Obama’s ‘odd strategy’ for pushing jobs bill

Posted on September 15, 2011 by oddmanout215

Poor Robert Reich. Every time I look at the photo of him that runs with his column he seems to look more bemused, or even dumbfounded, and I can’t help thinking it’s because President Obama is slowly driving him crazy.

For two years he has nudged Obama to make the right policy decisions. He has asked pointed questions that seem directed at Obama’s famous reasonableness. Sometimes he seems on the verge of hectoring the big chief, but then he stops short and just says Obama’s decisions seem sort of… odd:

On Monday the President will offer ways to pay for his $467 billion American Jobs Act mostly by increasing taxes on the wealthy. I’m all in favor, but it’s an odd strategy. If any Republican was prepared to vote for the jobs bill, this will send him or her scurrying. So if the President was never really serious about getting Republican votes in the first place – if his jobs bill and the tax increase on the wealthy were always going to be part of his 2012 election year pitch – why didn’t he make his jobs bill big enough to do the job?

Here’s another odd thing.

The deficit-reduction plan the President will present Monday to Congress’s special supercommittee on the debt (now struggling to come up with $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction) will also propose some $2 to $3 trillion in additional deficit reduction over the next ten years – including changes in Medicare. According to the President’s plan, those tax increases and spending cuts would go into effect in 2013. But there’s a strong likelihood the American economy will still be anemic in 2013, if not on life support… When unemployment is still in the stratosphere, it would be insane to start cutting the deficit by $3 trillion to $4 trillion. That would push unemployment into outer space.

Reich never seems to be saying that Obama is corrupt, or too weak to stick to his guns, but rather that he is profoundly obtuse when it comes to tackling what seems obvious to most people who aren’t right-wing nut jobs — i.e., that “Our national crisis is joblessness and low wages, not the deficit.”

At this point I wish Reich would speculate on why Obama can’t address or even acknowledge what’s really ailing the economy. Is it because an inner circle of wrong-headed advisers keeps steering the president off-track, or because Obama is too stubbornly off-track to listen to anyone who offers good advice?

Posted in economic collapse, Great Recession, mainstream media, Obama, Politics, taxes, unemployment, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Ten years after, we’re still in a dark age

Posted on September 13, 2011 by oddmanout215

The shame of it is that Osama bin Laden was counting on America to react in a disastrously foolish way to the 9/11 attacks, and no one in government was clever or cool-headed enough to disappoint him. In fact, the Bush administration thought it was a good idea — good for business, that is — to stoke fear and loathing to the point where most citizens would applaud our entry into two unfunded but enormously expensive wars.

Here’s Chris Hedges on the aftermath of the event that arguably started America’s downward spiral:

Because few cared to examine our activities in the Muslim world, the attacks became certified as incomprehensible by the state and its lap dogs, the press. Those who carried out the attacks were branded as rising out of a culture and religion that was at best primitive and probably evil…

What was played out in the weeks after the attacks was the old, familiar battle between force and human imagination, between the crude instruments of violence and the capacity for empathy and understanding. Human imagination lost… We began to speak and think in the empty, mindless nationalist clichés about terror that the state handed to us. We became what we abhorred. The deaths were used to justify pre-emptive war, invasion, Shock and Awe, prolonged occupation, targeted assassinations, torture, offshore penal colonies, gunning down families at checkpoints, massive aerial bombardments, drone attacks, missile strikes and the killing of dozens and soon hundreds and then thousands and later tens of thousands and finally hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

Posted in Congress, economic collapse, Iraq war, mainstream media, Politics, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Bush speaks on 9/10, supersizes lies

Posted on September 11, 2011 by oddmanout215

Yesterday on the Atlantic City Expressway, at the sprawling Frank S. Farley rest stop, I remembered how quickly 9/11 became a device for generating hatred while at the same time lulling Americans into swallowing lies about costly, undeclared wars.

All around me was fast food and the poor people who eat it or serve it. In the middle of the floor was George W. Bush, on a large flat-screen TV, praising American troops who

… have risked and given their lives to prevent our enemies from attacking America again. They’ve kept us safe, they have made us proud, and they have upheld the spirit of service shown by the passengers on Flight 93 …

Lulling is the right word. Many people have yet to realize Bush used 9/11 as an excuse to wage war, not long after he’d led the successful charge to lower the taxes of the super-wealthy, or that these actions are the main reasons we’re mired in a seemingly incurable economic slump.

Or that the death toll from the 9/11 attacks is small compared to that of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Or that Bush’s reasons for starting those wars had nothing to do with preventing attacks on America.

Or that patriotism is not only the last refuge of a scoundrel. It’s also an effective defense strategy for elected officials who broke the law in order to further enrich their rich friends and patrons. It’s a stick that can be used to beat those who suggest the scoundrels are also criminals.

No American court will ever try Bush or Dick Cheney or the others, partly because the scoundrel’s rule of thumb is the same as the fast-food marketer’s: Don’t just lie — lie big. Sell them Coke by the half-gallon and call it medium-size. Ignore the measly burger and push the Whopper. Would you like a rancid hunk of cheese with that, sir?

Now that’s a tasty burger!

Footnote: The Bush team’s strategy for selling their wars to the public could have been lifted from Joseph Goebbels, who wrote:

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

Posted in Congress, economic collapse, food, Great Recession, humor, mainstream media, Politics, taxes, The New Depression, unemployment, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Obama offers new spiel, but no New Deal

Posted on September 9, 2011 by oddmanout215

I wasn’t surprised that Paul Krugman didn’t slam my good buddy Barack’s jobs plan, a mix of tax cuts and increased government spending that makes more sense than anything congressional Republicans will ever put together.

But I thought it excessively generous of Krugman to describe the plan as “bold,” given the fact that it’s long-overdue and just happens to coincide with the start of Obama’s re-election campaign.

Krugman stated that Obama’s $447 billion plan is bigger and better than what he expected. But then he noted that it’s much too small to do what is needed to restore the country to anything approaching economic health, even if Obama doesn’t encounter the GOP opposition he and other sane people are expecting.

One could argue that Krugman was right to put a positive if ambivalent spin on Obama’s jobs plan, if only to remind people that Republicans and the Federal Reserve are cynically opposed to all job creation plans, and because Obama’s plan “may finally have set the stage for a political debate about job creation.”

But this argument isn’t likely to impress those who are out of work or underemployed, and/or in danger of losing their homes. The economic tailspin continues, and politicians might finally “debate” whether to try to stop it… This is progress?

Truthdig published something before the jobs speech that seems just as accurate afterwards:

Time and again, Obama has shown that he will only tinker around the edges, relying on the same tired supply-side initiatives that will not work: more incentives to build business confidence, subsidies to reduce labor costs and to promote exports, and maybe even tax cuts to please Republicans. He told a Labor Day crowd in Detroit that he wants to match the more than 1 million construction workers with an infrastructure-related rebuilding program to improve the nation’s roads and bridges. That is an improvement over his efforts to date, but it falls far short of the 20-plus million jobs we need.

Posted in Congress, economic collapse, Great Recession, mainstream media, Obama, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Pre-speech e-mail from my buddy Barack

Posted on September 9, 2011 by oddmanout215

I received an e-mail from the president late Thursday afternoon as he was preparing for last night’s important jobs speech. The chief addressed me as “David” and signed his message “Barack.” I was so moved by this personal gesture, I had to reply.

Obama to McKenna:

David —
I’m about to head to the Capitol to ask Congress to act on my plan to put Americans back to work. Before I do, I wanted to write you directly to remind you that the fight to create jobs — and provide the kind of economic security for middle-class families that’s been slipping away over the last decade — won’t begin or end with the speech I give tonight. What happens will be up to you. In the coming days and weeks, it will be up to you to pressure Congress to act — or hold them accountable if they do not. If you’re with me, let me know. And the campaign will make sure you are looped into our efforts to support this plan.

Talk to you soon,
Barack

McKenna to Obama:

Barack,
Thanks for keeping me “looped into” your efforts. I think you’re right, the fight won’t begin tonight. Don’t take this the wrong way, dude, but I don’t think there’s going to be a fight. You’ll pitch something big and bold-seeming, but the Super Committee (POW! BANG!!) will strip away the meat then gnaw the bones. And in truth it won’t be that bold to begin with, because you’ll start by meeting Republicans halfway on their plan to destroy Social Security and Medicare. Not to bust your bubble, old buddy, but the fight should have begun more than two years ago, when you had majorities in both houses and some cred with the people who voted for you. You blew that by turning your back on the poor and middle-class while you took care of the millionaires. A lot of people — not me, of course — think you only talk jobs when you’re campaigning.

I’d wish you good luck, but I know you don’t need it. Not when it comes to speechifying.

Talk to you soon,
D.

Follow-up:

Barack,
I found out registered Democrats all over the country got the same e-mail as me, but each with his or her own name in it! How’d you do that, dude? Anyway, just wondering how things went with Congress tonight. I’ll bet you gave ’em heck.
D.

Posted in Congress, economic collapse, enviromentalism, globalization, Great Recession, Obama, Politics, taxes, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Harvard Business Review: ‘Was Marx right?’

Posted on September 7, 2011 by oddmanout215

You know the economy is on its last legs when a Harvard Business School publication reminds us that Karl Marx might have been on to something in his critiques of industrial-age capitalism.

In an article headlined “Was Marx right?” economist-consultant Umair Haque notes that “the truth might just be that the global economy is in historic, generational trouble, plagued by problems the orthodoxy didn’t expect, didn’t see coming, and doesn’t quite know what to do with.”

Haque isn’t a commie or even a socialist like Albert Einstein. He’s an idealistic capitalist who believes that “prosperity as we know it might be lazily circling the glowing inner rim of the burbling event horizon of a massive supergalactic black hole.”

One after another of Marx’s bugaboos are briefly discussed, with Haque conceding that prosperity is withering in the face of worker exploitation, worker alienation, stagnating rates of profit, commodity fetishism and other maladies, some insidious and others obvious. I like Haque’s take on Marx’s notion of false consciousness:

According to Marx, one of the most pernicious aspects of industrial age capitalism was that the proles wouldn’t even know they were being exploited — and might even celebrate the very factors behind their exploitation, in a kind of ideological Stockholm Syndrome that concealed and misrepresented the relations of power between classes. How’s Marx doing on this score? You tell me. I’ll merely point out: America’s largest private employer is Walmart. America’s second largest employer is McDonald’s.

The fact that Haque posted this where he did is a good indication of how bleak the big picture looks even to establishment insiders. I wonder if anyone showed the piece to Harvard Law School grad Barack Obama.

Posted in economic collapse, globalization, Great Recession, mainstream media, Obama, Politics, taxes, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Firefighting is for big-government sissies

Posted on September 6, 2011 by oddmanout215

Here’s my theory: Rick Perry was in New York City once and saw grownups wearing rain gear and riding on big red trucks and hooking up hoses every time a measly row of houses caught fire. And he said to himself, firefighting is for sissies, I refuse to waste another dime on it. A real man, a Texas man, puts out his own fire, or he shoots holes in it and watches it burn.

Perry is anti-fire departments, even when the firefighters aren’t getting paid. From The Raw Story:

Under Gov. Rick Perry (R) this year, Texas slashed state funding for the volunteer fire departments that protect most of the state from wildfires like the ones that have recently destroyed more than 700 homes. Volunteer departments that were already facing financial strain were slated to have their funding cut from $30 million to $7 million, according to KVUE. The majority of Texas is protected by volunteer fire departments. There are 879 volunteer fire departments in Texas and only 114 paid fire departments. Another 187 departments are a combination of volunteer and paid. For that reason, aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) could be more important than ever to the state where wildfires have recently been raging. At a press conference Monday, Perry promised to seek federal disaster relief and said that FEMA would be in the state by Wednesday.

Fire departments cost money, you see, and that means taxes, which is why Perry was happy to gamble on the unlikely chance there would be no major brush fires in his increasingly bone-dry state. Small government is the goal. So who does the cowboy with the French cuffs call when the state’s burning down? The federal government, of course.

Posted in economic collapse, enviromentalism, Great Recession, Politics, taxes | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Labor Day message from Albert Einstein

Posted on September 5, 2011 by oddmanout215

Think of the millions of jobs eliminated or off-shored over the past few decades. Consider the extent to which this is the result of alliances between our increasingly corrupt political establishment and the corporate elite. Look at the way politicians, the courts and the corporations have conspired to cripple organized labor, lower wages and drastically cut back on benefits for workers. Then tell me there’s a good reason to celebrate Labor Day, or even acknowledge it.

This is from a piece written in 1949 by Albert Einstein, who was a socialist and a humanist (anybody remember humanists?) as well as a brilliant physicist:

Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.

The only thing that dates the piece is Einstein’s use of the adjective “underprivileged.” In today’s world, “non-wealthy” would be more appropriate, because the corporatists now have enough leverage to screw the middle classes, too. As you may have noticed.

Posted in Congress, economic collapse, globalization, Great Recession, mainstream media, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Mitchell’s ‘Coyote’ still lean and mean

Posted on September 4, 2011 by oddmanout215

Recently, watching the Band back Joni Mitchell on “Coyote” (the video I put up here has been blocked) in Martin Scorcese’s The Last Waltz, I wondered about the link between cocaine and the fashionably emaciated look in the 1970s. Never mind.

Mitchell is beyond svelte, but still young enough to make “cadaverous” rhyme with “glamorous.” Robbie Robertson looks like you could knock him over with a guitar pick. He must have been bucking to make the junior welterweight division of great rock and roll guitarists. Coyote, indeed.

But there is nothing slight about the music. Fans of the Band know they were terrific players with impressive stylistic range, but it’s still surprising to hear them do justice to Mitchell’s rhythmically complex piece. It’s folk jazz, fusion-y but spare, and somehow soulful.

Mitchell was labeled a folkie early on but she turned out to be a great jazz singer. “Coyote” is also a testament to her brilliance as a lyricist. It reads like it was written for the screen and is about a certain sort of predatory male who meets his match when he hooks up with a certain woman of the road.

Memorable lyric: Coyote’s in the coffee shop/ He’s staring a hole in his scrambled eggs/ He picks up my scent on his fingers/ While he’s watching the waitress’s legs.

Footnote: I think you can still view “Coyote” on YouTube. The live version with the Band is the best of the videos.

Posted in arts, movies, pop music | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Obama’s latest victim — the EPA

Posted on September 3, 2011 by oddmanout215

The treachery continues, but it’s hard to guess what the endgame is. Maybe Barack Obama really believes his own hype. He’s the “adult” in the race and therefore can’t lose against Texas wing-nut Rick Perry or insipid Mitt (“Corporations are people”) Romney.

From Daily Beast:

More dispiriting news, this time about the White House overturning the EPA’s proposed new rules on smog. That comes a few hours after the jobs report from Friday morning, one of the bleakest yet. And it comes a few days in advance of what everyone expects will be a small-thinking, modest, blah jobs speech by the president …

The smog decision is a real low … Environmental groups were going to file a lawsuit in 2009 about Bush-era ozone rules, and the Obama administration told them, in effect, “Wait, don’t hassle us with a lawsuit, we’re going to propose stricter rules soon.” So the stricter rules were proposed, and the White House has now said, “Sorry, changed our mind …”

… And you know how partisans say sometimes in anger that we’d have been better off with the other guy? They say it for effect and don’t actually mean it. But in this case, it’s literally true. Bush-proposed standards in 2008 were tougher than the 1997 standards under which companies will now operate …

Philip Radford of Greenpeace:

On the [2008] campaign trail the President talked a lot about holding corporations accountable. This decision today is the opposite of that. He’s actually doing their dirty work for them. And as a result all of us are going to suffer.

Posted in enviromentalism, Great Recession, livable cities, Obama, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment