Most of the nation seems to know what President Obama does not: The USA is in terrible shape and nothing the government is doing deserves public respect and confidence. by Joel S. Hirschhorn
(libertarian)
Sunday, August 15, 2010
If the United States is not kaput it is certainly withering away even as a rich upper class enjoys all the things that money buys. There is massive, widespread economic pain inflicting a huge fraction of Americans who are unemployed, underemployed, relying on food stamps, losing their homes, and who are feeling totally insecure financially. This maintains sluggish consumer spending that makes necessary economic growth impossible.
The corporate bigwigs meanwhile are essentially using economic blackmail as they sit on trillions of dollars in cash, refusing to invest their capital and making great profits because they have cut workers and increased productivity. They want even more benefits from government that they think Republicans will give them.
No wonder that only 11 percent of people have confidence in Congress and most Americans are fed up with both major political parties. It is bewildering why more Americans are not openly condemning President Obama and his administration. Perhaps because there is no clear Republican that warrants support to replace him.
It seems that Obama has taken some power-narcotic and entered into a delusional mental state. He persists in talking as if the Great Recession is over and all is going just swell. His wife takes the kids for a vacation in Spain and soon the whole family will go up to a swank place in Cape Cod for another vacation and, of course, Obama likes to go out golfing frequently. Does any rational being perceive he really feels the pain that so many citizens feel? He lives the life of a typical rich and powerful corporate CEO, not a servant of the people.
Progressives often seem amazed and befuddled by Obama's persistent policies that take care of the business and financial sectors, apparently forgetting that when he campaigned for the presidency he took huge amounts of money from those people. If he does not appoint Elizabeth Warren to head the new consumer protection financial agency Obama should be openly and loudly condemned by everyone on the left.
Obama finds self-satisfaction in making the argument that everything he has done is surely better than any Republican has done or would do. He misses the point that being better than the worst imaginable is not the same as doing a really first rate job that serves the interests of ordinary people and especially of those hit the hardest by the continuing recession. In many respects the economic conditions now savaging the nation are as bad as the Great Depression. The many millions facing hunger, no jobs, homelessness, foreclosure, inadequate better health care, bankruptcy and financial insecurity define a nation way down the toilet. The middle class has been murdered. We are now a two-class society with a rich Upper Class and a suffering Lower Class.
That billions and billions of dollars are still being spent on two unnecessary wars should make everyone feel as if they are living in a big insane asylum. All that money should be going to investment (especially public infrastructure) and jobs creation here in the USA.
No wonder that a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll this week found that nearly 6 in 10 Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, a majority disapproves of President Obama's handling of the economy, and nearly two-thirds expect the economy to get worse, which it will.
Even more important than Obama waking up to reality is that more Americans wake up to their nasty political reality. Voting in elections has become a political placebo. Electing more Republicans to Congress in the fall is nothing more than taking two aspirin when you are near death from starvation.
The real medicine needed for our delusional democracy is revolution that overthrows the two-party plutocracy. We need leaders for one, but there are none that most Americans could and should support, not even in the Tea Party movement. Time to learn from history: Even the greatest nations and societies end up losing their glory, wealth and power.
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Posted By: Roy Ellis
Date: August 15, 2010 04:42:02 PM
We all share your pain and anguish, Joel. But, your tautology is too narrowly focused to serve any real good. It is not just Obama and this administration that has worked to deliver us into the hands of lethal debt. Every President/administration/congress since the Carter era has worked feverously to bring down the U.S. middle class so as to allow the U.S. to compete in their ‘global economy’. IMO, their work is in the final stages and paying off bigtime.
For example: wages have fallen or stagnant for the last ten years. U.S. security, administration, trade and some justice laws have been ‘harmonized’ so that the U.S. will fit nicely into a One World government. Outside the Constitution, in many cases, but that’s another debate. I suppose we should be thankful that the Corpocracy has given us a somewhat soft landing relative to the great recession. It has been close and we aren’t out of the woods yet on that issue. Unemployment is about where the Corpocracy planned for at this point in time. Using taxpayer funds, the Corpocracy has facilitated the movement of major manufacturing industries to sources of cheap labor. I believe manufacturing was previously about 30% of the U.S. job market and that is comparative to the 20-25% unemployment we are experiencing as a result of industry relocation. The effort is to put pressure on middle and lower class workers through unemployment, running in cheap labor in the form of illegal immigrants and supporting 26 brands of temporary foreign worker visas. This has put great pressure on skilled and unskilled U.S. workers. Adding to this worsening labor market, many foreign workers that were educated in the U.S. are now returning to the U.S. seeking better wages and jobs with better working conditions, security, etc. And, as you suggest, fighting two simultaneous nation building police actions in the middle of a recession can be a real downer on the federal budget.
One could continue this tautology, endlessly, but the point should be clear: the Corpocracy, in bringing globalization to fruition and perhaps, maturity, have done well in the short period of 25 years. To have carried out the greatest transfer of wealth in human history, involving some 300 million people, in a 25 year time span is nothing short of amazing, IMO. That’s a heap of ‘harmonizing’.
Agree, many Progressives are unhappy with Obama in his tepid struggle with the Corpocracy. But IMO, the Progressives and the TEA Party’ers are whizzing up a rope in the struggle to deliver some ‘populist’ policies for the community at large.
The Progressives, the TEA Party, Independents, we all need to focus on the bigger picture, IMO. While you wrestled around the tautology of the moment you did, IMO, arrive at the right conclusion. A revolution is needed, required to remove the tentacles of the Corpocracy from power. To effect such a revolution can be achieved, IMO, through a couple of processes carried out in parallel.
One, we can weaken the Corpocracy by voting incumbents, normally re-elected 90-95% of the time, from office in great numbers. While this won’t defeat the Corpocracy it will provide for a more amenable environment for a unique 3rd Party movement. A 3rd Party with a different political attitude is, IMO, the only way we can carry out a successful non-violent revolution. The mission of this new party would be to work for the abolishment of Corporate Personhood law. For it is clear, there can be no REAL legislation, witness the healthcare plan, so long as Corporate Personhood law exists as part of the Constitution.
Reader’s can check out such a Party by visiting www.republicsentry.com. A Party founded in some rules preventing co-option by the money influence and providing membership oversight authority for focusing their elected and appointed members on the Party agenda.
A couple of informative sites on anti-incumbency voting and reclaiming a long denied Constitutional right provided by Article V Convention of the Constitution:
Posted By: Joel S. Hirschhorn
Date: August 15, 2010 05:51:40 PM
The Gallup organization has been tracking the job approval of President Obama since he became president for white, Hispanic and black Americans. This July it dipped to its lowest level for white Americans, 38 percent, compared to 62 percent in January 2009. For Hispanics the comparable numbers were 54 and 74 percent. But the real story is that the figures for blacks were 98 percent for both times. Apparently black Americans have not been troubled by any of the policies and actions by Obama, unlike other Americans that have steadily lost confidence in Obama. That is the real racism.
