said Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina who not only opposed the legislation but wanted to make sure that no one would mistake him for a class act.

One of the goals of the package, of course, is to begin cleaning up the holy mess that resulted from the long, dark night of G.O.P. control in Washington. President Obama went out of his way to get a substantial number of Republicans to make a genuine effort to move the economic revitalization process along, but was rebuffed, and in some cases contemptuously.

On Thursday night, he struck back, attacking Republican intransigence and its failed policies of the past. On Friday morning, with the government reporting that nearly 600,000 more jobs had been lost in January, the president went public again, stressing how irresponsible it would be to do nothing in the face of the growing crisis.

Neither the job losses nor the president’s prodding was enough to prompt much of a response from the Republicans. But by Friday evening, it appeared that a small number of G.O.P. senators, enough to assure Senate passage of a revised (and watered-down) stimulus package by a very slim margin, had come aboard.

But only a small number. Even as the report of an agreement was being circulated, Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, was bad-mouthing the package on CNN. “This bill is a disaster,” he said.

It’s been clear for years that the G.O.P. is a party without a heart. But its pointless obstructionism, its overall lack of any serious response to what is a clear national economic emergency, seems to indicate it’s also a party without a brain.

Republicans in Washington have behaved like a milling crowd standing in the way of firefighters trying to respond to a devastating blaze. The best that can be said for the party is that a few senators seem to have been able part the crowd enough to let the rescuers begin to inch forward.

President Obama addressed Republican inflexibility on Thursday night when he said at a gathering in Williamsburg, Va., “Don’t come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis.” He added that without swift action on the stimulus bill, “an economy that is already in crisis will be faced with catastrophe.”

The report of January’s enormous job losses came roughly a dozen hours later. It was the latest in a long and hideous pattern of employment woes, much of it resulting from the G.O.P.’s obsession with destructive supply-side economic voodoo.

On the front page of The Times on Friday was an article that said the number of women on the nation’s payrolls is poised to pass that of men for the first time in American history. This is not because women have been doing so well, but because men have been doing so poorly.

As I was reading the article, I thought of all the guys who used to listen to Rush Limbaugh while driving to or from work but are now tuning in from their living rooms because the benefits of the G.O.P.’s right-wing, tax-cutting ideology never trickled down to them and they are now jobless.

“Since the start of the recession,” as Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, points out, “the U.S. economy has shed more jobs than the total population of Chicago.”

The Republicans still don’t get it. Most act as if they don’t understand that in this radical economic downturn the demand for goods and services has fallen off a cliff, and that government spending is needed — and needed quickly — to replace a large portion of that lost demand.

The goal is twofold: to alleviate some of the enormous suffering (something that is easily understood if you have a heart), and to revive the battered economy (equally easy to understand by anyone with a brain).

Senator John McCain echoed many of his Republican colleagues on Friday when he indignantly asserted, “This is not a stimulus bill; it is a spending bill.”

It was an objection that had been addressed by an incredulous President Obama on Thursday night. “What do you think a stimulus is?” the president asked, his voice rising. Spending, he said — to laughter from his audience — “is the whole point.”

Political & Economic Reality vs. Rightwing Propaganda

All,

The stark reality vs. the criminal propaganda of the venomous and destructive Republican right is this: President Obama and the majority Democratic Party is simply going to have to get tough and go toe to toe with the Republicans because "bipartisanship" is merely a rancid myth/lie at this point in American political history. It's a genuine all out ideological war whether the Democrats want to face it or not and they and the President had better be fully prepared to go all the way in their principled opposition to the reactionary bullshit of the shameless demagogues running the Republican Party. The survival of this country hangs in the balance and as the President openly acknowledges any delays in passing this crucial legislation is totally "inexcusable" (see Obama's remarks in the article following the first one below about SPIRALING UNEMPLOYMENT...

Kofi


February 7, 2009
Economy Shed 598,000 Jobs in January
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
New York Times


WASHINGTON - The United States lost almost 600,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate rose to 7.6 percent, its highest level in more than 16 years, the Labor Department said Friday.

It was the biggest monthly job loss since the economy tipped into a recession more than a year ago, and it was even worse than most forecasters had been predicting.

In addition, the government revised the estimates for previous months to include another 400,000 job losses. For December, the government revised the job loss to 577,000, versus an initial reading of 524,000. Over all, it said, the nation has lost 3.6 million jobs since it slipped into a recession in December 2007.

"Businesses are panicked and fighting for survival and slashing their payrolls," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "I think we're trapped in a very adverse, self-reinforcing cycle. The downturn is intensifying, and likely to intensify further unless policy makers respond aggressively."

Despite the jobless number, Wall Street was higher; all three major exchanges were up about 2 percent at noon.

President Obama, in comments Friday morning, said the jobs report reinforced the need for Washington to act quickly, and he urged Congress to pass the economic stimulus package.

"All of us in Washington must remember that we're here to work for the American people," Mr. Obama said. "And if we drag our feet and fail to act, this crisis will turn into a catastrophe."

As in previous months, employers in January slashed their payrolls in almost every industry except health care. Manufacturers eliminated 207,000 jobs, more than in any year since 1982. The construction industry eliminated 111,000 jobs. And retailers, who were wrapping up their worst holiday shopping season in years, eliminated 45,000 jobs.

One modest exception was in workers' wages, which have thus far not reflected the sharp plunge in employment. Hourly earnings edged up to $18.46, up 5 cents, and average weekly earnings climbed to $614.72, up $1.67.

But over all, the new data reinforced the impression of an economy that has become increasingly trapped in a vicious circle of slumping consumer demand, falling business investment, rising unemployment and mounting losses in the banking system.

Although the United States officially slipped into a recession in December 2007, the decline was erratic and temporarily disguised by the impact of the emergency tax-rebate last spring.

Since September, analysts say, economic activity has plunged on almost every front. The monthly pace of job losses shot up to about 500,000 a month for the last three months of 2008, and the new report offered no hint that a bottom was in sight. Last week, the number of Americans filing first-time jobless claims reached a 26-year high, with 626,000 filling out applications.

"This is a horror show we're watching," said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, an economic research organization in Washington. "By every measure available - loss of employment and hours, rise of unemployment, shrinkage of the employment to population rate - this recession is steeper than any recession of the last 40 years, including the harsh recession of the early 1980s."

Most forecasters had predicted that the economy would lose about 540,000 in January. Instead, the Labor Department estimated that 598,000 jobs disappeared.

To be sure, monthly payroll numbers are subject to big revisions in the months that follow. But most other indicators of the job market had been trending worse as well.

Major retailers, rocked by one of the worst holiday shopping seasons in memory, have been shutting stores and laying off of armies of workers in recent weeks. On Thursday, retailers reported that sales fell 1.6 percent in January, the fourth consecutive month of steep declines.

And in a sign that the country's slowdown continues to reach beyond its borders, Canada, America's largest trading partner, reported Friday that its unemployment rate jumped to 7.2 percent in January, from 6.7 percent in December.

In Washington, Friday's gloomy job report put more pressure on Congress to pass an economic stimulus bill. The House passed a bill last week that would provide more than $800 billion in spending and tax cuts. In the Senate, still bogged down by objections from Republicans, lawmakers were hoping to be able to muster enough votes to pass a measure on Friday

"If anything can persuade Congressional Republicans to stop their hyperpartisan sniping at the recovery package, these disastrous employment numbers should be it," said Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who leads the House Financial Services Committee.

For comparison, the unemployment rate was 4.9 percent in January 2008. But some analysts contend that the current rate of 7.6 percent understates the labor market's problems because the percentage of adults participating in the labor force has slumped, and those people are not listed as "unemployed."

Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland, estimated that if the labor force participation rate today were as high as it was when President Bush took office, the unemployment rate would be 9.4 percent.

Ian Shepherdson, chief North American economist for High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, N.Y., said the government had become the only source of energy left to break the cycle of slumping demand for goods and falling production.

"The public sector needs to act," Mr. Shepherdson wrote in a note to clients. "It needs to prevent an endless spiral of attempts to increase saving, leading to reduced spending, leading to reduced incomes, leading to further attempts to raise savings, and so on."

"We remain firmly of the view that the package now in Congress is the bare minimum required to slow the shrinkage of the economy over the next year," he said.

Many economists expect that the economy will continue to contract until July at the very least, but at a slowing pace in the second quarter.

The Federal Reserve continues to pump money into the financial system at a furious pace. Since September, the central bank has more than doubled its reserves, from $900 billion to more than $2 trillion, by literally creating new money.

The Fed has used some of that money to help bail out financial institutions, from Citigroup and Bank of America to the American International Group.

It has been pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into lending programs, stepping in for banks and other financial institutions to buy up a widening array of corporate debt. Later this month, the Fed will begin a $200 billion program, in conjunction with the Treasury, to finance consumer debt ranging from car loans and credit card debt to student loans.

But analysts say that the big problem is not a shortage of money, but a shortage of demand for products by businesses and consumers. As a result, banks are overloaded with excess reserves, made available by the Fed, which they are often simply parking at the Fed.

Jack Healy contributed reporting from New York.


Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company



February 7, 2009
Senators Close to Reaching Accord on Stimulus Bill
By CARL HULSE and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
New York Times

WASHINGTON - Spurred by a dismal unemployment report for January, senators were close to reaching an accord on Friday evening on an economic stimulus program of some $800 billion sought by President Obama to pull the country out of the worst recession in years.

Democrats appeared to have succeeded, after a long day of private negotiations and intense public debate, to have won the support of enough Republicans to move the package toward a final vote. Assuming there is a final vote, passage would be assured.

Exact outlines of the accord were not immediately available, but the senators reportedly agreed to cut some spending and strip out some business tax cuts to gain enough Republican support.

Once the Senate votes on the package, differences between the Senate legislation and a considerably different version passed recently by the House would have to be reconciled. President Obama has said he hopes all that can be accomplished in time for him to sign the measure within 10 days.

Three centrist Republicans, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine, were said to be among the senators being wooed by Democrats, whose efforts were bolstered by Rahm Emanuel, the president's chief of staff, who is a former Congressman from Illinois.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, and Mr. Emanuel reportedly met with Ms. Collins and Mr. Specter Friday evening to smooth out any remaining wrinkles. Soon afterward, Mr. Reid conferred with his fellow Democrats to gain their approval.

The Senate negotiations and day-long public debate were given new urgency by the announcement on Friday morning that 598,000 jobs were lost in January. Democratic lawmakers said it was time to stop quibbling about the exact parameters of the legislation, which mixes safety net spending, tax cuts and a huge infusion of dollars into federal programs.

"While we dither, Rome burns," Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said, noting that the number of unemployed in her state was greater than the total population of other states.

At the White House, Mr. Obama urged Congress to act expeditiously.

"It is inexcusable and irresponsible for any of us to get bogged down in distraction, delay or politics as usual while millions of Americans are being put out of work," said the president, who has grown increasingly impatient with Republican resistance to the legislation.

But Republicans argued that the urgency of the moment should not make them forget their party's principles. "We want to stimulate the economy, not mortgage the future of our children and grandchildren by the kind of fiscally profligate spending embodied in this legislation," said Senator John McCain of Arizona, the defeated presidential candidate who was emerging as a chief Republican opponent of the proposal.

The accord emerged after hours of talks between Democratic leaders and a bipartisan group of lawmakers seeking some reductions in the price tag of the plan. The bipartisan group led by Senators Collins and Ben Nelson, a conservative Democrat from Nebraska, was trying to reduce the spending to about $800 billion, in line with Mr. Obama's initial request.

A memorandum circulating Friday afternoon listed proposed cuts that would bring a net reduction of about $80 billion from a measure that had grown to more than $900 billion. The document showed that money would be eliminated from education programs such as Head Start, criminal justice initiatives that included money for additional police, and some future spending on food stamp programs. The proposal would add spending on Pentagon programs, environmental cleanup and some transportation programs.

"This is a critical day for this new Congress and our country," Senator Reid said. "Faced with this grave and growing economic crisis, Republicans must decide today whether they will join the president and Congressional Democrats on that road to recovery."

"Lets not get dug in," said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut. "This is not a perfect bill, but it clearly is a very good bill. Most important, of all, it is a proposal that will pump money into American economy, into the pockets of working Americans and to businesses throughout this country."

By mid-day, after the president called further delays "inexcusable," the tone of the Senate debate was growing decidedly sharper, with no immediate end in sight, although the Democratic majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, remained optimistic about a vote by Friday evening.

President Obama seized on Friday's economic news - the Labor Department's report that the unemployment rate shot up in January - to step up the pressure on the lawmakers. "Last month, another 600,000 Americans lost their jobs," Mr. Obama said. "That is the single worst month of job loss in 35 years. The Department of Labor also adjusted their job loss numbers for 2008 upwards, and now report that we have lost 3.6 million jobs since this recession began.

"I am sure that at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, members of the Senate are reading these same numbers this morning. I hope they share my sense of urgency and draw the same, unmistakable conclusion: The situation could not be more serious. These numbers demand action. It is inexcusable and irresponsible to get bogged down in distraction and delay while millions of Americans are being put out of work. It is time for Congress to act."

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, said he was worried that the Senate was becoming like a gathering of firefighters arguing about "how to get to the fire while the house keeps burning."

"This is a critical day for this new Congress and our country," Mr. Reid said earlier on the Senate floor. "Faced with this grave and growing economic crisis, Republicans must decide today whether they will join the president and Congressional Democrats on that road to recovery.

"If we succeed, there will be plenty of credit to go around. But if we fail, our entire country will suffer the consequences."

Still, Mr. Reid's Republican counterpart, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said his party colleagues would not sign on to "an aimless spending spree that masks as a stimulus."

President Obama, after signaling for the last several weeks that he wanted to work with Republicans on the bill and accommodate their requests, suggested in sometimes-sharp language on Thursday night that his patience with the other party is wearing thin, and that the Democratic Party's ideological approach should take precedence.

"Don't come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis," Mr. Obama told a gathering of House Democrats in Williamsburg, Va., referring to Republican demands for more tax cuts.

"We are not going to get relief by turning back to the very same policies that for the last eight years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin," Mr. Obama said. "We can't embrace the losing formula that says only tax cuts will work for every problem we face, that ignores critical challenges like our addiction to foreign oil, or the soaring cost of health care, or falling schools and crumbling bridges and roads and levees."

Stepping up his pressure on both parties on Capitol Hill to act swiftly to finish work on the bill in the next 10 days, the president said that the American people had not voted for "the false theories of the past" when they elected him in November, and that it was time to set aside "phony arguments and petty politics."

The Democrats will need the support of at least two Republicans and probably more to win passage of the Senate's stimulus bill, which for procedural reasons will require 60 votes. The Democrats now hold 58 seats, but only 57 have been voting this week. Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts has been absent because of illness.

David Stout contributed reporting.

Support President Obama's Economic Stimulus Bill!

All,

President Obama's economic stimulus bill is not only vitally necessary for the national economy but even more importantly is actually a very progressive and far reaching piece of legislation that proposes and provides crucial funds for education, health care, housing, and employment. Needless to say it's absolutely necessary that this bill (and much more legislation along the same lines besides) is actively supported by the American people and PASSES in the Senate where it is currently being considered for final passage before it is sent on to President Obama for his signature after Congress passed the bill last week (with ZERO support from every last one of the 177 Republican congressional representatives in the House)...The following email letter from MoveOn.org provides even more important detail about what the bill is actually about...

Kofi


President Obama's economic stimulus plan is in trouble. Conservative talking points are dominating the media's coverage and there's lots of misinformation around. Here are a few things you may not have heard about it:

1) This is a very, very good bill. As The Nation writes, "If enacted, the economic recovery plan will be one of the biggest and boldest pieces of progressive legislation in the past forty years."1

Here are some facts about what the bill really does:

Creates or saves 3 million to 4 million jobs in the next two years.2

Averts "literally hundreds of thousands of teacher layoffs"—and doubles funding for the Department of Education.3

Creates 500,000 green jobs and doubles our clean energy production.4

Immediately helps unemployed folks get affordable health insurance.5

Some folks are arguing that it should be bigger, and they're probably right, but this is the best down payment on economic recovery we have seen, and it needs to be passed.

2) The stuff that's being singled out for criticism amounts to a tiny fraction of the bill—like anti-smoking programs that make up less than one-ten-thousandth of the spending.6 They would have you believe this is the centerpiece of the bill. It is not. This kind of nit-picking is pure politics.

3) If it doesn't pass, we're in deep trouble. Even John McCain's economic adviser estimates that without the stimulus, unemployment would top 11% by 2010, the highest level since the Great Depression.7

We all urgently need to get these facts out before the public. Can you write a letter to the editor of your local paper about how the stimulus will affect real people? Our tool makes writing a letter really easy. Click here to get started:

http://pol.moveon.org/lte?campaign_id=100&id=15490-5096174-iUNgQyx&t=3

Last week alone, 100,000 people lost their jobs in this country.8 So we need to make sure the Senate takes action quickly. Nearly 200 economists from across the political spectrum wrote to Congress, agreeing:

"We do not have the luxury of a lengthy debate over the best course of action. This legislation may not be enough to solve all the economy's problems, but it is urgently needed and an important step in the right direction."9

But with so much rhetoric and demagoguery surrounding the bill, it won't pass unless we can get the real facts out to a wide audience. And letters to the editor by local MoveOn members are one of the best ways to set the record straight.

Our tool makes it super easy. We'll provide you with talking points to use, some tips on writing your letter, and an easy way to send it in to any newspaper in your area.
You can start writing your letter to the editor by clicking here:

http://pol.moveon.org/lte?campaign_id=100&id=15490-5096174-iUNgQyx&t=4

Thanks for all you do.

–Noah, Laura, Patrick S., Anna and the rest of the team

Sources

1. "The Right is Winning Today," The Nation, February 3, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51138&id=15490-5096174-iUNgQyx&t=5

2. "Senate OKs tax break for new-car buyers," Boston Globe, February 4, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51139&id=15490-5096174-iUNgQyx&t=6

3. "Stimulus Plan Would Provide Flood of Aid to Education," New York Times, January 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/education/28educ.html

4. "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act," Speaker Nancy Pelosi, January 28, 2009
http://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/legislation?id=0273

5. "Relief Seen for Jobless and State in Health Care Plan," New York Times, January 27, 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/us/28health.html

6. "What GOP Leaders deem wasteful in Senate stimulus bill," CNN, February 3, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51140&id=15490-5096174-iUNgQyx&t=7

7. "The Economic Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act," Economy.com, January 21, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51141&id=15490-5096174-iUNgQyx&t=8

8. "Job cuts exceed 100,000 for the week," CNN, February 2, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51142&id=15490-5096174-iUNgQyx&t=9

9. "Letter to Congress: Economist Across the Spectrum Endorse Stimulus Package", Center for American Progress Action Fund, January 27, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51130&id=15490-5096174-iUNgQyx&t=10

Want to support our work? We're entirely funded by our 5 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way.

President Obama, The Economy, and Fighting the Republican Right

February 1, 2009
NEWS ANALYSIS
Stimulus Plan: Reinvention or Recovery?

By DAVID E. SANGER
New York Times


WASHINGTON — As President Obama and Congress barrel toward the latest emergency program to resuscitate the American economy, one question is looming over their search for a cure: Can the government fashion a fast and efficient economic stimulus while also seizing the moment to remake America?

For now, Mr. Obama and his aides are insisting they can accomplish both goals, following their mantra of using the urgency of the economic crisis to accomplish larger — and long-delayed — reforms that never garnered sufficient votes in ordinary times.

In fact, at various times in American history, moments like this one have been used for big programs, from integrating the armed forces to creating Social Security and, later, Medicare. So it is little wonder that everyone with a big, stalled, transformative project — green energy programs, broadband networks that reach into rural America, health insurance for the newly unemployed or uninsured — is citing the precedent of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and declaring that a new New Deal is overdue.

But the question that the Senate will begin debating Monday is whether grand ambitions are getting in the way of pulling the country out of a nose dive. And so for every comparison of this moment to Roosevelt’s first hundred days, there are warnings that much of his social experimentation did not have a big impact on America’s economic recovery, which took years.

“When you are filling a hole this big and adding to America’s debt on such a large scale, you need to make sure every dollar is aimed for the economic boost you need,” said Martin S. Feldstein, a Harvard economist who warned more than a year ago that the United States economy was about to be hit between the eyes.

Mr. Feldstein has provided the economic arguments behind Republican objections that Mr. Obama is starting a long-term expansion of government, after decades in which the United States has relied on market solutions and encouraged nations around the world to do the same.

The economic arguments mask, for some, a primal fear that this is 1933 all over again, the beginning of a 21st century liberal resurgence.

The comparisons to 1933 are sure to resound even louder in the next week. Much as Roosevelt imposed a “bank holiday” in his first days in office to stop the run on American financial institutions, Mr. Obama promised in his weekly address to the nation on Saturday that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner would soon announce “a new strategy for reviving our financial system that gets credit flowing to businesses and families.”

That is bound to revive the question of whether anything short of nationalizing some of America’s biggest banks, even briefly, can get the job done.

Taken together, the economic stimulus plan and the banking bailout have quickly melded into a bitter political and ideological clash, barely two weeks into the Obama presidency.

Some of what is going on might best be called a classic case of pent-up demand — demand by Democrats for the kinds of programs that they could never get passed during the Bush years.

After years of battling with a White House that questioned the science behind global warming, Democratic lawmakers see a chance to begin programs aimed at environmental protection, using economic justifications for efforts like developing low-emission cars. And with a Democrat in the White House, they also see an opening to push for increased spending on education.

The efforts are fueled by a liberal base that supported Mr. Obama’s promise that he would tackle the biggest issues. That same base is concerned that the long slog ahead will force a delay or an abandonment of those ambitions.

As a result, there is $54 billion in the House bill for new forms of “American energy,” a phrase with an air of nationalism, along with a series of “Buy America” requirements of dubious legality under trade treaties; $141 billion for education; $24 billion for lowering health care costs; and $6 billion for broadband service, the digital equivalent of Lyndon B. Johnson electrifying the Hill Country in Texas.

(Some critics of that effort say it is pitifully small, too small to fulfill Mr. Obama’s campaign promise that all Americans should enjoy “the highest form of broadband access.”)

To those who argue that many of the programs will take years to get rolling, their advocates have replied, “So what?”

“It’s not as if we can just fix what’s wrong and go back to normal,” said James K. Galbraith, an economist at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs in Austin. “Can you overdo? Maybe, but it’s easier to pull back later than to make up for the fact that you did too little.”

But the result is that a piece of “emergency” legislation that would spend heavily to stanch the killing of jobs is now transforming into a series of long-term commitments that are sure to add enormously to the national debt, and keep adding to it long after the Panic of 2008 and the recession — or worse — that it set off are consigned to history.

Republicans see a chance to do something they could do only quietly, and rarely, until President George W. Bush flew out of the city 11 days ago: protest huge deficit spending. Now, they are freer to complain — as Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky did on Saturday in the Republican response to Mr. Obama’s address, when he argued that “permanent spending would be expanded by about $240 billion” in the House, which would “lock in bigger and bigger deficits every year.”

(Mr. McConnell was less vocal in his opposition when President Bush declared that the combination of 9/11, a downturn and the expansion of the military budget required deficit spending.)

The Republicans have been joined by a small band of Democratic fiscal conservatives whose message does not seem to match the party’s mood.

“Because we’re doing this outside the budget process, it means no one has to talk about what the long-term effects of any of this might be,” said Alice M. Rivlin, an economist at the Brookings Institution and a former member of the Federal Reserve, who supports a major stimulus package. She testified recently in Congress about the need to separate short-term economic stimulus from a broader agenda — which embraces everything from fixing America’s schools to improving health care for children.

“We seem to be counting on the Chinese to keep investing to pay for this,” Ms. Rivlin said, referring to the huge amount of United States government debt held by China, “and we’re assuming that the rest of the world isn’t going to lose confidence once we use this moment to spend on a whole range of programs. And I’m just not sure that’s the right assumption.”

Ms. Rivlin raises what may turn out to be the most urgent question of all in a few months.

When Roosevelt took America down new roads, he financed it at home. Mr. Obama does not have that luxury: He must persuade not only Congress and the public but also world financial markets, which must decide whether — and at what interest rate — they are willing to finance his plan.

That is the three-dimensional chess game the administration must play as it tries to mount the biggest economic rescue plan in more than seven decades.


Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

MEANWHILE PRAISE FROM OBAMA'S LEFT FLANK....

1 Obama Is a Two-Faced Liar. Aw-RIGHT!
2 Obama's Economic Recovery Plan Is Almost As Pure As
Ivory Soap

Obama Is a Two-Faced Liar. Aw-RIGHT!

by Greg Palast
www.GregPalast.com
January 29, 2009

Republicans are right. President Barack Obama treated
them like dirt, didn't give a damn what they thought
about his stimulus package, loaded it with a bunch of
programs that will last for years and will never leave
the budget, is giving away money disguised as "tax
refunds," and is sneaking in huge changes in policy,
from schools to health care, using the pretext of an
economic emergency.

Way to go, Mr. O! Mr. Down-and-Dirty Chicago pol.
Street-fightin' man. Covering over his break-your-face
power play with a "we're all post-partisan friends" BS.

And it's about time.

Frankly, I was worried about this guy. Obama's
appointing Clinton-droids to the Cabinet, bloated
incompetents like Larry Summers as "Economics Czar,"
made me fear for my country, that we'd gotten another
Democrat who wished he were a Republican.

Then came Obama's money bomb. The House bill included
$125 billion for schools (TRIPLING federal spending on
education), expanding insurance coverage to the
unemployed, making the most progressive change in the
tax code in four decades by creating a $500 credit
against social security payroll deductions, and so on.

It's as if Obama dug up Ronald Reagan's carcass and put
a stake through The Gipper's anti-government heart. Aw-
RIGHT!

About the only concession Obama threw to the right-wing
trogs was to remove the subsidy for condoms, leaving
hooker-happy GOP Senators, like David Vitter, to pay
for their own protection. S'OK with me.

And here's the proof that Bam is The Man: Not one
single Republican congressman voted for the bill. And
that means that Obama didn't compromise, the way
Clinton and Carter would have, to win the love of these
condom-less jerks.

And we didn't need'm. Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!

Now I understand Obama's weird moves: dinner with those
creepy conservative columnists, earnest meetings at the
White House with the Republican leaders, a dramatic
begging foray into Senate offices. Just as the
Republicans say, it was all a fraud. Obama was pure
Chicago, Boss Daley in a slim skin, putting his arms
around his enemies, pretending to listen and care and
compromise, then slowly, quietly, slipping in the
knife. All while the media praises Obama's "post-
partisanship." Heh heh heh.

Love it. Now we know why Obama picked that vindictive
little viper Rahm Emanuel as staff chief: everyone
visiting the Oval office will be greeted by the Windy
City hit man who would hack up your grandma if you mess
with the Godfather-in-Chief.

I don't know about you, but THIS is the change I've
been waiting for.

Will it last? We'll see if Obama caves in to more tax
cuts to investment bankers. We'll see if he stops the
sub-prime scum-bags from foreclosing on frightened
families. We'll see if he stands up to the whining,
gormless generals who don't know how to get our troops
out of Iraq. (In SHIPS, you doofusses!)

Look, don't get your hopes up. But it may turn out the
new President's ... a Democrat!

---

Greg Palast's investigative reports for BBC and Rolling
Stone can be seen at www.GregPalast.com. Palast is the
author of New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy
Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse.

===

Obama's Economic Recovery Plan Is Almost As Pure As
Ivory Soap

CAF STAFF
By Bernie Horn
January 27th, 2009

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009010527/obama-s-economic-recovery-plan-almost-pure-ivory-soap>

There's been a lot of bitching and moaning in the
progressive blogosphere about the huge business tax
cuts that are supposed to be contained in President
Obama's economic recovery plan.

In fairness to all, the negotiations took place behind
closed doors, leaving us little solid information on
which to base opinions. And over the years, we've had
good reason to be wary of backroom deals in Congress.

But there's good news. The American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act is a remarkably "clean" bill. Only
between 1½ and 3 percent is being wasted on tax cuts
for business. Put another way, the bill is about 98
percent pure-money dedicated to good, progressive
causes.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis,
released Monday, says the business tax cuts will cause
"a net revenue loss of $13 billion over the 2009-2019
period." See the discussion on pages 11-12 of this
document.

The figure of $13 billion is confirmed and explained by
the House Ways and Means Committee on pages 2-3 in this
document. There are only three business tax provisions
that have a significant price tag. First, the extension
of bonus depreciation enacted last year, allowing
businesses to depreciate capital costs faster than the
ordinary schedule, will cost $5 billion. Second, the 5-
year carryback provision, allowing businesses to deduct
net losses from the last five years instead of the last
two, will cost $15 billion. Third, the repeal of a Bush
Treasury Department ruling that unjustly benefits the
purchasers of certain companies will increase revenues
by $7 billion. So $20 billion in business tax cuts are
offset by a $7 billion tax increase, leaving a total of
$13 billion in benefits.

As you probably know, the Senate Finance Committee
intends to make larger business tax cuts than the House
bill has. The analysis of the Finance Committee's
markup, evaluated by the Congressional Joint Committee
on Taxation, is on page 3 of this document. The Senate
version includes both the bonus depreciation and 5-year
carryback provisions, but the Joint Committee estimates
these will cost a total of $22.5 billion instead of the
House's $20 billion. The Senate does not include the $7
billion tax increase and adds a bit more than $2
billion more in tax breaks for a total of $24.9 billion
in business tax benefits.

The CBO tells us that the whole bill costs $816
billion. So if the Senate version is adopted, only 3
percent of the spending is for business tax breaks.
(That percentage is about the same with or without the
recent Alternative Minimum Tax provision.) If the House
version is adopted, it's only 1½ percent. Either way,
this is a bill that is between 97 and 98.5 percent
targeted toward good causes.

In our nation's capital, no major bill ever passes
without a "sweetener" for the special interests you may
oppose. By Capitol Hill standards, this is an
exceptionally modest sweetener. And don't think it's
necessarily being done to gain Republican votes-key
Democrats want these too.

The bottom line: This is the biggest and boldest
progressive legislation in 40 years. By all means,
register your complaints against the business tax cuts.
But don't let that dampen your enthusiasm for the
overall measure. If you live in a state with a
Republican or less-than-liberal Democratic Senator,
call them today and urge them to support this bill.
You'll be sorry if you don't help out, because this is
history in the making.

The writer is a Senior Fellow at Campaign for America's
Future and author of the recent book, Framing the
Future: How Progressive Values Can Win Elections and
Influence People.

_____________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.

Wall Street Greed & Exploitation vs. the American People

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/business/30obama.html?th&emc=th

All,

Hold on to your hats everybody--we haven't seen anything yet! Can Government nationalization and stringent hardcore regulation of banks and financial institutions be far behind? WE CAN ONLY HOPE...or finally wake up and demand it...

Kofi


Obama Calls Wall Street Bonuses ‘Shameful’
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and STEPHEN LABATON
January 29, 2009
New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Obama branded Wall Street bankers “shameful” on Thursday for giving themselves nearly $20 billion in bonuses as the economy was deteriorating and the government was spending billions to bail out some of the nation’s most prominent financial institutions.


Obama: Now Not The Time for Bonuses

CNBC coverage of a press conference with President Obama, in which he called Wall Street's $20 billion in bonuses this year 'shameful,' considering that the same firms have been receiving government rescue money.

“There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses,” Mr. Obama said during an appearance in the Oval Office with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner. “Now’s not that time. And that’s a message that I intend to send directly to them, I expect Secretary Geithner to send to them.”

It was a pointed — if calculated — flash of anger from the president, who frequently railed against excesses in executive compensation on the campaign trail. He struck his populist tone as he confronted the possibility of having to ask Congress for additional large sums of money, beyond the $700 billion already authorized, to prop up the financial system, even as he pushes Congress to move quickly on a separate economic stimulus package that could cost taxpayers as much as $900 billion.

This week alone, American companies reported as many as 65,000 job cuts, and public anger is rising over reports of profligate spending by banks and investment firms that are receiving help from the $700 billion bailout fund. About half of that money is still available, but the new administration has yet to announce how it will use it, and many analysts think it will take far more to stabilize the banking system.

Should Mr. Obama have to go to Congress to seek more money for the bailout fund to avert the failure of more banks, he would most likely encounter opposition within both parties and demands for tighter restrictions on pay for executives of institutions that receive government assistance.

Mr. Geithner has already signaled a willingness to impose stricter compensation limits as part of a revamped approach to dealing with the banking crisis, but with his strong words on Thursday, Mr. Obama seemed intent on reassuring Congress and the public that he would step up the pressure on bankers before granting them additional assistance.

Mr. Obama was reacting to a report by the New York State comptroller that found financial executives had received an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for 2008, less than for the previous several years but the same level of bonuses as they received in 2004, when times were flush.

“That is the height of irresponsibility,” Mr. Obama said. “It is shameful. And part of what we’re going to need is for the folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint and show some discipline and show some sense of responsibility.”

The Obama administration and lawmakers have begun to consider ways to control executive pay; the bailout fund, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, would be the main vehicle for exerting such control. The administration of former President George W. Bush issued guidelines last October to try to control executive pay at companies receiving government help, but so far they have done little to curb large salaries.

During his confirmation hearings, Mr. Geithner said the administration is preparing rules that would require executives at companies receiving taxpayer money to agree that any compensation above a certain amount — he did not specify how much — be “paid in restricted stock or similar form” that could not be liquidated or sold until the government had been repaid.

Some lawmakers, meanwhile, have said they are considering so-called “clawback” provisions that could be invoked by the government to take back bonuses and executive pay from officials at companies that encountered problems.

In the meantime, public outrage is already forcing some companies to rein in their lavish spending. John A. Thain, the former Merrill Lynch executive who was forced out of Bank of America, said this week he would reimburse Bank of America for an expensive renovation of his office that included an $87,000 area rug and $35,000 commode.

But it took the urging of the Obama administration to force Citigroup, which received an infusion of taxpayer funds last year, to abandon plans to buy a $50 million corporate jet. On Thursday, Mr. Obama made reference to the jet, without singling out Citigroup by name; his remarks came one day after the president met at the White House with business leaders, including Richard D. Parsons, the new chairman of Citigroup.

On Capitol Hill, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, issued his own warning on Thursday, saying companies would be summoned to testify if taxpayer money was involved.

“Whether it was used directly or indirectly, this infuriates the American people and rightly so,” Mr. Dodd said. “So I say to anyone else who does it, if you do it, I’m going to bring you before the committee.”

There is also political pressure to rein in pay in industries beyond banks and investment firms. The pressure reflects the substantial disparities between pay increases for senior executives, the low rate of wage growth for workers and the frequent disconnect between compensation and the long-term strategic success or failure of corporations.

Mr. Obama’s message on Thursday was reinforced by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who pledged in an interview with CNBC and The New York Times that the government would spend the remaining $350 billion of the troubled assets money “wisely and prudently and transparently.”

Mr. Biden said that he, like the president, was outraged by reports of large bonuses going to Wall Street executives.

“I’d like to throw these guys in the brig,” he said. “They’re thinking the same old thing that got us here, greed. They’re thinking, ‘Take care of me.’ ”

John Harwood contributed reporting.

Equal Pay for Equal Work--Attacking Sexism at its Economic Source

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/first-lady-in-her-first-public-policy-role/?nl=pol&emc=pola2

All,

Very good news as President Obama overturns reactionary, sexist 2007 Supreme Court ruling upholding pay discrimination against women and signs equal pay bill. AmerThis legislation was well overdue for many years and it demonstrates what genuine power any President has to actually protect and defend the real interests of working people if he chooses to...

Needless to say this truly progressive decision on Obama's part goes under the category that I mentioned yesterday of that citizen activism that "will actively support and prop up what needs to be supported"...

Kofi


Obama Signs Equal-Pay Legislation

President Obama signed his first bill into law on Thursday, approving the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a law named for Ms. Ledbetter, fourth from left, an Alabama woman who at the end of a 19-year career as a supervisor in a tire factory complained that she had been paid less than men.

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: January 29, 2009
New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Obama signed his first bill into law on Thursday, approving equal-pay legislation that he said would “send a clear message that making our economy work means making sure it works for everybody.”

Mr. Obama was surrounded by a group of beaming lawmakers, most but not all of them Democrats, in the East Room of the White House as he affixed his signature to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a law named for an Alabama woman who at the end of a 19-year career as a supervisor in a tire factory complained that she had been paid less than men.

After a Supreme Court ruling against her, Congress approved the legislation that expands workers’ rights to sue in this kind of case, relaxing the statute of limitations.

“It is fitting that with the very first bill I sign — the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — we are upholding one of this nation’s first principles: that we are all created equal and each deserve a chance to pursue our own version of happiness,” the president said.

He said was signing the bill not only in honor of Ms. Ledbetter — who stood behind him, shaking her head and clasping her hands in seeming disbelief — but in honor of his own grandmother, “who worked in a bank all her life, and even after she hit that glass ceiling, kept getting up again” and for his daughters, “because I want them to grow up in a nation that values their contributions, where there are no limits to their dreams.”

The ceremony, and a reception afterward in the State Dining Room of the White House, had a celebratory feel. The East Room was packed with advocates for civil rights and workers rights; the legislators, who included House and Senate leaders and two moderate Republicans — Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both of Maine — shook Mr. Obama’s hand effusively (some, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, received presidential pecks on the cheek) as he took the stage. They looked over his shoulder, practically glowing, as Mr. Obama signed his name to the bill, using one pen for each letter.

“I’ve been practicing signing my name very slowly,” Mr. Obama said wryly, looking at a bank of pens before him. He handed the first pen to the bill’s chief sponsor, Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, and the last to Ms. Ledbetter.

The ceremony also marked First Lady Michelle Obama’s policy debut; she spoke afterward in a reception in the State Dining Room, where she called Ms. Ledbetter “one of my favorite people.”

Mr. Obama told Ms. Ledbetter’s story over and over again during his campaign for the White House; she spoke frequently as an advocate for him during his campaign, and made an appearance at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Now 70, Ms. Ledbetter discovered when she was nearing retirement that her male colleagues were earning much more than she was. A jury found her employer, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company plant in Gadsden, Ala., guilty of pay discrimination. But in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court threw out the case, ruling that she should have filed her suit within 180 days of the date that Goodyear first paid her less than her peers.

Congress tried to pass a law that would have effectively overturned the decision while President George W. Bush was still in office, but the White House opposed the bill; opponents contended it would encourage lawsuits and argued that employees could delay filing their claims in the hope of reaping bigger rewards. But the new Congress passed the bill, which restarts the six-month clock every time the worker receives a paycheck .

Ms. Ledbetter will not see any money as a result of the legislation Mr. Obama signed into law. But what she has gotten, aside from celebrity, is personal satisfaction, as she said in the State Dining Room after the signing ceremony.

“Goodyear will never have to pay me what it cheated me out of,” she said. “In fact, I will never see a cent. But with the president’s signature today I have an even richer reward.”



January 29, 2009
First Lady in Her First Public-Policy Role
By RACHEL L. SWARNS


Michelle Obama stepped into the public-policy spotlight as first lady for the first time on Thursday, hailing a new law that will give women greater power to challenge sex discrimination in the workplace.

Standing below a portrait of Lincoln in the State Dining Room of the White House, Mrs. Obama described pay equity as “a top and critical priority for women of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, older women, younger women, women with disabilities and their families.’’

Mrs. Obama said the legislation, which was signed into law by President Obama on Thursday, symbolized her commitment and her husband’s to ensure that policies are put in place to “help women and men balance their work and family obligations without putting their jobs or their economic security at risk.

Mrs. Obama’s comments marked her first public appearance since she moved into the White House with her family last week. She stood in a purple power suit alongside Lilly M. Ledbetter, a supervisor at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company plant in Alabama.

Ms. Ledbetter became a cause célèbre among advocates for women when the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that she was not entitled to compensation even though she received much smaller raises over several years than men in comparable positions at her plant.

The new law overturns that Supreme Court decision, which made it much harder for employees to challenge unlawful pay discrimination based on gender, race, age and disability.

Mrs. Obama and Ms. Ledbetter appeared together during the presidential campaign. And on Thursday, they stood together again before a crowd that included the cheering, clapping members of 150 advocacy organizations that had pressed for the law.

“I know that my daughters and granddaughters and your daughters and granddaughters will have a better deal,’’ Ms. Ledbetter said. “That’s what makes this fight worth fighting.”

Mrs. Obama has said that she plans to focus on supporting working parents and military families.

PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA INAUGURATION SPEECH, January 20, 2009

All,

Please note that directly following the printed copy of President Obama's inauguration speech below there is a comprehensive ideological and political analysis of Obama's speech by leftist political journalist and historian Paul Street, who has written an important new book entitled "Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics" (Paradigm Press, 2008), as well as my own critical assessment of Street's analysis...

Kofi

http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/bild-english/world-news/2009/01/20/barack-obama-speech/first-black-president-historic-inaugural-address.html


BARACK OBAMA INAUGURATION SPEECH IN FULL

History is made as first black President is sworn in

Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States and the nation's first ever black president on January 20, 2009. This is a transcript of his historic speech:

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the Presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.
So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concordand Gettysburg; Normandyand Khe Sahn.
Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control - and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that Americais a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort - even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraqto its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Thank you. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America."

(End of speech)


http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=999&Itemid=1

All,

Paul Street is the author of an excellent new book about Obama entitled "Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics" (Paradigm Press, 2008). While Street's incisive ideological critique of Obama is both timely and important in a number of ways I hope he and many others don't forget that it won't be nearly enough in and of itself to simply attack Obama's obvious individual political flaws, weaknesses, blindspots, and inadequacies and simply leave it at that. Individual moral and ideological outrage--however justified-- is one thing. HOWEVER, organized mass struggle both for specific alternatives, values, and ideas as well as against specific policies, positions, actions, and directives is quite another---and both are far more necessary and difficult both in the short and long term to say the least than rhetorical critique alone.

In that same light I also hope that Street and many other progressives and radicals from the Left in this country don't generally get mired down in merely taking rhetorical potshots at Obama and his administration while neglecting to do the kind of intense, arduous, and systematic political organizing, education, and mobilization at the grassroots level--as the American Left so often fails to do-- that cries out to be done at this particularly opportune and dangerous moment in American history when the global capitalist crisis is at one of its periodic heights. Certainly we can and should acknowledge the highly significant fact (and give intelligent credit where it is surely due!) that Obama himself clearly recognized this necessity in his own campaign for the Presidency and succeeded brilliantly in many creative, disciplined, and highly imaginative ways that the American Left still desperately needs to learn how to do on its own behalf. After all merely pointing out that President Obama--like all American Presidents-- is (gasp!) a charter member of the "ruling class" in the United States is a rather facile Homer Simpson-like observation ("DOH!") in the final analysis and ultimately doesn't tell us much if anything about how we, the People, are to seriously address, deal with, and critically engage this highly obvious fact and many others in genuine political and ideological terms as far as our own collective activity as citizens are concerned.

No, I'm afraid we've all got a lot more work cut out for us than simply telling ourselves over and over again what we already know or smugly "believe.". Deciding exactly what to do--and how to do it (strategically, tactically, and in broad visionary terms)--in response to the massive tasks facing all of us is the real, profound challenge looming before us all. That challenge--and opportunity--can't and should never be reduced just to what we think President Obama is or is not doing at any given time. Rather we need to do the kind of serious, disciplined, and creative work on the issues, concerns, agendas, and possibilities ourselves that will actively support and prop up what needs to be supported, critique and oppose that which needs to be opposed, and always fight for more than what we are being asked to "settle for." That mature approach to political, ideological, and cultural activity will require us to take a number of useful pages from even Obama's administrative and policy playbook(s) and simultaneously go far beyond them. That won't be nearly as easy as simply taking Barack to task for his own personal allegiance to "bourgeois, nationalist, and imperial canons" in American politics, but it will provide us as citizens of the Republic with a truly mature and dynamic template for constantly struggling for and ultimately winning (and then fighting still again and again) the ongoing battles for true mass democracy in this society. We can't afford to do any less--whether Obama is the President or not. Since he is the President, let's honestly acknowledge just who and what he really is and isn't--both positively and negatively in time honored dialectical style--and act accordingly...

Kofi


Barack Obama's Not-So Non-Ideological Inaugural Address

Wednesday, 28 January 2009
by Paul Street


The new president dismisses "ideology" in order to promote his own brand of neo-liberalism. He is a partisan in the corporate war-against-all who slimes the opposition as purveyors of "dogma," "stale" ideas and "tired" recriminations, a proponent of government "that works" who never addresses the question, "for whom?" Obama blames the current crisis on a "collective failure" of the people, a form of "vicious victim-blaming" that suggests "the country's broad populace shares equal responsibility with the investor class for the nation's dire economic straits."

Barack Obama's Not-So Non-Ideological Inaugural Address
by Paul Street

"Set thine house in order" - 2 Kings, chapter 20, verse

The Obama administration makes a very big point of claiming to be above and beyond "ideology." It's all about the "pragmatic" goal of "getting things done" with no particular "ideological" axe to grind.

"Ideological" approaches and divisions are from the dysfunctional bad old days, before the new president wiped the slate clean and started History anew.

Like his previous famous speeches [1], however, Barack Obama's somewhat leaden Inaugural Address last Tuesday was chock full of, well, ideology. It was loaded with customary bourgeois, nationalist and imperial canon and colored by the power elite's standard crackpot history, suggesting that The One is another ruling class politician. Let's take a closer look at Obama's latest grand oration.



Bush's "Service to Our Nation"

Obama started by thanking ex-President George W. Bush "for his service to our nation." I doubt there was any way for Obama to avoid this, but the fact remains that George Bush II was and remains an especially egregious arch-offender. He viciously exploited 9/11 to greatly further the upward concentration of wealth and power and to shred civil liberties at home and abroad. He launched a monumentally illegal and immoral war of aggression on thoroughly false and concocted pretexts.

It is a great disgrace that the Congress in which Obama served did not act on their constitutional duty to have impeached and removed Bush and Dick Cheney for crimes against humanity, international law, and U.S. law.

Obama's expressed reluctance to investigate and prosecute the Bush administration's transgressions is applauded by dominant media as an example of his desire to "heal the nation" and "look forward, not backwards." But it does not bode well for his responsible utilization of the imperial presidency's awesome powers. At the same time, meaningful healing and reconciliation require acknowledgement of - and real consequences for - terrible crimes.

"The Ideals of Our Forebears"

In times of crisis, Obama said, "America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because we the people have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebears, and true to our founding documents."

Not really. A vast literature and empirical record shows that "our" founders and their documents were quite explicitly authoritarian. They were harshly classist (as well as racist and sexist) on the whole, deeply convinced (in accord with the dominant bourgeois-republican ideology of their time) that the poor and property-less majority posed grave threats to civilized order and good government. The early American Republic 's well-propertied architects (many of whom were slave owners) believed that, as John Jay put it, the people who own the country should run it. They set up an elaborate constitutional mechanism to keep popular governance and the "rabble" (the majority of the citizenry) at bay. Real democracy was the Founding Fathers' worst nightmare.

Peoples' movements - the labor movement, the abolitionist movement, the farmers' movement, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, and the peace movement, for example - subsequently enriched, expanded and (really) created American democracy from the bottom up.

"Our Nation is at War"

"That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood," Obama said. "Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred."

Where's the "war?" It's in Iraq , Afghanistan , and (most recently) Gaza. And it's a very one-sided imperial and U.S.-imposed affair. Its main victims are civilian Arabs, Pashtuns, and (more broadly) Muslims who have done nothing to the American people.

It's not over here. "At war" Americans aren't dodging IEDS and sniper fire and F-16s and Blackhawk Attack Helicopters on their way to work, school, and shopping center. They haven't been displaced from their homes like millions of Iraqis. They have been encouraged to carry on with private lives of work, family, entertainment, and mass consumerism while U.S. military masters conduct wars of occupation without meaningful popular consultation.

"The U.S. military constitutes the planet's leading 'far-reaching network of violence and hatred.'"

Just a small and disproportionately working-class share of the U.S. population provides soldiers for the nation's bloody colonial wars through the "All Volunteer" Armed Forces. If the U.S. government tried to make military "service" mandatory for young adults across the socioeconomic spectrum it would encounter considerable popular resistance.

The "far-reaching network of [Islamic] violence and hatred" is largely a U.S. creation. It is critically fueled (and was in fact originally financed) by the United States'longstanding petro-imperial presence in the oil-rich Middle East - a presence that is intimately related back to the mass consumerism that induces Americans to devour global resources on a spectacular scale. As far as much of the world - the Muslim world especially - is concerned (with good reason), the U.S. military (replete with more than 730 bases located across more than 130 countries) constitutes the planet's leading "far-reaching network of violence and hatred."

"Our Collective Failure"

"Our economy is badly weakened," Obama said, "a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age."

This statement evades the special agency and culpability of the financial elite. Of course all citizens should work to create "a new [economic] age." But it shades into vicious victim-blaming to suggest that the country's broad populace shares equal responsibility with the investor class for the nation's dire economic straits. The U.S. working- and lower-class majority possesses less than negligible power when it comes to the the direction, of "our [corporate-managed state-capitalist] economy," in which the top 1 percent owns 40 percent of the wealth and 57 percent of all claims on wealth.

Our Wonderful "Free Market Capitalism" at Work

"Homes have been lost;" Obama whined on Tuesday, "jobs shed; businesses shuttered."

Has the "progressive" and highly educated and intelligent young president (recently praised by left-liberal journalist John Nichols for "know[ing] not just the rough outlines of the left-labor-liberal-progressive agenda, but the specifics") [2] studied the history and nature of the profits system --- of the so-called "free market capitalism" he repeatedly aligned himself with during the presidential campaign and in his 2006 campaign book The Audacity of Hope?

If he has then surely he knows that capitalism does all this and more (worse) over and over again. It sheds and shreds jobs, people, communities, livable ecology, and democracy by its very essence, militantly opposed to human need and social health. It's the nature of the beast.

Missing Deeper Points on Health Care

"Our health care," Obama added, "is too costly." But whose health care, exactly, is too dear? America's 2.5 million millionaires and the rest of the nation's rich easily afford the best medical services ever while more than 47 million Americans lack basic medical coverage and hundreds of millions struggle with (yes) overly expensive (and often inadequate) care.

The deeper problems are that "our health care" is too corporate, too private, too commodified, and too unequal. It is absurdly allotted primarily through the job market, making it a major contributor to both unemployment and overwork. It is placed under the cost-fueling control of bloated private insurance companies to whom Obama has pledged a powerful "seat at the table" of "health care reform."

High quality health care can and should be provided for free to all on an equal basis by the government. Reflecting his deep corporate captivity, Obama refuses to advance the most effective democratic and cost-saving health care solution: single-payer national insurance.

"Unity" Over "Conflict and Discord"

"On this day," Obama said last Tuesday, "we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord."

Citizens beware! The elevation of "unity" over "conflict and discord" is rife with authoritarian meaning. Democracy brings "conflict and discord." Those who believe in popular and participatory governance should hardly welcome neo-Bonapartist rulers who claim to rise above supposedly harmful "ideological" and partisan divisions to abolish "discord and conflict," inducing (ex-) citizens to close their mouths and minds.

"On this day," the new president elaborated, "we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics."

More democratic danger here. Obama did not specify precisely what he meant by "recriminations" and "worn out dogmas." Still, we can safely conclude from his past rhetorical record that he includes "radical" and "Marxist" notions of a core conflict between the working and lower-class Many, on one hand, and the rich and powerful Few (his leading sponsors) on the other. And that's a problem, for democracy disappears when that supposedly "worn out" conflict is removed from the spectrum of acceptable debate.

"The Greatness of Our Nation"

"In reaffirming the greatness of our nation," Obama said, "we understand that greatness is never a given." But what is so "great" about our nation? We are 4 percent of the world's population but consume a quarter of the planet's resources, with disastrous environmental consequences at home and abroad. "We":

* have the most unequal distribution of wealth in the industrialized world.

* were founded and grew largely on a basis of genocide and mass enslavement, terrible crimes with deep prices we continue to deny and cloak.

* lead the world in terms of mass incarceration, disproportionately imposed like so much else that is bad in American life on blacks and Latinos.

* afflict African-Americans with a national median-household wealth-gap of seven black cents on the white dollar and with numerous interrelated forms of institutional racism even as the nation celebrates Obama's election as a symbol of its transcendence of racial bigotry.

* account for nearly half the world's military spending, a great drag on our social and spiritual health.

And "we" seem chillingly incapable of acknowledging our crimes past and present. Even the "antiwar" and great liberal hope Obama, for example, will not admit that the invasion of Iraq was criminal and immoral or that it has led to the deaths of more than a million Iraqis. He has never criticized the occupation as anything worse than a "dumb war," a "strategic blunder." Last year (in Janesville, Wisconsin) he even campaigned on the notion that the U.S. was spending too much money helping Iraq instead of the U.S. [3]

Consistent with his claim (to CNN's Candy Crowley last summer) that the U.S. should NOT apologize for its crimes (since the U.S. is obviously what he called "a force for good in the world"), moreover, Obama has refused to call even the Vietnam War - the vicious U.S. assault that ended 2-3 million Indochinese lives between 1962 and 1975 - anything worse than a "mistake." He even argued (in the foreign policy chapter of The Audacity of Hope) that "the greatest casualty of that [Vietnam] war was the bond of trust between the American people and their government" (p.287) --- as if the deaths of millions of Indochinese and 58,000 U.S. GIs were secondary and as if popular American skepticism towards the designs of the U.S. foreign policy establishment isn't a sign of democratic health.

There is an intimate relationship between America 's failure to admit its transgressions abroad and its denial of savage disparities and oppressions at home. U.S. political culture's doctrinal faith in the United States' "exceptional" magnificence feeds American's inability to acknowledge its criminality on the global stage.

Like imperial presidents of the past, Obama cannot let go of the standard and dangerous national-narcissist mantra: "We are Good, We are Great."

"For Us They Fought and Died in Khe Sanh"

Midway through his speech, Obama announced an interesting perspective on the great prior sacrifices that produced "the greatness of our nation." According to the new president:

"Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. ...It has as been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom."

"For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life."

"For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth."

"For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sanh."

"Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction."

Here Obama strangely wove the savage racial oppression of slavery ("endured the lash of the whip") together with European immigration, American frontier settlement (involving the genocidal removal and slaughter of millions of indigenous people - a detail he omits), industrial labor exploitation ("toiled in the sweatshops"), the American Revolution ("Concord"), the Civil War ("Gettysburg"), World War II ("Normandy"), and the U.S-colonial War on Vietnam (the battle of Khe Sanh took place in illegally invaded South Vietnam in 1968) as part of a patriotic storyline wherein hard-working patriots pulled together across divisions of race, class, and party to selflessly create liberty and abundance for future generations of their fellow Americans.

This is sheer Orwellian nonsense. It falsely imposes a retrospectively virtuous tale of shared national "service" and commonality back on the pervasive possessive-individualist selfishness, rampant imperial hubris and savage racism and classism behind the founding and often murderous settlement (conquest) of the country, the brutal exploitation of slaves and garment workers, and the rapacious execution of a bloody and expansionist foreign policy. Are we really supposed to honor the ferocious high-tech Superpower assault on the peasant nation of Vietnam - an imperial onslaught that significantly undermined U.S. economic strength by the way - as some sort of noble moment (along with two and half centuries of black chattel slavery) in the selfless creation of contemporary "prosperity" through the ruggedly righteous labor of anonymous toilers embodying the spirit of the Protestant Work Ethic? [4]

Beyond Good Government

"What the cynics fail to understand," Obama claimed, "is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified."

Here our new President approached but fell short of a real insight. Beneath the battle between so-called "free market" and supposedly anti-government (laissez-faire) "conservatives" on the right and more "pro-government" liberals and progressives on the left lay a deeper conflict between those who want the state to work for the privileged Few and those who want it work for the common good of the working- and lower-class Many.

Today as in previous periods of American state capitalism, nobody's actually against government per se. It's not just about "good government" (a "government that works"). The real question is whose class interest government is going to serve.

But then this is a supposedly "ideological" point raised mainly by people who hold what the "realistic" corporate-neoliberal Obama team considers a "stale" perspective, full of the tired old "recrimination" that lay at the heart of "outworn" class-struggle "dogma."

An Issue Not Before Us": The Goodness of "The Market"

"Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill," Obama proclaimed.

Many good Americans beg to differ. I, for one, agree with the left U.S. economist and visionary Mike Albert, who speaks for many progressives' observations and experience when he notes that:

"Markets are a no-confidence vote on the social capacities of the human species....markets mobilize our creative capacities largely by arranging for other people to threaten our livelihoods and by bribing us with the lure of luxury beyond what others have and beyond what we know we deserve. They feed the worst forms of individualism and egoism. And to top off their anti-social agenda, markets munificently reward those who are the most cut-throat and adept at taking advantage of their fellow citizens, and penalize those who insist on pursuing the golden rule...Mutual concern, empathy, and solidarity have little or no usefulness in market economies, so they atrophy." [5]

I also agree with Laurence Shoup, who observed last summer that Obama's campaign trail declarations of "love" for the market "failed to note that the market loves and rewards those who already have money and power, not those lacking these advantages. To say that you ‘love the market' is akin," Shoup added, "to saying that you love the ruling class (the top 1 percent of the population that controls 20 percent of the country's income and nearly 40 percent of the country's wealth) and do not care about the great majority (the 60 percent of the population that controls only 25 percent of the income and 5 percent of the wealth). To say ‘I love the market' - at a time when the financial system is deflating because of decades of lies about how great unregulated markets are which fueled rampant speculation, phony valuations, and deceitful assurances - is to be deaf to the reality of how powerful interests are protected by the government while everyone gets a lecture on personal responsibility. ‘Change we could believe in,' would involve confronting the perversity of market-driven capitalism...." [6]

The market's "goodness" - along with the virtue of the market's tyrannical Frankenstein creation The Corporation - must be "a question before us."

"We are Ready to Lead Once More"

"As for our common defense" the new head of the American Empire proclaimed Tuesday. "Our founding fathers' ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all the other people and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born, know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and children who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more."

Obama left it to "ideological" others to point out that America follows in the footsteps of past global powers by covering its imperial ambitions and agendas with flowery claims of special benevolent and idealistic credentials and intent. Be that as it may, the U.S. is widely perceived - with good reason - as an enemy of the peace and dignity (and democracy and justice) sought by billions, including the Iraqis (victims of a murderous U.S. occupation Obama has depicted as an expression of America's excessively "good intentions"), the Afghan people (victims of repeated U.S. civilian slaughters for which Obama says the U.S. should NOT apologize), and the Palestinians (on whose fate President-elect Obama was deafeningly and damningly silent). Do the children and families of Gaza and of Afghan villages (the latter are on the wrong end of what Obama considers Bush II's "good" and "proper" war) "we" have unapologetically pulverized in the name of freedom "seek a future of peace and dignity?"

"Ready to lead once more"? The avowed Christian Obama (who said Tuesday that the U.S. must "lead" through "the force of our example") might want to take a closer look at the imperial "homeland." Reflecting on its rising U.S. unemployment, poverty (destitution for some), desperation, incarceration, madness, and inequality, he could consult "Scripture's" (his term) call to "Set thine house in order" (2 Kings, chapter 20, verse 1) before talking so boldly about America "leading" others.

The repair of broken societies and the fixing of failed states begin at home.

"We Will Not Apologize for Our Way of Life"

Claiming that "we are the keepers" of earlier U.S. policymakers' "legacy" of "prudent" "humility and restraint," Obama said that "We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan....We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."

Here Obama proclaimed his buy-in with the false and bankrupt notion that Islamic terrorists assaulted the U.S. because of their hatred for " America 's" supposedly democratic "way of life," NOT because of the United States ' provocative imperial conduct in the Middle East [7]

The phrase "inducing terror and slaughtering innocents" refers to 9/11 and other moments of extremist Islamic terror against the West. It makes no intended reference to leading U.S. client state Israel's recent "mass slaughter of defenseless civilians trapped in a tiny cage [Gaza] with nowhere to flee" (Noam Chomsky [8]). A good "friend of Israel [‘s brutal policies]," Obama has been shockingly but predictably silent on that horrific crime, conducted with U.S. military technology and under U.S. "diplomatic" cover. "We" are not determined to "outlast" and "defeat" the apartheid and occupation state of our close ally Israel.

"Obama proclaimed his buy-in with the false and bankrupt notion that Islamic terrorists assaulted the U.S. because of their hatred for ‘America 's' supposedly democratic ‘way of life.'"

Obama reasserted his disastrous commitment to deepening the imperial quagmire in Afghanistan, an ill-conceived adventure as illegal as the War on Iraq.

Obama's commitment to "begin to responsibly leave" Mesopotamia is loaded with qualification. "Beginning to leave" is not leaving. The caveat of "responsible" departure leaves room for staying when Superpower determines (as seems likely) that "circumstances on the ground" - e.g. "excessive internal violence" and/or "Iranian influence" (imagine) and/or broader Middle Eastern "instability" - mandate continued significant U.S. military presence for an indeterminate time.

"Apologize" or not, the U.S. does need to drastically change its corporate-coordinated mass-consumerist "way of life" both for the sake of livable ecology and in order to reduce its deadly, oil-related entanglement in the Middle East .

Still, what in the name of "God" (a frequent Obama reference) would be so bad about, well, apologizing to the world for the damage our interrelated consumerist and imperial ways have done to life on the planet?

For what its worth (not much in the dominant narrow-spectrum U.S. political and intellectual cultures), "humility and restraint" strike me as curious reflections on the Sand Creek and Wounded Knee massacres, the bloody occupation of the Philippines, the unspeakable crimes of Hiroshima and (even worse) Nagasaki, the overthrows of Arbenz, Mossadeq, and Allende, and the U.S. "crucifixion of Southeast Asia" (Noam Chomsky's phrase at the height of the U.S. attack) during the 1960s and 1970s.

"If You are Willing to Unclinch Your Fist"

"To the Muslim world," Obama said, "we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."

How bitterly these words must have fallen on the ears of many Palestinians who heard them! The Palestinians and their many supporters across the Middle East and the world watched the famously wordy President-elect Obama stand mute, claiming that "institutional constraints" prevented him from commenting on the United States and Israel's recent dreadful massacre in Gaza even while he gave regular proto-presidential speeches on the economy and condemned the terror attacks in Mumbai.

Does Obama really think we will soon forget his silence of complicity on Israel 's clenched and pounding fist as his handlers prepare to try to make him look like a great new Middle Eastern peacemaker? Surely his team (loaded from the top down with militant "friends of Israel ") was consulted on the terrible attack and approved of it on the condition that it would be "wrapped up" - like the murdered corpses of Gazan children - by his Inauguration. Another glorious chapter in "the West's" noble record of "build[ing]," not "destroy[ing]" within and beyond the Middle East.

Would Obama care to comment on the critical roles "corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent" play in sustaining ruling class power in the United States ' "dollar democracy"? And would he like to comment on the credibility of the U.S. admonishing Muslims and others to "unclench their fist[s]" in the wake of the U.S.-Israel assault on Gaza and during an ongoing bloody six-year U.S. invasion that has killed more than 1 million Iraqis?

"The American occupation has been more disastrous than that of the Mongols who sacked Baghdad in the thirteenth century."

According to the respected journalist Nir Rosen in the December 2007 edition of the mainstream journal Current History, "Iraq has been killed, never to rise again. The American occupation has been more disastrous than that of the Mongols who sacked Baghdad in the thirteenth century. Only fools talk of solutions now. There is no solution. The only hope is that perhaps the damage can be contained."

One wonders what Rosen would have had to say about the following comment offered by Barack Obama to autoworkers assembled at the General Motors plant in Janesville, Wisconsin on February 13, 2008, just before that state's Democratic primary: "It's time to stop spending billions of dollars a week trying to put Iraq back together and start spending the money putting America back together."[9]

For those who knew the depth and degree of the destruction inflicted on Iraq by two U.S. invasions, one ongoing, and more than a decade of deadly economic sanctions (embargo), this statement was nothing short of obscene. So was Obama's following 2006 comment (to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs): "The American people have been extraordinarily resolved [in support of the Iraq invasion]. They have seen their sons and daughters killed or wounded in the streets of Fallujah."[10]

"Those Brave Souls Who Patrol Far-off Deserts and Distant Mountains"

"As we consider the road that unfolds before us," Obama said last Tuesday, "we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all."

Does Obama really need to go so far in demonstrating chilling deference to reigning doctrines of imperial and military nationalism claiming that Superpower's global gendarmes protect Liberty at home by colonially subjugating others abroad?! It gets tiresome and nauseating to hear him again (as during his campaign) fold the United States' brazen imperialism into his offensive narrative of shared national "service.

Who the Hell (his God perhaps?) does our new "antiwar" (so many left liberals insist on believing) president think appointed the U.S. to "patrol" Iraqi desserts and Afghan mountains?

No, Mr. President, no. Bring the troops home from the criminally and provocatively occupied hinterland. "We" have no business - zero legitimate role - "patrolling" (and testing the latest high-tech mass murderous military technologies in and on) distant others' deserts, forests, cities, villages, hills, rivers, caves, rivers, seas, and skies, and telephone calls and e-mails. The United States does not own the Middle East. "We" do not own the world. And freedom, justice, and democracy at home are undermined, not protected, by Empire.

"One Common Danger"

Proclaiming a "new era of responsibility," Obama said that "God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny." He asked Americans to remember how "In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people: ‘Let it be told to the future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet (it).'"

I find it disturbing to hear the nation's first black president citing the founders' rebellion against England (1763-1783) as an example of how we Americans need to stand together "against one common enemy." Many American slaves and indigenous people found very good and logical reasons to favor the British over the colonists in the war between England and the rising new racist and settler-imperialist slave state [11]. The new republic's snows and soils and forests and tobacco, rice, and cotton and killing fields had long been stained and even occasionally soaked with the blood of its First Nations victims and its growing population of black chattel. The fate and struggle of the "homeland's" early black and red victims foretold the future struggles of Asians, Latin Americans, and Middle Easterners caught on the wrong side of "freedom"-loving America 's imperial guns, alliances, and doctrines.

Some Things Not Mentioned

There was nothing in Obama's Inaugural Address, really, about rising poverty and stunning socioeconomic inequality in the "homeland." He spoke not a word about the vital need to restore union organizing and bargaining rights in the U.S. and bringing the labor movement - accurately described as "the leading anti-poverty program in American history" by John Edwards during the presidential primaries - back to life in the U.S. by passing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). There was nothing about the institutional racism that continues to plague and poison American life beneath and beyond the mass hysteria over the election of a "black but not like Jesse" president.

The new "antiwar" and "progressive" President was silent about the desperate need to significantly roll back the $1 trillion annual "defense" (Empire) allotment and bring about the forgotten peace dividend that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. knew to be required to fund social uplift and stave off the nation's "spiritual death." [12].

I don't care how many preachers they put up on the speakers platform, be they right wing creeps like Rick Warren (giver of the Inauguration convocation prayer) or decent men like civil rights veteran Joseph Lowrey (giver of the benediction), that terrible "spiritual death" (Dr. King's phrase to describe the consequence of privileging war over social health in the federal budget) continues apace.

As far as I can tell, poverty and its core connection to the problem of inequality has been kicked to the curb of American political discourse since the excessively "populist" and pro-labor John Edwards was unceremoniously relegated (before his adultery scandal) to the political margins.

Refusing to make any reference to horrific crimes against Palestinian humanity during the last three weeks, Obama did not utter the word "Gaza" once during a speech that denounced "those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents."

Stand Down, Mr. President

I will now uncharacteristically (since I tend to think that "speaking truth to power" is a waste of time) offer Barack Obama a bit of advice.

My counsel to the new President: step down from the American Exceptionalist Imperial Hubris that has run so strongly in your campaign statements to the foreign policy establishment, whose approval you required to reach the White House. Your only chance to leave the world better off (if that is your concern) starts with you standing down from all that ridiculous nonsense, Mr. President.

You will only exacerbate tragedy and decline if you insist on expanding the criminal U.S. war --- replete with your newly inherited Blackhawk and Apache attack helicopters (named after forgotten victims of the supposedly virtuous settlement of the U.S. West), the same models recently used to help kill 1300 Gazans (a racist-imperial atrocity on which you remained silent) --- in the imperial graveyard that is Afghanistan. And Afghanistan carries dangerously into nuclear Pakistan like Vietnam carried over into Cambodia .

Stand down, President Obama. Stand down, for your own sake and everyone else's too.

Oh and by the way - if you show some global humility and do some half-reasonably pseudo-social democratic things at home, they'll probably start advance-carving you a new face on Mt. Rushmore, stolen from the Sioux.

"The Real Issue to be Faced"

Four days after Martin Luther King, Jr. Day gave way to Barack Obama Day, I wish readers to consider one of King's many purple passages - this from a posthumously published essay titled "A Testament of Hope":

"Millions of American are coming to see that we are fighting an immoral war that costs nearly thirty billion dollars a year, that we are perpetuating racism, that we are tolerating almost forty million poor during an overflowing material abundance. Yet they remain helpless to end the war, feed the hungry, to make brotherhood a reality; this has to shake our faith in ourselves. If we look honestly at the realities of our national life, it is clear that we are not marching forward; we are groping and stumbling; we are divided and confused. Our moral values and our spiritual confidence sink, even as our material wealth ascends. In these trying circumstances, the black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws - racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced." [Martin Luther King Jr., "A Testament of Hope," January 1969]

This (along with much else you can find in King's speeches and writings) doesn't fit very well with the officially domesticated history of Dr. King as a polite middle-class reformer who sought little more than the desegregation of lunch counters and the right of certain black Americans to run for higher office.

I know there are lots of key differences between the United States and its (colonial) wars in the time of Dr. King's execution and the same in the time of the Obama's ascendancy. This is a period of recession and perhaps depression, not growth.

Iraq (2003-present), Afghanistan (2001-present), and Vietnam (1962-1975) are very different imperial crucifixions.

We need to add (at least) sexism and the war on livable ecology to King's list of America's "interrelated flaws."

Still, I am struck by how relevant King's words remain more than a generation later, how poorly they match the domesticated (bourgeois) King the dominant historical narrative has created, and by how different his final perspective was from that of the militantly incrementalist and power-accommodating Obama.

King would be 80 years old today. My sense is that his excitement over the election of the "deeply conservative" [13] Obama would have been strictly qualified in accord with his airbrushed radical sentiments, which went far beyond the goal of making a symbolic skin-color shift in the power elite. He would understand that we are still "perpetuating racism" under the cloak of a "post-racial" era, deeply fed by the Obama phenomenon.

Beyond "Expectation Management"

Meanwhile, a new depression looms and the specter of ecological catastrophe grows ever more real. Under the totalitarian rules of corporate-"managed democracy" [14], the required radical and egalitarian solutions to the deepening crisis of humanity seem to all be officially "irrelevant," "unrealistic," "ideological," and "obsolete."

A few nights ago millions of Americans saw an arrogant grade B actor named Cuba Gooding Jr. tell Jay Leno that the election of Obama is helping sell "the American brand" around the world - a noble sentiment. The fact that "we have an African-American in the White House," Gooding proclaimed, "proves that our democracy does work."

This childish sentiment is ubiquitous and not just in the Orwellian corporate media. It has trickled down into the minds of numerous ordinary people I know for whom the Obama extravaganza has been yet another excuse not to become seriously engaged in activism beneath and beyond quadrennial corporate-crafted candidate-centered election spectacles.

Still, I find glimmers of hope beneath and beyond top-down spectacles for the weak of mind and heart: the Chicago factory occupation, the recent Oakland riots, the New School action, anti-eviction battles, union organizing triumphs, and the recent and ongoing left- and youth-led rebellion in Greece, the birthplace of Western democratic thought. There's a lot of "unreported resistance" (Howard Zinn's useful term) at home and abroad: people acting for the real meaning of democracy beneath and beyond top-down coordination and "expectation management" (Obama's top public relations task at present). There's more to come, more hope that cannot be contained by anything less than "the radical reconstruction of society itself...the real issue to be faced."

In the meantime, some fellow Americans would like to apologize to the world for "our" nation's all-too imperial and ecologically and socially disastrous ways of "life."

Paul Street ( paulstreet99@yahoo.com)is an author and writer in Iowa City , IA. He is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and the World Street's books include Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004); Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis (New York, 2007; Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York: Routledge, 2005); and Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2008), order

www.paradigmpublishers.com/Books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=186987

NOTES

1. For Left critiques of the centrist Obama's 2004 Democratic Convention Keynote Address, his March 2008 Philadelphia Race Speech, his August 2008 Berlin Speech, and his election night Victory Speech, please see Paul Street: "Keynote Reflections," (Featured Article), ZNet Magazine (July 29th, 2004), read at www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=5951;

"Obama's Latest ‘Beautiful Speech,'" ZNet (March 22, 2008), read at http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16947; His High Imperial Holiness Obama Does Berlin," Black Agenda Report (July 30, 2008), read at http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=717&Itemid=34; ‘Anyone Out There?'" ZNet (November 10, 2008), read at http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/19414.

2. John Nichols (who thinks Obama is a left progressive in centrist clothing), "How to Push Obama," The Progressive (January 2009), read at http://www.progressive.org/mag/nichols0109.html

3. WIFR Television, CBS 23, Rockford , Illinois , "Obama Speaks at General Motors in Janesville ," February 13, 2008, read at http://www.wifr.com/morningshow/headlines/15618592.html

4. There is precedent in Obama's already vast rhetorical record for this sort of strange and reactionary historical conflation. An especially nauseating part of Obama's first famous speech - the 2004 Democratic Convention Keynote Address that turned him into an overnight sensation - came when he said the following about his repeatedly invoked concept of "hope:"

"I'm not talking about blind optimism here - the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't talk about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a mill worker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too...In the end, that is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation; a belief in things not seen; a belief that there are better days ahead."

The "young naval lieutenant line" was a reference to Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry's participation in a previous imperialist adventure, one that took millions of Vietnamese lives. It took no small and reactionary chutzpah for Obama to lump African-American slaves' struggles and spirituality with the imperial and racist U.S. assault on Southeast Asia under the image of noble Americans wishing together for a better future. Perhaps "God" (the officially highly religious Obama's Keynote Address made repeated references to "God" and "the Creator") gave Nazi executioners and Nazi victims the shared gift of hoping for "better days ahead." It was not clear who or what told Obama that the Mekong Delta was Kerry and his superiors' territory to "patrol" - the same arrogant, nationalist and racist sensibilities, perhaps, that gave 19th century white Americans permission to own slaves, steal land from Mexico and Native Americans and which allowed the Bush administration to seize Iraq as a neocolonial possession?

5. Mike Albert, PARECON: Life After Capitalism ( New York : Verso, 2003), p. 65.

6. Laurence H. Shoup, "Obama and McCain March Rightward," Z Magazine (September 2008), p. 27

7. For a thoughtful critique of that pervasive notion from within the foreign policy national security establishment, see Anonymous, Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror ( Washington DC , 2004).

8. Noam Chomsky, "‘Exterminate All the Brutes': Gaza 2009," ZNet, January 20, 2009).

9. WIFR, "Obama Speaks at General Motors."

10. Barack Obama, "A Way Forward in Iraq ," Speech to Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Chicago Illinois (November 20, 2006), available online at http://obama.senate.gov/speech/061120-a_way_forward _in_iraq/index.html. Of all places to pick to claim to demonstrate American "sacrifice" in criminally invaded Iraq , Obama could not have chosen a more provocative and telling locale than Fallujah, site of epic U.S.-imperial assaults on civilians and infrastructure in the spring and fall of 2004.

11. Alfred Young, ed., The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1976).

12. "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." Martin Luther King Jr., "A Time to Break the Silence," Riverside Church, New York City , NY , April 4. 1967.

13. As Larissa MacFarquhar noted in a carefully researched May 2007 Obama portrait titled "The Conciliator": "In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative. There are moments when he sounds almost Burkean. He distrusts abstractions, generalizations, extrapolations, projections. It's not just that he thinks revolutions are unlikely: he values continuity and stability for their own sake, sometimes even more than he values change for the good." Larissa MacFarquhar, "The Conciliator: Where is Barack Obama Coming From?" The New Yorker (May 7, 2007). See also Ryan Lizza, "Making It: How Chicago Shaped Obama," The New Yorker, (July 21, 2008). "Perhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama," Lizza noted, "is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them." See also Paul Street , "Obama's Audacious Deference to Power," ZNet Magazine (January 24, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11936; Paul Street , Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Boulder,CO: Paradigm, 2008).

14. Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism ( Princeton , NJ : Princeton University, 2008)