This blog has made the case that the election of Barack Obama to the presidency was a referendum on white nationalism and white nationalism lost. The Republican right wing, which pushes an anti-civil rights agenda, was soundly defeated at the ballot box in November. Having said that, given America's over 300 years of white nationalism hegemony, those core ideas do not die easily. As a consequence, having an African American president is giving rise to white supremacist resistance. RGN
Rebranding Hate in the Age of Obama
With an African-American president and the economy in bad shape, extremist groups are trying to enter the mainstream—and they're having some success.
Eve Conant
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated May 4, 2009
It's not about hate, it's about love. Love of white people. That's the message in songs, speeches and casual conversation during a weekend retreat in Zinc, Ark., sponsored by the Christian Revival Center and the Knights Party, an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan. There's no overt threat of violence here. No cross burnings (or "lightings," as the KKK prefers to call them). The only fire at the grassy compound, located at the end of a long, rocky road circled by turkey vultures, is a bonfire for the Knights youth corps to roast their s'mores. The kids draw pictures of white-hooded Klanspeople and sing songs about the oppressed Aryan race; rousing sermons are read from Bibles decorated with Confederate flags. Aryan souvenirs are for sale, including baseball caps proclaiming IT'S LOVE, NOT HATE and advertising
THE ORIGINAL BOYZ IN THE HOOD.
This would all be funny (Jon Stewart, where are you?) if it weren't so disturbing. "Do you know why people are so afraid of us?" asks Thomas Robb, the soft-spoken national director—don't call him grand wizard!—of the Knights. "Because we're so normal." In his speeches, Robb is more likely to make a joke about his short stature than he is about minorities. His Web site includes careful statements about nonviolence, green energy and women's rights. But among his ideological kin, Robb equates minorities to fleas and favors a program for "voluntary resettlement" to home countries. Illegal immigrants, as well as blacks serving time in prison, should be deported, he says. "Why is it that when a black man wants to preserve his culture and heritage it's a good thing, and when a white person wants the same thing, we're called haters?" he says.
Some of the roughly 50 attendees at the Arkansas lovefest wear Knights uniforms with Confederate flags and, along with their children, raise their arms "Heil, Hitler"–STYLE to shouts of "white power!" Robb sometimes dons his white robe and hood and doesn't see why that carries any baggage: "Why do judges wear robes? It's tradition." The Klan's past is misunderstood, he insists—no history of brutal lynchings, torture and intimidation; it's gotten a bad name from, for example, federal provocateurs who instigated violence. While Robb questions the authority of other Klan groups, he happily notes that "a rising tide lifts all ships."
It's hard to conduct accurate surveys of racists, who tend to exaggerate their strength and importance. But it's fair to say that in the Age of Obama, there's growing concern. This spring, the Southern Poverty Law Center released its annual "Year in Hate" report, which outlines that in 2008 the number of hate groups rose to 926, up 4 percent from 2007, and 54 percent since 2000. (The SPLC doesn't measure the number of members in the groups.) An April Homeland Security intelligence report states that "the economic downturn and the election of the first African-American president present unique drivers for right-wing radicalization and recruitment." Home foreclosures, unemployment and an inability to obtain credit "could create a fertile recruiting environment," the briefing adds, and extremist groups are aiming to "broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda."
The haters are doing their best, in other words, to move out from the fringe and toward the mainstream—and they're boasting some success.
Indoctrination often starts on the Internet. Some crazies posting on MySpace, for instance, have called for armed revolution; at least one has referred to Barack Obama as "a dead man." But many leaders of white-supremacist groups and Web forums are toning down their rhetoric. The aim is to attract the kind of person Robb describes as "the guy down the road who until now had his plasma TV and car in the garage, but just lost his job and won't find a new one because some illegal already has it."
Don Black, a 56-year-old former KKK grand wizard, says he no longer has any formal affiliation with the Klan because "it just got so demonized and attracted the wrong people; it just got to be impossible." But that doesn't mean he's given up the struggle. As the founder of Stormfront.org, he has the white-supremacist world at his fingertips, all from the comfort of his West Palm Beach, Fla., home. Last spring Black made it a policy for the site to "have no swastikas and Third Reich symbols to turn off first-time visitors."
Black had to upgrade his server after it crashed Nov. 5 along with another white-supremacist site, the Council of Conservative Citizens, according to the SPLC. "I knew we'd get a surge in interest [after the election], but I didn't expect so much; we couldn't handle it," says Black. In the 24 hours following Obama's victory, he says, 2,800 new users signed up. He claims 150,000 registered users and says he gets about 50,000 unique visits a day. (It's impossible to confirm the figures independently; the SPLC thinks the numbers are slightly higher, but civil-rights groups may also have an interest in exaggerating the phenomenon.) Stormfront has some 50 active forums, including venues for dating, financial advice, gardening and homemaking. Black has 65 volunteer moderators and three administrators.
One moderator, who goes by the alias Truck Roy, is a clean-cut 32-year-old who wouldn't give his real name for fear of losing his job. During the Knights weekend in Arkansas, Roy, a guest speaker, advised white recruiters to "keep it subtle. Don't hit 'em with anything too hard right off the bat or you will shock them. Find a chink in their armor and make friends. If you are too radical, they won't listen."
The Nationalist Coalition, a small outfit based in St. Petersburg, Fla., claims it has seen a jump in new members in just the past few months. In March, the Arizona chapter held a family "spaghetti night" meet and greet. Members also blanketed a Phoenix suburb with fliers depicting a white toddler and the word MISSING—an attempt to show that the future of the white race is in trouble. One of its national chiefs, Todd Weingart, says the group does not condone violence and is composed of doctors and lawyers as well as blue-collar workers. "If it was only immigration or the economy or a nonwhite running the country, there wouldn't be this interest. We know that," he says. "It's the combination that is getting people to stand up and get interested." Winston Smith, a host of the white-supremacist radio show "The Political Cesspool" in Millington, Tenn., says, "The emphasis is different now. We don't talk as much about what blacks have done to us; we're more focused on ourselves and our own culture."
At least one group has become more fashion-conscious. The National Socialist Movement—a descendent of the American Nazi Party—tweaked its uniform last year, switching from Nazi brown shirts to a more Italian Fascist look. "The uniforms we wore before were even more out there, more extreme," says "commander" Jeff Schoep, who, like the Knights' Robb, hails from Detroit. "Last April we adopted the black [uniforms]; it's part of our modernization project. We don't want to look like throwbacks to 1935. But we are not trying to trick people; there are enough white groups now trying to soft-pedal people into joining."
At one recent meeting in Springfield, Mo., a dozen NSM members wore black from chin to steel-toed boot. Some sported swastikas and tattoos and wore bomber jackets with cloth patches: NO HABLA ESPAÑOL, A––HOLE and a Jewish star being dumped in the trash. Their local leader, Cynthia Keene, has a half-shaved head and multiple piercings. She started the meeting with a 14-word pledge to secure the future of the white race. There was discussion of the "Holohoax" and the warrior nature of Aryans.
They know they're being monitored. It probably makes them feel important. Keene warns her followers, "We have to be careful what we do and say and stay out of their line of sight," referring to groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the SPLC.
One recent recruit, 31-year-old Melissa Cipcic, says she's upset about Americans losing jobs to illegal immigrants. She used to think of white-power groups as scary, she says, "but no one here advocates violence. So much more can be done with conversation."
The ADL's Mark Pitcavage says it is very difficult to track hate-group numbers because the organizations often splinter. What he tries to track is anger levels, and those, he warns, are rising—despite any superficial sweet talk: "The white-supremacist movement has been at red-hot anger levels for a long time. When I get concerned is when they get to white hot, where you see large bomb plots or talk about race wars. Right now we're at very red hot, and are concerned we might reach white hot again." He points to the MySpace account of "88Charles88" as an example of what he's seeing (88 is code for "Heil, Hitler" in the white-power world). "Charles" attacks Obama and says, "Now it's time to fight." "There is a lot of anger out there," says Pitcavage, "and these groups are trying to stoke it, to get someone like 88Charles88 to take the next step. What we're seeing is not a softening, but a hardening of attitude."
Pitcavage says current rhetoric resembles that of the early '90s (including conspiracy theories about FEMA concentration camps and gun confiscations), just before the outbreak of the white-militia movements. While some leaders of extremist groups may use softer recruiting tactics, "their membership is not toning down at all," says Pitcavage. For every NSM member, there is a nonaffiliated skinhead posting entries to hate blogs. If Stormfront has tried to tone down, that has only inspired a competing site—Vanguard—to showcase violent alternatives.
Some civil-rights activists are more worried about the racists they can't see than the showboaters trying to draw attention to themselves. "We're not going back to the '50s," says Mark Potok of the SPLC. "The country has moved forward in remarkable ways. But with that breakthrough comes something of a backlash." It's the loners, he says, who are most worrisome: "The lone-wolf idea is much scarier than the big-plot idea. Big plots don't succeed because these guys cannot keep their mouths shut."
As local law enforcement tells it, Cynthia Lynch was an Internet loner who tried to become a white activist and failed. She was recruited online to travel from Oklahoma last November to join a reputed Klan group in Bogalusa, La. The group called itself the Sons of Dixie. But after meeting the members, the 43-year-old Lynch had second thoughts and tried to back out during an extended initiation ceremony. She was shot dead and buried in the backwoods of St. Tammany Parish.
The Sons of Dixie were rounded up after two of them asked a Circle K clerk how to remove blood stains from clothing, authorities said. Their alleged leader, Raymond (Chuck) Foster, had a history of Klan involvement and was in the SPLC database, but no one had previously heard of the Sons of Dixie. As it turned out, Foster, who has been indicted for second degree murder, lived just more than a mile away from Bogalusa's mayor, James McGehee. "I thought I knew everyone here, but I guess I didn't," says the mayor. "I think these were Klan wannabes."
The mayor and local law-enforcement officers have spent the past few months working with the FBI to rule out further Klan activities in the area and meeting with local black churches to discuss the problem. As a child, McGehee grew up hearing about the Klan and watching civil-rights marches, he recalls. "The Klan was obviously here then. But I hadn't really heard that word in 25 years," he says. Cynthia Lynch might also have thought the old racists had softened with time; on Foster's MySpace page, according to the SPLC, he listed Jesus Christ as his hero and said he'd like to meet "honest loyal people who are devoted to things and take them seriously." She might have thought the Sons of Dixie would provide something—a sense of community or pride —that her life was missing. She didn't learn otherwise until it was too late.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/195085
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Even Propagandist Newt Concedes
Of all people, Newt Gingrich concedes that the Obama presidency has hit a home run. His prediction: Obama is likely to transform "Change we can believe in" to "Change in what we believe." RGN
100 Days of Devastatingly Swift Success
by Newt Gingrich (more by this author)
Posted 04/29/2009 ET
To mark President Obama’s 100th day in office, I’m going to say something you might find unexpected, even shocking:
President Obama’s first 100 days have been spectacularly successful.
President Obama is the strongest domestic Democratic President since Lyndon Johnson. His ability to get Democrats in Congress to give him things that undermine their own power is impressive.
In just 100 days, President Obama has been devastatingly effective in moving forward swiftly the most radical, government-expanding agenda in American history.
Successfully Moving to a European Model of Government Control
At home, in everything from his economic policy to his energy policy to his just-announced science policy, President Obama has successfully moved the country from a traditional American model of entrepreneurship and private initiative to a European model of regulation and government control.
Abroad, he has succeeded in his apparent goal to be the un-George W. Bush; replacing aggressive, if sometimes flawed, American leadership with a humbled, weakened America on the world stage.
Judged by these standards, President Obama’s first 100 days have been a remarkable success.
Getting Congress to Give Him Things That Undermine Their Own Power
The Obama record in the first 100 days includes three instances of spectacular political impunity:
• Under the guise of “economic stimulus” he was able to pass a $787 billion gift for his liberal special interest base. And he did it so quickly that no member of Congress was able to read it before they voted.
• After campaigning on a pledge to end earmarks, he signed an appropriations bill loaded with 8,000 earmarks -- and paid no political penalty.
• President Obama has kept congressional Democrats marching with him in lockstep. House Democrats tow the party line an amazing 94 percent of the time and Senate Democrats vote Democratic 91 percent of the time.
Two Historic Bureaucratic Power Grabs
In these first 100 days, the Obama Administration has achieved two historic bureaucratic power grabs:
• President Obama has transformed the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) into giant engines of unsupervised spending. Together, they’ve spent the equivalent of the entire federal budget for 2007, without having to disclose where the money went.
• Just two weeks ago, the President presided over an unprecedented bureaucratic power grab when his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruled that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health. This seemingly innocuous decision opens the door to wholesale regulation of American life by government. The threat is so great that politicians and activists are using the specter of an out-of-control EPA to force Congress to pass a $1 trillion to $2 trillion energy tax in the form of cap-and-trade legislation.
In Foreign Policy, Weakness and Self-Delusion
The Obama 100 days record also includes remarkable weakness and self-delusion overseas:
• In an attempt to overcome anti-Americanism abroad by agreeing with it, President Obama has gone on a global apology tour, labeling America as “arrogant, dismissive and derisive” in front of foreign audiences.
• President Obama has unleashed a domestic war over the meaning of guilt by caving in to the anti-American left and leaving the door open to prosecuting Bush Administration officials over the interrogation of terrorists who plotted to kill Americans.
All Other Obama “Accomplishments” Are Only a Prelude to His $3.5 Trillion Budget
But all these successful expansions of government at home and retractions of American leadership abroad are merely a prelude to President Obama’s looming crowning achievement: His 2010 budget which remakes our health care system, remakes our energy system, raises taxes and forecasts an amazing $9 trillion increase in the national debt.
As I write this, Democrats in Congress are fashioning a deal to pass the budget’s provisions on health care by preventing Republicans and moderate Democrats from having a voice in the debate.
Think about that. The Obama-Reid-Pelosi political machine is going to pass legislation that fundamentally affects every single American -- as well as 17 percent of our economy -- by cutting the elected representatives of half of all Americans out of the process.
If they succeed, the budget will be President Obama’s most enduring -- and devastating -- accomplishment.
Will the Future Bring Change We Can Believe In? Or a Change in What we Believe?
One thing is clear at this point in President Obama’s presidency: His control of Washington Democrats has been so masterful, and his policies so successful, that he has officially claimed ownership of the American economy.
Going forward, it won’t be possible to continue to place blame on former President Bush and the Republicans. If President Obama fails, it will be his failure and his alone.
As for us, the “success” of the first 100 days of the Obama presidency raises a threatening possibility.
As my daughter and columnist Jackie Cushman put it, if we’re not careful, instead of change we can believe in, we’re going to have change in what we believe.
It’s something to ponder for the next 1,361 days.
Your friend,
Newt Gingrich
100 Days of Devastatingly Swift Success
by Newt Gingrich (more by this author)
Posted 04/29/2009 ET
To mark President Obama’s 100th day in office, I’m going to say something you might find unexpected, even shocking:
President Obama’s first 100 days have been spectacularly successful.
President Obama is the strongest domestic Democratic President since Lyndon Johnson. His ability to get Democrats in Congress to give him things that undermine their own power is impressive.
In just 100 days, President Obama has been devastatingly effective in moving forward swiftly the most radical, government-expanding agenda in American history.
Successfully Moving to a European Model of Government Control
At home, in everything from his economic policy to his energy policy to his just-announced science policy, President Obama has successfully moved the country from a traditional American model of entrepreneurship and private initiative to a European model of regulation and government control.
Abroad, he has succeeded in his apparent goal to be the un-George W. Bush; replacing aggressive, if sometimes flawed, American leadership with a humbled, weakened America on the world stage.
Judged by these standards, President Obama’s first 100 days have been a remarkable success.
Getting Congress to Give Him Things That Undermine Their Own Power
The Obama record in the first 100 days includes three instances of spectacular political impunity:
• Under the guise of “economic stimulus” he was able to pass a $787 billion gift for his liberal special interest base. And he did it so quickly that no member of Congress was able to read it before they voted.
• After campaigning on a pledge to end earmarks, he signed an appropriations bill loaded with 8,000 earmarks -- and paid no political penalty.
• President Obama has kept congressional Democrats marching with him in lockstep. House Democrats tow the party line an amazing 94 percent of the time and Senate Democrats vote Democratic 91 percent of the time.
Two Historic Bureaucratic Power Grabs
In these first 100 days, the Obama Administration has achieved two historic bureaucratic power grabs:
• President Obama has transformed the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) into giant engines of unsupervised spending. Together, they’ve spent the equivalent of the entire federal budget for 2007, without having to disclose where the money went.
• Just two weeks ago, the President presided over an unprecedented bureaucratic power grab when his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruled that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health. This seemingly innocuous decision opens the door to wholesale regulation of American life by government. The threat is so great that politicians and activists are using the specter of an out-of-control EPA to force Congress to pass a $1 trillion to $2 trillion energy tax in the form of cap-and-trade legislation.
In Foreign Policy, Weakness and Self-Delusion
The Obama 100 days record also includes remarkable weakness and self-delusion overseas:
• In an attempt to overcome anti-Americanism abroad by agreeing with it, President Obama has gone on a global apology tour, labeling America as “arrogant, dismissive and derisive” in front of foreign audiences.
• President Obama has unleashed a domestic war over the meaning of guilt by caving in to the anti-American left and leaving the door open to prosecuting Bush Administration officials over the interrogation of terrorists who plotted to kill Americans.
All Other Obama “Accomplishments” Are Only a Prelude to His $3.5 Trillion Budget
But all these successful expansions of government at home and retractions of American leadership abroad are merely a prelude to President Obama’s looming crowning achievement: His 2010 budget which remakes our health care system, remakes our energy system, raises taxes and forecasts an amazing $9 trillion increase in the national debt.
As I write this, Democrats in Congress are fashioning a deal to pass the budget’s provisions on health care by preventing Republicans and moderate Democrats from having a voice in the debate.
Think about that. The Obama-Reid-Pelosi political machine is going to pass legislation that fundamentally affects every single American -- as well as 17 percent of our economy -- by cutting the elected representatives of half of all Americans out of the process.
If they succeed, the budget will be President Obama’s most enduring -- and devastating -- accomplishment.
Will the Future Bring Change We Can Believe In? Or a Change in What we Believe?
One thing is clear at this point in President Obama’s presidency: His control of Washington Democrats has been so masterful, and his policies so successful, that he has officially claimed ownership of the American economy.
Going forward, it won’t be possible to continue to place blame on former President Bush and the Republicans. If President Obama fails, it will be his failure and his alone.
As for us, the “success” of the first 100 days of the Obama presidency raises a threatening possibility.
As my daughter and columnist Jackie Cushman put it, if we’re not careful, instead of change we can believe in, we’re going to have change in what we believe.
It’s something to ponder for the next 1,361 days.
Your friend,
Newt Gingrich
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Ron Walters: Grading Obama at 100 Days.
Walters grades Obama in his first 100 days as somewhere between an "A-" or "B+". Obama has tackled a finsncial crisis, crisis in auto, the illegality and immorality of the Bush-Cheney policies, he has wowed (!!) the E-20 and the OAS and he gets somewhere between an "A-" or "B+"??!!! Walters' concern is about Obama's lack of targeting programs that center on problems of the black community. RGN
Grading President Obama
By Ron Walters
This is the season for giving President Barack Obama his 100 day grade and in my participation in a number of these events, I concluded that he has earned somewhere between an “A-“ and a “B+”, more the latter. My reasoning is two fold: while he has done a great deal for the nation, from which blacks also benefit, he has done little to directly target the persistent problems faced by the black community yet.
The comparison to the performance of President Obama is often made to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who also inherited an economic crisis and who sponsored 15 major pieces of legislation to attempt to fix it. Barack Obama has to some extent matched that record by gravity of his decisions. For example, Roosevelt had not inherited a war, but Obama made the decision as his first act of business, to inform the nation that he was changing course and establishing a timetable for American withdrawal from Iraq. In his era, Roosevelt had nothing like the financial behemoths that roam the landscape of American capitalism today and so, Obama’s treatment of the banks, the financial institutions and the auto industry must be seen as comparable to Roosevelt’s regulation of the banking industry.
Where there seems to be more comparability is in the social sector where both men created programs to get America working again. Obama crafted a $787 billion Stimulus Package and a $49 billion small business assistance package. Roosevelt did not have the equivalent of the home foreclosure crisis, but Obama enacted a $79 billion home stabilization package. This performance was, therefore, not only breath-taking in its scope, but unprecedented in its historical importance in attempting to turn the country around.
On the other hand, I don’t see the Obama administration giving much special attention to the Black community and even black leaders interviewed admit that his administration has been weak on grass economic measures. So, in order to give Obama an “A” at this point, you would have to come to the conclusion that blacks not only benefit, but benefit as equally as others from the general policies that have been enacted on behalf of the nation. But how is that possible when blacks entered these crises suffering from double the rates of unemployment, triple the rate of incarceration, nearly double the lack of home ownership, and serious gaps with whites in almost every category of life? In this case, the rising tide will not lift all the boats equally.
In order not to grade him down, you would have to come to the conclusion that he could not possibly enact any targeted solutions to the problems faced by blacks and other such populations. Some accept that logic and give him a pass. I’m not ready to do that because I know that – without proposing legislation devoted specifically to blacks -- there are many non-racial ways of targeting public resources so that they effectively reach specific populations. The White House Office on Urban Policy could be such a vehicle, but he has not yet given it the profile or the mandate to do anything. No one has seen its Director, no speeches have been given about its agenda and so, one suspects that is in the offing for some time in the future.
If targeting public policy is not possible, then how do you account for the fact that one of the first acts of President Obama was to include a healthy percentage of women in his cabinet (some are still being confirmed). He then, signed the Lilly Ledbetter act promising equal pay for women, lifted the international gag rule for abortion counseling on American aid programs, followed that up with a White House Council of Women and Girls, and etc. In fact, this is an impressive list of actions devoted to women, who – not incidentally -- constitute 53% of the electorate.
This first 100 days would have been difficult for any President to mark important achievements, but especially when one has inherited the monumental problems faced by this Administration. Moreover, my colleagues believe that it is the second 100 days in which presidents have generally achieved much more. So, one should not despair that the black agenda has not been vigorously addressed as yet, but at the same time, one should not let the honeymoon that President Obama is enjoying among blacks and their leaders extend too far into the future.
Dr. Ron Walters is the Distinguished Leadership Scholar, Director of the African American Leadership Center, and Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. His latest book is: The Price of Racial Reconciliation (U. Michigan Press.)
Grading President Obama
By Ron Walters
This is the season for giving President Barack Obama his 100 day grade and in my participation in a number of these events, I concluded that he has earned somewhere between an “A-“ and a “B+”, more the latter. My reasoning is two fold: while he has done a great deal for the nation, from which blacks also benefit, he has done little to directly target the persistent problems faced by the black community yet.
The comparison to the performance of President Obama is often made to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who also inherited an economic crisis and who sponsored 15 major pieces of legislation to attempt to fix it. Barack Obama has to some extent matched that record by gravity of his decisions. For example, Roosevelt had not inherited a war, but Obama made the decision as his first act of business, to inform the nation that he was changing course and establishing a timetable for American withdrawal from Iraq. In his era, Roosevelt had nothing like the financial behemoths that roam the landscape of American capitalism today and so, Obama’s treatment of the banks, the financial institutions and the auto industry must be seen as comparable to Roosevelt’s regulation of the banking industry.
Where there seems to be more comparability is in the social sector where both men created programs to get America working again. Obama crafted a $787 billion Stimulus Package and a $49 billion small business assistance package. Roosevelt did not have the equivalent of the home foreclosure crisis, but Obama enacted a $79 billion home stabilization package. This performance was, therefore, not only breath-taking in its scope, but unprecedented in its historical importance in attempting to turn the country around.
On the other hand, I don’t see the Obama administration giving much special attention to the Black community and even black leaders interviewed admit that his administration has been weak on grass economic measures. So, in order to give Obama an “A” at this point, you would have to come to the conclusion that blacks not only benefit, but benefit as equally as others from the general policies that have been enacted on behalf of the nation. But how is that possible when blacks entered these crises suffering from double the rates of unemployment, triple the rate of incarceration, nearly double the lack of home ownership, and serious gaps with whites in almost every category of life? In this case, the rising tide will not lift all the boats equally.
In order not to grade him down, you would have to come to the conclusion that he could not possibly enact any targeted solutions to the problems faced by blacks and other such populations. Some accept that logic and give him a pass. I’m not ready to do that because I know that – without proposing legislation devoted specifically to blacks -- there are many non-racial ways of targeting public resources so that they effectively reach specific populations. The White House Office on Urban Policy could be such a vehicle, but he has not yet given it the profile or the mandate to do anything. No one has seen its Director, no speeches have been given about its agenda and so, one suspects that is in the offing for some time in the future.
If targeting public policy is not possible, then how do you account for the fact that one of the first acts of President Obama was to include a healthy percentage of women in his cabinet (some are still being confirmed). He then, signed the Lilly Ledbetter act promising equal pay for women, lifted the international gag rule for abortion counseling on American aid programs, followed that up with a White House Council of Women and Girls, and etc. In fact, this is an impressive list of actions devoted to women, who – not incidentally -- constitute 53% of the electorate.
This first 100 days would have been difficult for any President to mark important achievements, but especially when one has inherited the monumental problems faced by this Administration. Moreover, my colleagues believe that it is the second 100 days in which presidents have generally achieved much more. So, one should not despair that the black agenda has not been vigorously addressed as yet, but at the same time, one should not let the honeymoon that President Obama is enjoying among blacks and their leaders extend too far into the future.
Dr. Ron Walters is the Distinguished Leadership Scholar, Director of the African American Leadership Center, and Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. His latest book is: The Price of Racial Reconciliation (U. Michigan Press.)
And what is happening to the working class???
Bob Herbert is right-on on his critique of who is really paying the price of this "economic recovery." The bankers have not learned their lessons and the work force shrinks. We are hemmoraging workers. RGN
________________________________________
April 28, 2009
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Workers Walk the Plank
By BOB HERBERT
I’m sure everyone is thrilled to know that the high rollers on Wall Street are bouncing back. With profits on the rebound, the big shots at the biggest institutions are on track, as The Times reported Sunday, to make as much money this year as they were hauling in before the mega-recession began.
The growing legions of the unemployed can be forgiven for not shouting hallelujah. It’s a little like watching the drunken driver who plowed into your family car and caused untold havoc and heartache, suddenly pulling up one morning, no worse for the wear, in a sparkling new vehicle.
The folks who led the nation to this financial abyss are the ones being made whole on the taxpayers’ dime. We can look after them, all right. But we can’t seem to get credit flowing in any normal way again; we can’t stanch the terrible flow of home foreclosures; and we’re not doing nearly enough to address the most critical need of all: putting people back to work.
While Wall Street is breaking out the Champagne yet again, the rest of the economy is beyond terrible, and will be for the foreseeable future.
Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, offered a rundown of the unemployment crisis in remarks she prepared for a House subcommittee last week. Ms. Shierholz began by noting that next month the current economic downturn will become the longest since the Great Depression.
“The 10 postwar recessions prior to this one have averaged 10.4 months in length, with the longest being 16 months,” said Ms. Shierholz. “The current recession is now in its 16th month and the labor market is still shedding over 600,000 jobs a month.”
Wall Street can swallow all the Champagne it wants, and the market fanatics can obsess until their brains lock over the daily gyrations of the Dow. The simple fact is that working men and women are being squeezed in the ever-tightening jaws of a catastrophe.
The American auto industry is fading before our eyes. Chrysler is looking to Fiat — Fiat! — as a savior. The once-impregnable General Motors is now a giant junkyard sinking in quicksand. It disclosed Monday that it will cut another 21,000 factory jobs in the United States over the next year. If G.M. were to go under it would take an enormous chain of satellite industries down with it.
More than 13 million people are officially counted as unemployed, with some 5.6 million jobs lost since the recession started. Ms. Shierholz tells us that since the first of the year about 23,000 men and women were being added to the jobless rolls every day.
Job losses on such a scale are knockout blows to ordinary American families.
The importance of employment to the everyday life and long-term health of the nation is too often given short shrift. A recent report, “The 2009 MetLife Study of the American Dream,” found, not surprisingly, that “work is the linchpin holding the dream together” for most Americans.
In fact, the mythic American dream is becoming more and more elusive. The big concern facing millions of families at the moment is economic survival. More than half of all Americans — 56 percent — are concerned that they might lose their jobs in the next year. Few are prepared for such a setback.
As the authors of the MetLife study reported:
“With the erosion of social and corporate safety nets, tightening credit and declining home equity, most Americans have little financial cushioning to survive a job loss. Without a steady paycheck, 50 percent of Americans say they could not meet their financial obligations for more than a month — and, of that, a disturbing 28 percent couldn’t support themselves for more than two weeks of unemployment.”
That’s the case in an environment in which more than three million Americans already have been out of work for more than six months.
The employment issue is not being addressed with the level of urgency that is warranted. For all the talk of green jobs, there is no large-scale creative effort to turn this employment debacle around. There is no crash program on anything like the scale needed, for example, to rebuild the rotting infrastructure — a big-time potential source of jobs.
The financial industry is seen as essential, but millions of American workers are not. They’re expendable.
If as much attention, energy and resources were given to the effort to put Americans back to work as has been given to putting the banking industry back on its feet, you’d have fewer Champagne toasts on Wall Street but a lot more high-fiving in family homes across the country.
________________________________________
April 28, 2009
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Workers Walk the Plank
By BOB HERBERT
I’m sure everyone is thrilled to know that the high rollers on Wall Street are bouncing back. With profits on the rebound, the big shots at the biggest institutions are on track, as The Times reported Sunday, to make as much money this year as they were hauling in before the mega-recession began.
The growing legions of the unemployed can be forgiven for not shouting hallelujah. It’s a little like watching the drunken driver who plowed into your family car and caused untold havoc and heartache, suddenly pulling up one morning, no worse for the wear, in a sparkling new vehicle.
The folks who led the nation to this financial abyss are the ones being made whole on the taxpayers’ dime. We can look after them, all right. But we can’t seem to get credit flowing in any normal way again; we can’t stanch the terrible flow of home foreclosures; and we’re not doing nearly enough to address the most critical need of all: putting people back to work.
While Wall Street is breaking out the Champagne yet again, the rest of the economy is beyond terrible, and will be for the foreseeable future.
Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, offered a rundown of the unemployment crisis in remarks she prepared for a House subcommittee last week. Ms. Shierholz began by noting that next month the current economic downturn will become the longest since the Great Depression.
“The 10 postwar recessions prior to this one have averaged 10.4 months in length, with the longest being 16 months,” said Ms. Shierholz. “The current recession is now in its 16th month and the labor market is still shedding over 600,000 jobs a month.”
Wall Street can swallow all the Champagne it wants, and the market fanatics can obsess until their brains lock over the daily gyrations of the Dow. The simple fact is that working men and women are being squeezed in the ever-tightening jaws of a catastrophe.
The American auto industry is fading before our eyes. Chrysler is looking to Fiat — Fiat! — as a savior. The once-impregnable General Motors is now a giant junkyard sinking in quicksand. It disclosed Monday that it will cut another 21,000 factory jobs in the United States over the next year. If G.M. were to go under it would take an enormous chain of satellite industries down with it.
More than 13 million people are officially counted as unemployed, with some 5.6 million jobs lost since the recession started. Ms. Shierholz tells us that since the first of the year about 23,000 men and women were being added to the jobless rolls every day.
Job losses on such a scale are knockout blows to ordinary American families.
The importance of employment to the everyday life and long-term health of the nation is too often given short shrift. A recent report, “The 2009 MetLife Study of the American Dream,” found, not surprisingly, that “work is the linchpin holding the dream together” for most Americans.
In fact, the mythic American dream is becoming more and more elusive. The big concern facing millions of families at the moment is economic survival. More than half of all Americans — 56 percent — are concerned that they might lose their jobs in the next year. Few are prepared for such a setback.
As the authors of the MetLife study reported:
“With the erosion of social and corporate safety nets, tightening credit and declining home equity, most Americans have little financial cushioning to survive a job loss. Without a steady paycheck, 50 percent of Americans say they could not meet their financial obligations for more than a month — and, of that, a disturbing 28 percent couldn’t support themselves for more than two weeks of unemployment.”
That’s the case in an environment in which more than three million Americans already have been out of work for more than six months.
The employment issue is not being addressed with the level of urgency that is warranted. For all the talk of green jobs, there is no large-scale creative effort to turn this employment debacle around. There is no crash program on anything like the scale needed, for example, to rebuild the rotting infrastructure — a big-time potential source of jobs.
The financial industry is seen as essential, but millions of American workers are not. They’re expendable.
If as much attention, energy and resources were given to the effort to put Americans back to work as has been given to putting the banking industry back on its feet, you’d have fewer Champagne toasts on Wall Street but a lot more high-fiving in family homes across the country.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Barack Gets Rave Reviews
President Barack Obama is being received well by the American people. For his First 100 Days, Obama has shown competence, intelligence and confidence in handling an agenda that is simply unbelievable. There have been some minor bumps and those will be corrected (i.e. holding Bush, Cheney et al). The Republicans nw have a 21% approval rating. Their white nationalism, with its divisiveness, conservatism and racism, is being rejected. RGN
From Politico
April 27, 2009 04:18 AM EST
President Barack Obama scores high marks for how he has handled his job in his first three months in office, according to new polls released as the 100-day anniversary of his presidency approaches this Wednesday.
A Gallup survey found 56 percent of Americans giving Obama an excellent or good job rating, vs. 20 percent who grade him terrible or poor so far. The partisan breakdown in the poll was stark: 88 percent of Democrats surveyed gave Obama a good or excellent rating, compared with 24 percent of Republicans; and just 3 percent of Democrats said he has done a poor or terrible job in his first 100 days, compared with 40 percent of Republicans who said that.
When asked what was the best thing Obama has done since becoming president, 27 percent cited his economic measures, and 21 percent said improved foreign relations. In both cases, the responses were driven by positive responses from Democrats. Asked about the worst thing Obama had done, Republicans led with negative comments: 28 percent cited economic measures (particularly bailouts, the budget and economic stimulus packages), and 11 percent said national security issues, citing relations with enemies, the closing of Guantanamo Bay and the release of information about Bush administration torture techniques.
In a new poll by The Washington Post, 69 percent of those surveyed approved of Obama’s job performance. Majorities also approved of his handling of health care, global warming, taxes and Cuba; 38 percent disapproved of his handling of taxes and the federal deficit; and 53 percent opposed how he has dealt with big U.S. automakers.
“About three-quarters of Americans see Obama as a ‘strong leader,’ as ‘honest and trustworthy,’ as empathetic and as someone who can be trusted in a crisis,” the Post reported. “Six in 10 said he is in sync with their values, and nearly as many rate him a good commander in chief.”
© 2009 Capitol News Company, LLC
From Politico
April 27, 2009 04:18 AM EST
President Barack Obama scores high marks for how he has handled his job in his first three months in office, according to new polls released as the 100-day anniversary of his presidency approaches this Wednesday.
A Gallup survey found 56 percent of Americans giving Obama an excellent or good job rating, vs. 20 percent who grade him terrible or poor so far. The partisan breakdown in the poll was stark: 88 percent of Democrats surveyed gave Obama a good or excellent rating, compared with 24 percent of Republicans; and just 3 percent of Democrats said he has done a poor or terrible job in his first 100 days, compared with 40 percent of Republicans who said that.
When asked what was the best thing Obama has done since becoming president, 27 percent cited his economic measures, and 21 percent said improved foreign relations. In both cases, the responses were driven by positive responses from Democrats. Asked about the worst thing Obama had done, Republicans led with negative comments: 28 percent cited economic measures (particularly bailouts, the budget and economic stimulus packages), and 11 percent said national security issues, citing relations with enemies, the closing of Guantanamo Bay and the release of information about Bush administration torture techniques.
In a new poll by The Washington Post, 69 percent of those surveyed approved of Obama’s job performance. Majorities also approved of his handling of health care, global warming, taxes and Cuba; 38 percent disapproved of his handling of taxes and the federal deficit; and 53 percent opposed how he has dealt with big U.S. automakers.
“About three-quarters of Americans see Obama as a ‘strong leader,’ as ‘honest and trustworthy,’ as empathetic and as someone who can be trusted in a crisis,” the Post reported. “Six in 10 said he is in sync with their values, and nearly as many rate him a good commander in chief.”
© 2009 Capitol News Company, LLC
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Robert Freeman: Beware of the Fascist Backlash!!
At this moment the Republicans and the fascist right wing in this country seem to be so discredited that the thought of their comeback would be so unlikely. Robert Freeman raises a note a word of caution, given the economic catastrophe that we face. There is every reason to be hopeful that Barack Obama’s progressive pragmatism will be successful in turning around the dire straits in which we find ourselves. Rush Limbaugh’s “I hope he fails” has not been condemned by the Republicans. In fact, they consider him to be the leader to provide the ideological clarity of what their movement should be about. While many argued that the administration should ignore Limbaugh’s rants, the tactic of wrapping him around their necks was the right thing to do. It sharpens the debate. It exposes them as the party of obstruction. The policies of fascist right have proven themselves to be bankrupt but, as Freeman points out, such a failure did not die in Germany and as the economic crisis deepened following World War I. In fact, the fascists were able to gain momentum and power when the liberal Weimar Republic could not easily resolve the crisis. So, rather than being sanguine about the death of the “Reagan Revolution,” it is going to be imperative that the fascist right continue to be marginalized as Obama’s progressive pragmatism attempts to restore our economy. It is imperative that the policies of an Obama transformation win out for a new America that seeks economic justice and not be a victim of the fascist backlash that Freeman warns us of. RGN
Does America Face the Risk of a Fascist Backlash?
By Robert Freeman, AlterNet
Posted on March 19, 2009, Printed on March 21, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/132155/
In early 1919, Germany put in place a new government to begin rebuilding the country after its crushing defeat in World War I. But the right-wing forces that had led the country into the War and lost the War conspired even before it was over to destroy the new government, the "Weimar Republic." They succeeded.
The U.S. faces a similar "Weimar Moment." The devastating collapse of the economy after eight years of Republican rule has left the leadership, policies, and ideology of the right utterly discredited. But, as was the case with Germany in 1919, Republicans do not intend to allow the new government to succeed. They will do everything they can to undermine it. If they are successful, the U.S. may yet go the way of Weimar Germany.
World War I left Germany utterly devastated. The landed aristocrats, industrial magnates, wealthy financiers, weapons makers, and the officer corps of the military that formed the locus of right wing power were completely discredited. Their failure in provoking and prosecuting the War was catastrophic, undeniable, and complete.
The economy was destroyed. Prices were at 800% of pre-war levels and rising quickly. Agriculture, pillaged for the War, lay in ruins. Social insurance payments for the War's injured, to widows and orphans, and newly unemployed soldiers were astronomical. And all this was before the cost of rebuilding was even begun.
At the same time, Germany faced massive reparations payments to the Allied victors, France and England. But Germany's foreign properties had been confiscated and its colonies turned over to the victors. The combination of these conditions, both domestic and international, made it extraordinarily difficult for the German economy to recover.
As a result of the failure of the right, the German people elected a moderately leftist government to lead the nation's rebuilding. It was named the Weimar Republic for the city in which the new post-imperial constitution was written. The new government was led by Friedrich Ebert, head of the German Socialist Party.
But the country's new parliamentary system had allowed dozens of parties to run, making it impossible for any one party to win an outright majority. Ebert's party had achieved the highest portion of votes, 38%, in the first post-War elections, held in January 1919. Ebert would have to govern by coalition.
It was at this time that the right wing made its crucial decision. Despite its shocking, naked failure over the prior decade, despite the horrific devastation it had wrought on the German people, despite the discrediting of everything they had purported to stand for, they would fight Ebert, his new government, and its plans for recovery. They would do everything they could to make sure that the new government failed.
Their strategy was two-fold: first, stoke the resentment of the population about the calamitous state of its living conditions-no matter that those conditions had been created by the very right-wing oligarchs who now pretended to befriend the little guy. Rage is rage. It is glandular and unseeing. Once catalyzed it is easy to turn on any subject.
And stoking resentment was easy to do. Just before the War ended, the military concocted its most sensational lie: the German army hadn't actually been defeated. It had been "stabbed in the back" by communists, traitors, and Jews. It was an easy lie to sell. It entwined an attack on an alien political ideology -- liberalism -- with the latent, pervasive myth of German racial superiority.
The second strategy of the right was to prevent the new government from succeeding. To begin with, success of the left would conspicuously advertise the failure of the right. Moreover, success by the left would legitimize republican government, so hated by the oligarchs of the right. Much better for the people to be ruled by the self-aggrandizing right-wing autocracy that had governed Germany for centuries.
So the rightists set out to do everything they could to make it impossible for the leftists to govern. They would use parliamentary maneuver, shifting coalitions, domination of the new mass media, legislative obstruction, staged public relations spectacles, relentless pressure by narrow but powerful interests, judicial intimidation and, eventually, outright murder of their political opponents.
Contrition for their abject failure, humility for their destructive hubris, compassion for their crippled country-those had nothing to do with it. All they possessed was a blinding, visceral hatred of the left and a masturbatory lust for the return to power.
Eventually, they succeeded. Every setback in recovery -- and there would inevitably be many -- was met with hysterical demonizing of the left wing government. The lie was repeated relentlessly that the government was run by communists, traitors, and Jews-the same furtive cabal that had purportedly stabbed the country in the back at the end of the War. They steadily chipped away at the efficacy and, thereby, the legitimacy of successive republican governments.
By the time of the Great Depression, Adolph Hitler's ironically named National Socialist Party had become the biggest vote getter in the nation. The Nazis had once been derided as the lunatic fringe of the far right. But the "respectable" right-wing power brokers who had started and lost the Great War anointed Hitler Chancellor in January, 1933.
He immediately suspended the constitution, abolishing most civil liberties. He outlawed opposition parties, began a massive military build-up and a relentless propaganda campaign, and set Germany and the world onto the path of the greatest destruction it would ever know.
America now faces its own "Weimar moment."
The failure of right wing policy and leadership over the past eight years, especially in matters economic, is comparable to Germany's right-wing failure in World War I. It is catastrophic, undeniable, and complete.
Consider:
According to the World Economic Forum, forty percent of the entire world's wealth has been destroyed in the recent financial collapse. In the U.S. alone, between housing and the stock market, more than $18 trillion in wealth has already been destroyed.
The private mega-banks that anchor the financial systems of the western world are bankrupt. This makes it all but impossible to jump-start the western world's economies which are heavily dependent on bank-system credit to operate.
More than 10,000 homes go into foreclosure every day. More than 20,000 people lose their job every day. And the collapse is accelerating, developing its own self-reinforcing dynamic. Job losses breed foreclosures, reducing demand, leading to more job losses and further degradation of the financial system. None of the stopgaps designed to stanch the bleeding have yet worked. There is no bottom in sight.
Meanwhile, debt has risen to astronomical levels. Reagan and Bush I quadrupled the national debt in only twelve years. Bush II doubled it again in only eight. It is now ten times higher than it was in 1980 when Reagan was elected. Total public and private debt exceeds 300% of GDP, half again higher than it was in 1929.
The government's unfunded liabilities, promises it has made to the American people but for which no payment source can be identified, now exceed $60 trillion, a literally inconceivable sum that can never, will never, be paid. Federal Reserve economist Lawrence Kotlikoff has suggested that the U.S. government is "actuarially bankrupt."
The full measure of the nation's plight is revealed in Hillary Clinton's first trip as Secretary of State. It was to China, to beg them to fund Obama's new fiscal deficits. Without loans from China, the U.S. economy cannot be revived. The significance of this cannot be overstated: the U.S. no longer exercises sovereignty over its own economic affairs. That sovereignty now resides in the hands of China, the U.S.'s greatest long-term rival.
Thanks to Republican policies of massive debt and shipping jobs abroad, the U.S. has technically become a colony of China. It exports raw materials and imports finished goods, together with the capital to make up the difference. Should the Chinese decide not to lend the trillions of dollars the U.S. is begging for, the U.S. economy will implode, plummeting onto itself in a World Trade Center-like collapse that will leave dust clouds circling the planet for decades.
Notwithstanding the destruction inflicted on the economy by Republican policies, the most devastating breakdown is in the intellectual foundation on which right wing economic ideology itself is premised. Free market doctrine, the secular religion of right-wing America, is in utter, irretrievable shambles.
One of the most lofty tenets on which free markets are premised is their claim for themselves that they are "efficient," that is, that market prices always reflect "fundamental values" of assets. But if that's true, how could the world's largest insurance company, AIG, have lost 99.5% of its market value in only 18 months? How could the world's largest bank, Citibank, have lost 98% of its value over the same period?
How could the world's largest brokerage company, Merrill Lynch, have gone bankrupt and need to be bought by Bank of America? How could the world's largest car company, General Motors, have lost 95% of its value and stand on the threshold of extinction? How could the world's largest industrial conglomerate, General Electric, have lost 85% of its value in only 18 months?
If the largest companies in the world, those at the very heart of the capitalist system itself, can lose virtually all of their value in only 18 months, what is the possible meaning of the phrases "efficient markets" and "fundamental value"?
The other core tenets of free market ideology are equally compromised. Major actors are clearly not rational -- a breakdown of theological proportions admitted by no less an avatar of the cult than its pope himself, Alan Greenspan. Free markets clearly cannot, will not, regulate themselves. It is precisely their innate, irrepressible propensity for sociopathic greed and predatory fraud that has brought the whole of the world's economy to the precipice of collapse.
Free markets clearly do not align risk and reward, allocating capital to its most productive uses, as its promoters advertise. They clearly do not automatically return to equilibrium, but must be bailed out with trillions of dollars of injections from the shrinking coffers of the public to the ever-bulging coffers of a private priesthood of pillage and plunder.
And in perhaps the greatest indictment of all, one going back to its primeval roots in Adam Smith's eighteenth century opus, The Wealth of Nations, the unrestrained behavior of self-interested individuals clearly, manifestly, does not "coalesce as if by an Invisible Hand to the greatest good for the greatest number."
These are not peripheral premises that have failed. They are not tangential tenets. Efficient markets. Rational actors. Market equilibrium. Risk and reward. Self interest. These are the essential sacraments on which the entire free market system is founded. They are in tatters. And it isn't that any one of them has been discredited by the glaring, merciless force of events. All of them have been. All of them together. And all of them at the same time.
Free markets have long been the basis for a legitimate -- though rightly debated -- economic policy framework. But they have become little more than a robotically-recited cultural catechism, a mindless mantra mumbled to mask the looting of the nation's resources that is the true purpose of Republican economic policy as demonstrated by the staggering upward transfers of wealth that inevitably occur under Republican regimes. A more complete, conspicuous, catastrophic, and irrefutable repudiation of right wing leaders, right wing policies, and right wing ideology could not possibly be contrived.
So what is the right wing response?
They have adopted the strategy and tactics of the failed right wing plotters in Weimar Germany. First, stoke the resentment of the population about the increasingly dire state of its living conditions-no matter that those conditions were created by the very right-wing oligarchs who now pretend to befriend the little guy. Rage is rage. It is glandular and unseeing. Once catalyzed it is easy to turn on any subject.
Second, prevent the new government from succeeding in any meaningful endeavor. The Republicans have set all their efforts to doing everything they can to make sure the Obama administration fails. Rush Limbaugh's infamous, "I hope he fails" pronouncement is only the beginning of the fomenting of hatred from the right. As Limbaugh said, "Let's be honest. Every Republican in America is hoping for Obama's failure."
The same malignant hope oozes unadulterated from all the other Dogpatch Demagogues that rent themselves out to the Republican party to foment resentment against anything liberal: Joe the "Plumber," Rick Santelli, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, and virtually every other wing-nut operative whose intellectual stock in trade has been vaporized by the collision of right-wing policies with objective reality.
Equally so for the "respectable" members of the party, the all-but-three Republican members of Congress who refused to sign on to Obama's first stimulus package and continue to grandstand against every effort toward any form of progress. Contrition for their own abject failure, humility for their destructive hubris, compassion for their crippled country-those have nothing to do with it. All they possess is a blinding, visceral hatred of the left and a masturbatory lust for the return to power.
And what else can they do? Bereft of ideas, bankrupt in ideology, architects of collapse, obstruction is all they have. If Obama is successful, it will not only advertise the full extent of their failure, it will provide a model of liberal governance that would render Republicans irrelevant for decades, much as FDR's success left them out in the political cold for an entire generation. Liberal failure is a matter of life and death for Republicans.
And it's not at all clear that the liberals won't fail. No one should underestimate the task at hand. Never before -- not even during the Great Depression -- has the country inherited such a daunting, intractable set of economic problems: a debt burden so crushing; inequality so vast; a loss of financial sovereignty so constricting; an intellectual edifice so bankrupt; a private economy so uncompetitive; or an opposition so callously self interested in its own recovery and so cavalierly disinterested in the nation's.
The economy has been so damaged, successful rescue requires threading a series of policy needles, each of them so complex in their own right that none could be solved by any administration of the past 50 years. This includes rehabilitating and re-regulating the nation's banking system, restructuring health care, reducing national dependence on oil, reviving manufacturing so as to reduce the trade deficit, rebuilding the nation's crumbling infrastructure, dealing with a soaring national debt, trying to resuscitate a collapsing housing market, and all the while maintaining the safety net under 77 million baby boomers entering retirement with a net worth 60% what it was only 18 months ago.
Success will require much more than luck, hard work, brilliant policy, or soaring rhetoric. It will require cooperation and contribution from every American. It is those two offerings, cooperation and contribution, that Republicans are intent on withholding, the better to ensure Obama's failure. Simply put, the Republicans hate Democrats more than they love America.
If they succeed in derailing Obama's efforts, the cost will be incalculable.
After World War I, one of the consequences of the liberal government's failure was Adolph Hitler. Hitler had a genius for exploiting the resentment of the German people for their condition. More than 80% of the Nazi party's members were unemployed. It was these legions of idle thugs who made up the ranks of Hitler's brownshirt militia, the SA. The right wing oligarchy that had set out from the beginning to destroy the Weimar Republic recognized the potency of resentment and Hitler's genius at exploiting it. It was they who sponsored Hitler's ascension to Chancellor in 1933.
Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology -- even by its own standards -- is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s.
The Republican propensity for fascism must not be underestimated. Witness their phony justifications for the war in Iraq, fanning the flames of nationalistic aggression, just as Hitler did with Austria, the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, and Poland in the 1930s. Consider their symbiotic embrace of corporate interests in the oil, weapons, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, finance, and other industries-the same type of corporate interests that sponsored Hitler's ascent to power. Look at their efforts to dismantle civil liberties with the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act. Or their relentless, pervasive propaganda laundered through their corporate-owned right-wing media machine.
These are the classic hallmarks of fascism. The strategy is to obstruct recovery, facilitate collapse, and then incite the faux-populism of public resentment to re-install a corporatist oligarchy which has failed, but which will not abide a reduction of its privileges or a diminution of its control. It is a fetid, seditious agenda, awaiting only its own latter day mustachioed messiah for its final fulfillment.
World War I was a once-in-a-millennium upset in the architecture of global power. In four years, it shifted the center of that power from Europe to the United States. But failure now by the U.S. will shift that center once again, from the United States to China, out of the western world where it has resided for the past 500 years. The psychic shock to the billion-odd people living in western civilization, with its liberal democracies, capitalist economies, and Enlightenment ideals, will be incalculable, irretrievable.
This shift may be inevitable and only a matter of time. It is quite possible that the damage inflicted on the western world's economy by rapacious Republicans is already beyond repair. But it will be tragedy beyond measure if such a shift is consummated by the very wrecking crew that took us down the road to ruin, all the while so unctuously proclaiming "patriotism" as its crowning ideal. They are not patriots and their goal is not the revival of American power. It is the revival of their own power, even at the expense of America's. They represent a very dangerous threat to the nation's future.
Robert Freeman writes on history, economics and education.
© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/132155/
Does America Face the Risk of a Fascist Backlash?
By Robert Freeman, AlterNet
Posted on March 19, 2009, Printed on March 21, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/132155/
In early 1919, Germany put in place a new government to begin rebuilding the country after its crushing defeat in World War I. But the right-wing forces that had led the country into the War and lost the War conspired even before it was over to destroy the new government, the "Weimar Republic." They succeeded.
The U.S. faces a similar "Weimar Moment." The devastating collapse of the economy after eight years of Republican rule has left the leadership, policies, and ideology of the right utterly discredited. But, as was the case with Germany in 1919, Republicans do not intend to allow the new government to succeed. They will do everything they can to undermine it. If they are successful, the U.S. may yet go the way of Weimar Germany.
World War I left Germany utterly devastated. The landed aristocrats, industrial magnates, wealthy financiers, weapons makers, and the officer corps of the military that formed the locus of right wing power were completely discredited. Their failure in provoking and prosecuting the War was catastrophic, undeniable, and complete.
The economy was destroyed. Prices were at 800% of pre-war levels and rising quickly. Agriculture, pillaged for the War, lay in ruins. Social insurance payments for the War's injured, to widows and orphans, and newly unemployed soldiers were astronomical. And all this was before the cost of rebuilding was even begun.
At the same time, Germany faced massive reparations payments to the Allied victors, France and England. But Germany's foreign properties had been confiscated and its colonies turned over to the victors. The combination of these conditions, both domestic and international, made it extraordinarily difficult for the German economy to recover.
As a result of the failure of the right, the German people elected a moderately leftist government to lead the nation's rebuilding. It was named the Weimar Republic for the city in which the new post-imperial constitution was written. The new government was led by Friedrich Ebert, head of the German Socialist Party.
But the country's new parliamentary system had allowed dozens of parties to run, making it impossible for any one party to win an outright majority. Ebert's party had achieved the highest portion of votes, 38%, in the first post-War elections, held in January 1919. Ebert would have to govern by coalition.
It was at this time that the right wing made its crucial decision. Despite its shocking, naked failure over the prior decade, despite the horrific devastation it had wrought on the German people, despite the discrediting of everything they had purported to stand for, they would fight Ebert, his new government, and its plans for recovery. They would do everything they could to make sure that the new government failed.
Their strategy was two-fold: first, stoke the resentment of the population about the calamitous state of its living conditions-no matter that those conditions had been created by the very right-wing oligarchs who now pretended to befriend the little guy. Rage is rage. It is glandular and unseeing. Once catalyzed it is easy to turn on any subject.
And stoking resentment was easy to do. Just before the War ended, the military concocted its most sensational lie: the German army hadn't actually been defeated. It had been "stabbed in the back" by communists, traitors, and Jews. It was an easy lie to sell. It entwined an attack on an alien political ideology -- liberalism -- with the latent, pervasive myth of German racial superiority.
The second strategy of the right was to prevent the new government from succeeding. To begin with, success of the left would conspicuously advertise the failure of the right. Moreover, success by the left would legitimize republican government, so hated by the oligarchs of the right. Much better for the people to be ruled by the self-aggrandizing right-wing autocracy that had governed Germany for centuries.
So the rightists set out to do everything they could to make it impossible for the leftists to govern. They would use parliamentary maneuver, shifting coalitions, domination of the new mass media, legislative obstruction, staged public relations spectacles, relentless pressure by narrow but powerful interests, judicial intimidation and, eventually, outright murder of their political opponents.
Contrition for their abject failure, humility for their destructive hubris, compassion for their crippled country-those had nothing to do with it. All they possessed was a blinding, visceral hatred of the left and a masturbatory lust for the return to power.
Eventually, they succeeded. Every setback in recovery -- and there would inevitably be many -- was met with hysterical demonizing of the left wing government. The lie was repeated relentlessly that the government was run by communists, traitors, and Jews-the same furtive cabal that had purportedly stabbed the country in the back at the end of the War. They steadily chipped away at the efficacy and, thereby, the legitimacy of successive republican governments.
By the time of the Great Depression, Adolph Hitler's ironically named National Socialist Party had become the biggest vote getter in the nation. The Nazis had once been derided as the lunatic fringe of the far right. But the "respectable" right-wing power brokers who had started and lost the Great War anointed Hitler Chancellor in January, 1933.
He immediately suspended the constitution, abolishing most civil liberties. He outlawed opposition parties, began a massive military build-up and a relentless propaganda campaign, and set Germany and the world onto the path of the greatest destruction it would ever know.
America now faces its own "Weimar moment."
The failure of right wing policy and leadership over the past eight years, especially in matters economic, is comparable to Germany's right-wing failure in World War I. It is catastrophic, undeniable, and complete.
Consider:
According to the World Economic Forum, forty percent of the entire world's wealth has been destroyed in the recent financial collapse. In the U.S. alone, between housing and the stock market, more than $18 trillion in wealth has already been destroyed.
The private mega-banks that anchor the financial systems of the western world are bankrupt. This makes it all but impossible to jump-start the western world's economies which are heavily dependent on bank-system credit to operate.
More than 10,000 homes go into foreclosure every day. More than 20,000 people lose their job every day. And the collapse is accelerating, developing its own self-reinforcing dynamic. Job losses breed foreclosures, reducing demand, leading to more job losses and further degradation of the financial system. None of the stopgaps designed to stanch the bleeding have yet worked. There is no bottom in sight.
Meanwhile, debt has risen to astronomical levels. Reagan and Bush I quadrupled the national debt in only twelve years. Bush II doubled it again in only eight. It is now ten times higher than it was in 1980 when Reagan was elected. Total public and private debt exceeds 300% of GDP, half again higher than it was in 1929.
The government's unfunded liabilities, promises it has made to the American people but for which no payment source can be identified, now exceed $60 trillion, a literally inconceivable sum that can never, will never, be paid. Federal Reserve economist Lawrence Kotlikoff has suggested that the U.S. government is "actuarially bankrupt."
The full measure of the nation's plight is revealed in Hillary Clinton's first trip as Secretary of State. It was to China, to beg them to fund Obama's new fiscal deficits. Without loans from China, the U.S. economy cannot be revived. The significance of this cannot be overstated: the U.S. no longer exercises sovereignty over its own economic affairs. That sovereignty now resides in the hands of China, the U.S.'s greatest long-term rival.
Thanks to Republican policies of massive debt and shipping jobs abroad, the U.S. has technically become a colony of China. It exports raw materials and imports finished goods, together with the capital to make up the difference. Should the Chinese decide not to lend the trillions of dollars the U.S. is begging for, the U.S. economy will implode, plummeting onto itself in a World Trade Center-like collapse that will leave dust clouds circling the planet for decades.
Notwithstanding the destruction inflicted on the economy by Republican policies, the most devastating breakdown is in the intellectual foundation on which right wing economic ideology itself is premised. Free market doctrine, the secular religion of right-wing America, is in utter, irretrievable shambles.
One of the most lofty tenets on which free markets are premised is their claim for themselves that they are "efficient," that is, that market prices always reflect "fundamental values" of assets. But if that's true, how could the world's largest insurance company, AIG, have lost 99.5% of its market value in only 18 months? How could the world's largest bank, Citibank, have lost 98% of its value over the same period?
How could the world's largest brokerage company, Merrill Lynch, have gone bankrupt and need to be bought by Bank of America? How could the world's largest car company, General Motors, have lost 95% of its value and stand on the threshold of extinction? How could the world's largest industrial conglomerate, General Electric, have lost 85% of its value in only 18 months?
If the largest companies in the world, those at the very heart of the capitalist system itself, can lose virtually all of their value in only 18 months, what is the possible meaning of the phrases "efficient markets" and "fundamental value"?
The other core tenets of free market ideology are equally compromised. Major actors are clearly not rational -- a breakdown of theological proportions admitted by no less an avatar of the cult than its pope himself, Alan Greenspan. Free markets clearly cannot, will not, regulate themselves. It is precisely their innate, irrepressible propensity for sociopathic greed and predatory fraud that has brought the whole of the world's economy to the precipice of collapse.
Free markets clearly do not align risk and reward, allocating capital to its most productive uses, as its promoters advertise. They clearly do not automatically return to equilibrium, but must be bailed out with trillions of dollars of injections from the shrinking coffers of the public to the ever-bulging coffers of a private priesthood of pillage and plunder.
And in perhaps the greatest indictment of all, one going back to its primeval roots in Adam Smith's eighteenth century opus, The Wealth of Nations, the unrestrained behavior of self-interested individuals clearly, manifestly, does not "coalesce as if by an Invisible Hand to the greatest good for the greatest number."
These are not peripheral premises that have failed. They are not tangential tenets. Efficient markets. Rational actors. Market equilibrium. Risk and reward. Self interest. These are the essential sacraments on which the entire free market system is founded. They are in tatters. And it isn't that any one of them has been discredited by the glaring, merciless force of events. All of them have been. All of them together. And all of them at the same time.
Free markets have long been the basis for a legitimate -- though rightly debated -- economic policy framework. But they have become little more than a robotically-recited cultural catechism, a mindless mantra mumbled to mask the looting of the nation's resources that is the true purpose of Republican economic policy as demonstrated by the staggering upward transfers of wealth that inevitably occur under Republican regimes. A more complete, conspicuous, catastrophic, and irrefutable repudiation of right wing leaders, right wing policies, and right wing ideology could not possibly be contrived.
So what is the right wing response?
They have adopted the strategy and tactics of the failed right wing plotters in Weimar Germany. First, stoke the resentment of the population about the increasingly dire state of its living conditions-no matter that those conditions were created by the very right-wing oligarchs who now pretend to befriend the little guy. Rage is rage. It is glandular and unseeing. Once catalyzed it is easy to turn on any subject.
Second, prevent the new government from succeeding in any meaningful endeavor. The Republicans have set all their efforts to doing everything they can to make sure the Obama administration fails. Rush Limbaugh's infamous, "I hope he fails" pronouncement is only the beginning of the fomenting of hatred from the right. As Limbaugh said, "Let's be honest. Every Republican in America is hoping for Obama's failure."
The same malignant hope oozes unadulterated from all the other Dogpatch Demagogues that rent themselves out to the Republican party to foment resentment against anything liberal: Joe the "Plumber," Rick Santelli, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, and virtually every other wing-nut operative whose intellectual stock in trade has been vaporized by the collision of right-wing policies with objective reality.
Equally so for the "respectable" members of the party, the all-but-three Republican members of Congress who refused to sign on to Obama's first stimulus package and continue to grandstand against every effort toward any form of progress. Contrition for their own abject failure, humility for their destructive hubris, compassion for their crippled country-those have nothing to do with it. All they possess is a blinding, visceral hatred of the left and a masturbatory lust for the return to power.
And what else can they do? Bereft of ideas, bankrupt in ideology, architects of collapse, obstruction is all they have. If Obama is successful, it will not only advertise the full extent of their failure, it will provide a model of liberal governance that would render Republicans irrelevant for decades, much as FDR's success left them out in the political cold for an entire generation. Liberal failure is a matter of life and death for Republicans.
And it's not at all clear that the liberals won't fail. No one should underestimate the task at hand. Never before -- not even during the Great Depression -- has the country inherited such a daunting, intractable set of economic problems: a debt burden so crushing; inequality so vast; a loss of financial sovereignty so constricting; an intellectual edifice so bankrupt; a private economy so uncompetitive; or an opposition so callously self interested in its own recovery and so cavalierly disinterested in the nation's.
The economy has been so damaged, successful rescue requires threading a series of policy needles, each of them so complex in their own right that none could be solved by any administration of the past 50 years. This includes rehabilitating and re-regulating the nation's banking system, restructuring health care, reducing national dependence on oil, reviving manufacturing so as to reduce the trade deficit, rebuilding the nation's crumbling infrastructure, dealing with a soaring national debt, trying to resuscitate a collapsing housing market, and all the while maintaining the safety net under 77 million baby boomers entering retirement with a net worth 60% what it was only 18 months ago.
Success will require much more than luck, hard work, brilliant policy, or soaring rhetoric. It will require cooperation and contribution from every American. It is those two offerings, cooperation and contribution, that Republicans are intent on withholding, the better to ensure Obama's failure. Simply put, the Republicans hate Democrats more than they love America.
If they succeed in derailing Obama's efforts, the cost will be incalculable.
After World War I, one of the consequences of the liberal government's failure was Adolph Hitler. Hitler had a genius for exploiting the resentment of the German people for their condition. More than 80% of the Nazi party's members were unemployed. It was these legions of idle thugs who made up the ranks of Hitler's brownshirt militia, the SA. The right wing oligarchy that had set out from the beginning to destroy the Weimar Republic recognized the potency of resentment and Hitler's genius at exploiting it. It was they who sponsored Hitler's ascension to Chancellor in 1933.
Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology -- even by its own standards -- is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s.
The Republican propensity for fascism must not be underestimated. Witness their phony justifications for the war in Iraq, fanning the flames of nationalistic aggression, just as Hitler did with Austria, the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, and Poland in the 1930s. Consider their symbiotic embrace of corporate interests in the oil, weapons, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, finance, and other industries-the same type of corporate interests that sponsored Hitler's ascent to power. Look at their efforts to dismantle civil liberties with the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act. Or their relentless, pervasive propaganda laundered through their corporate-owned right-wing media machine.
These are the classic hallmarks of fascism. The strategy is to obstruct recovery, facilitate collapse, and then incite the faux-populism of public resentment to re-install a corporatist oligarchy which has failed, but which will not abide a reduction of its privileges or a diminution of its control. It is a fetid, seditious agenda, awaiting only its own latter day mustachioed messiah for its final fulfillment.
World War I was a once-in-a-millennium upset in the architecture of global power. In four years, it shifted the center of that power from Europe to the United States. But failure now by the U.S. will shift that center once again, from the United States to China, out of the western world where it has resided for the past 500 years. The psychic shock to the billion-odd people living in western civilization, with its liberal democracies, capitalist economies, and Enlightenment ideals, will be incalculable, irretrievable.
This shift may be inevitable and only a matter of time. It is quite possible that the damage inflicted on the western world's economy by rapacious Republicans is already beyond repair. But it will be tragedy beyond measure if such a shift is consummated by the very wrecking crew that took us down the road to ruin, all the while so unctuously proclaiming "patriotism" as its crowning ideal. They are not patriots and their goal is not the revival of American power. It is the revival of their own power, even at the expense of America's. They represent a very dangerous threat to the nation's future.
Robert Freeman writes on history, economics and education.
© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/132155/
Friday, March 20, 2009
Recognizing Integrity, Intelligence, and Vision is Repulsive to Right Wing Republicans
Conservative and right wing Republicans are dumbfounded about what to do with Barack Obama as President. President Obama is unique in terms of what he brings to the Presidency and politics. This is very frustrating for the right wing because their aims, goals, and behavior are limited to ideology, an ideology that has been exposed for the failure that it is. For 30 years, white Americans have been seduced by lies -- the biggest of which is that the government is the enemy as a opposed to it being "by, of, and for, the people." Their leading spokespersons are Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and William Bennett -- to name a few. These people are liars and distorters all. It is this right wing hegemony that finds its foundation in lies. Consequently, the presidency of a man who was at the top of his Harvard Law School but who eschews Wall Street to organize the working class and the poor brings an integrity and intelligence to the office discredits all that they stand for. So, when there is an attempt to acknowledge and honor these characteristics in the President's public service by the black legislators of Georgia, it became imperative for the right wing ideologues to blunt any notion that there are now, in this presidency, a new set of standards that are not the politics as usual. RGN
— ATLANTA (AP) — Frustrated black lawmakers staged a walkout Friday after the Georgia House decided to delay another vote on a resolution that would have honored President Barack Obama as a politician with an “unimpeachable reputation for integrity, vision and passion.”
House Speaker Glenn Richardson vowed the decision to send the resolution to a committee did not “bury” the bill, but the move outraged black lawmakers, who stalked out of the chamber seconds later. They saw it as an effort to snub the nation’s first black president by a group of white Republican legislators.
“It drips with racism,” said state Rep. Al Williams, a Midway Democrat who joined about two dozen black legislators outside the chamber. “I call it just like it is.”
The furor began Thursday when the Republican-controlled House voted 70-68 to reject the resolution, which would have made Obama an honorary member of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus. The members said it would have been the first such proposal in the country.
The measure was blocked by a group of House Republicans who said they were forced to vote it down because House Democrats refused to hash out a compromise over the resolution’s wording.
State Rep. Austin Scott, the Tifton Republican who led the charge, said he took issue with language that said “no one could be more worthy of special honor and recognition by the members of this body and the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus than this extraordinary leader.”
Scott, who is running for governor, said if Democrats had taken out the wording “by the members of this body” he would have accepted the proposal. But he said its sponsors refused to budge.
But state Rep. Keith Heard, the resolution’s sponsor, said the wording was stock language that has appeared in countless other resolutions and was approved by the Legislature’s attorneys.
He said he and his colleagues have often voted for such “privileged” resolutions they don’t support, such as a 2005 resolution commending then-President George W. Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina and another one honoring Ronald Reagan — out of respect for the lawmaker supporting the measure.
“We’ve passed thousands of these resolutions with the same language,” said Heard, D-Athens. “The language is very minor, but if it is so minor, why are we changing it?”
Others saw the decision in a more troubling light.
“This seems to add credibility that there’s an undertone of racism here, an undertone of mean-spiritedness, an undertone of the efforts to repress the minority legislators,” said state Sen. Emanuel Jones, the chairman of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus.
But GOP leaders denied the allegations. House Majority Leader Jerry Keen said sending the resolution back to committee would help “get this language recrafted” so lawmakers can find something they can all agree upon.
Richardson, meanwhile, suggested it would be an easy fix.
“Two or three words can be changed and this matter can be voted on,” said Richardson, R-Hiram. “It’s a matter of less than five words that are objectionable.”
———
— ATLANTA (AP) — Frustrated black lawmakers staged a walkout Friday after the Georgia House decided to delay another vote on a resolution that would have honored President Barack Obama as a politician with an “unimpeachable reputation for integrity, vision and passion.”
House Speaker Glenn Richardson vowed the decision to send the resolution to a committee did not “bury” the bill, but the move outraged black lawmakers, who stalked out of the chamber seconds later. They saw it as an effort to snub the nation’s first black president by a group of white Republican legislators.
“It drips with racism,” said state Rep. Al Williams, a Midway Democrat who joined about two dozen black legislators outside the chamber. “I call it just like it is.”
The furor began Thursday when the Republican-controlled House voted 70-68 to reject the resolution, which would have made Obama an honorary member of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus. The members said it would have been the first such proposal in the country.
The measure was blocked by a group of House Republicans who said they were forced to vote it down because House Democrats refused to hash out a compromise over the resolution’s wording.
State Rep. Austin Scott, the Tifton Republican who led the charge, said he took issue with language that said “no one could be more worthy of special honor and recognition by the members of this body and the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus than this extraordinary leader.”
Scott, who is running for governor, said if Democrats had taken out the wording “by the members of this body” he would have accepted the proposal. But he said its sponsors refused to budge.
But state Rep. Keith Heard, the resolution’s sponsor, said the wording was stock language that has appeared in countless other resolutions and was approved by the Legislature’s attorneys.
He said he and his colleagues have often voted for such “privileged” resolutions they don’t support, such as a 2005 resolution commending then-President George W. Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina and another one honoring Ronald Reagan — out of respect for the lawmaker supporting the measure.
“We’ve passed thousands of these resolutions with the same language,” said Heard, D-Athens. “The language is very minor, but if it is so minor, why are we changing it?”
Others saw the decision in a more troubling light.
“This seems to add credibility that there’s an undertone of racism here, an undertone of mean-spiritedness, an undertone of the efforts to repress the minority legislators,” said state Sen. Emanuel Jones, the chairman of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus.
But GOP leaders denied the allegations. House Majority Leader Jerry Keen said sending the resolution back to committee would help “get this language recrafted” so lawmakers can find something they can all agree upon.
Richardson, meanwhile, suggested it would be an easy fix.
“Two or three words can be changed and this matter can be voted on,” said Richardson, R-Hiram. “It’s a matter of less than five words that are objectionable.”
———
Monday, March 16, 2009
Ron Walters on the "Politics of Anxiety"
The Politics of Anxiety
By Ron Walters
I guess that it is inevitable in a context which has so many large issues that are unresolved and punishing so many people that anxiety is the culture of the ruling class as much as everyone else. You see it and hear it in the remarks of even well-meaning media commentators and analysts, to such an extent that someone defends the Administration of Barack Obama in the welter of criticism it is a rare occurrence. Otherwise, the finger-pointing and second-guessing is rife, questioning every move made or rumored and even some that have not been discussed seriously by the White House (such as the prospect of a second Stimulus Package). To purposefully bump it up, this culture of anxiety and criticism is richly mixed by the views of Republicans who wish the Obama administration ill and don’t have any good ideas, but who are a convenient source of negative opinion nonetheless.
Thus far, there is not an expert consensus that the Administration is going south, but that appears to be the atmosphere that much of the media is working hard to arrive at, as they are pained by the continuing good favorable rating numbers put up by President Obama’s leadership among the American people.
This is strange because when Obama put together his Administration there were ooohs and aaahs about the expertise he had surrounded himself with, especially on the economic front, but now the journalists are the experts and the views of the Administration are suspect because they haven’s solved the economic crisis in 50 days. Only TV comedian Jon Stewart tapped into a deadly serious moment when he cussed out folks like CNBC’s Jim Cramer who has pilloried the Obama economic team and its moves unmercifully. Lost in the criticism is the almost miraculous passage of the $787 billion Stimulus package in 30 days and the unleashing of another $75 billion addressed to the Housing Foreclosure crisis and the third leg of the stool is the work they are doing to address the financial system, getting the banks back into the credit business more robustly.
Critics seem to want an immediate formula to fix the financial crisis in fifty days. But if the administration is to get the fix right, they have to gather data (an operation that alone should take at least a month) that tells them what has happened and something of the scope of it. So, Treasury Secretary Geithner and his colleagues need time. The Administration has also been hampered because it has had to clean up the mess made by the Bush Administration’s bad decisions that gave $350 billion to the banks without any accountability and create a valid solution going forward. Symptomatic of this is the amount of attention being given to developing regulations promoting transparency in the use of these funds for AIG and other financial institutions that are spending the peoples’ money like it was their own, having lavish parties, giving themselves big bonuses. This has given Republicans the opportunity to appear to be populist on the side of average people who are angry at the fat cats who are being bailed out while they suffer.
There seems to be a big push to make the criticism of the Obama Administration the rationale for shoving the whole financial mess on to his shoulders, by trying to shorten the honeymoon (as Washington Post columnist David Broder said) he should have with the political establishment in the post-election period.
But folks are just plain wrong when they suggest that the President has too much on his plate. For anyone who knows government, they should know that he hasn’t had much of a choice but to use this extraordinary moment that cries out for change on many fronts to crack the Champaign on the bow of many boats and get them moving toward his goals. He has thirteen cabinet agencies and a host of independent agencies to get going. What should he have done, wait to give them their mission until the economic crisis is solved? I think not and people who think that way are either ignorant or suspiciously playing games.
So, lets be clear that much of the criticism is coded opposition against valid objectives such as fixing health care, education, employment, energy, the environment, because those opposed to action on these fronts want a clear shot at stopping them anyway. But the Obama people wisely slipped them into the Stimulus Package.
I was really surprised at billionaire Warren Buffet, a supporter of Barack Obama, recommend to him that he should zero in on the economic crisis “like a laser.” Well, where has he been? Even when Obama was only President-Elect during the Transition period he was working on the economic crisis, that leadership created the Stimulus Package and the Home Foreclosure strategy. So, I guess that Buffet, who has also lost billions, feels that Obama should spend his time helping him get his money back rather than forming his entire government.
Finally, the culture of anxiety has gotten so out of hand that even the downward slide in the market was tied to Obama’s leadership, but when it went up 600 points the week of March 8 all was quiet. So where is the fairness? Lost in the current psychosis.
Dr. Ronald Walters is the Distinguished Leadership Scholar, Director of the African American Leadership Center and Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. His latest book is: The Price of Racial Reconciliation (U. of Michigan Press)
By Ron Walters
I guess that it is inevitable in a context which has so many large issues that are unresolved and punishing so many people that anxiety is the culture of the ruling class as much as everyone else. You see it and hear it in the remarks of even well-meaning media commentators and analysts, to such an extent that someone defends the Administration of Barack Obama in the welter of criticism it is a rare occurrence. Otherwise, the finger-pointing and second-guessing is rife, questioning every move made or rumored and even some that have not been discussed seriously by the White House (such as the prospect of a second Stimulus Package). To purposefully bump it up, this culture of anxiety and criticism is richly mixed by the views of Republicans who wish the Obama administration ill and don’t have any good ideas, but who are a convenient source of negative opinion nonetheless.
Thus far, there is not an expert consensus that the Administration is going south, but that appears to be the atmosphere that much of the media is working hard to arrive at, as they are pained by the continuing good favorable rating numbers put up by President Obama’s leadership among the American people.
This is strange because when Obama put together his Administration there were ooohs and aaahs about the expertise he had surrounded himself with, especially on the economic front, but now the journalists are the experts and the views of the Administration are suspect because they haven’s solved the economic crisis in 50 days. Only TV comedian Jon Stewart tapped into a deadly serious moment when he cussed out folks like CNBC’s Jim Cramer who has pilloried the Obama economic team and its moves unmercifully. Lost in the criticism is the almost miraculous passage of the $787 billion Stimulus package in 30 days and the unleashing of another $75 billion addressed to the Housing Foreclosure crisis and the third leg of the stool is the work they are doing to address the financial system, getting the banks back into the credit business more robustly.
Critics seem to want an immediate formula to fix the financial crisis in fifty days. But if the administration is to get the fix right, they have to gather data (an operation that alone should take at least a month) that tells them what has happened and something of the scope of it. So, Treasury Secretary Geithner and his colleagues need time. The Administration has also been hampered because it has had to clean up the mess made by the Bush Administration’s bad decisions that gave $350 billion to the banks without any accountability and create a valid solution going forward. Symptomatic of this is the amount of attention being given to developing regulations promoting transparency in the use of these funds for AIG and other financial institutions that are spending the peoples’ money like it was their own, having lavish parties, giving themselves big bonuses. This has given Republicans the opportunity to appear to be populist on the side of average people who are angry at the fat cats who are being bailed out while they suffer.
There seems to be a big push to make the criticism of the Obama Administration the rationale for shoving the whole financial mess on to his shoulders, by trying to shorten the honeymoon (as Washington Post columnist David Broder said) he should have with the political establishment in the post-election period.
But folks are just plain wrong when they suggest that the President has too much on his plate. For anyone who knows government, they should know that he hasn’t had much of a choice but to use this extraordinary moment that cries out for change on many fronts to crack the Champaign on the bow of many boats and get them moving toward his goals. He has thirteen cabinet agencies and a host of independent agencies to get going. What should he have done, wait to give them their mission until the economic crisis is solved? I think not and people who think that way are either ignorant or suspiciously playing games.
So, lets be clear that much of the criticism is coded opposition against valid objectives such as fixing health care, education, employment, energy, the environment, because those opposed to action on these fronts want a clear shot at stopping them anyway. But the Obama people wisely slipped them into the Stimulus Package.
I was really surprised at billionaire Warren Buffet, a supporter of Barack Obama, recommend to him that he should zero in on the economic crisis “like a laser.” Well, where has he been? Even when Obama was only President-Elect during the Transition period he was working on the economic crisis, that leadership created the Stimulus Package and the Home Foreclosure strategy. So, I guess that Buffet, who has also lost billions, feels that Obama should spend his time helping him get his money back rather than forming his entire government.
Finally, the culture of anxiety has gotten so out of hand that even the downward slide in the market was tied to Obama’s leadership, but when it went up 600 points the week of March 8 all was quiet. So where is the fairness? Lost in the current psychosis.
Dr. Ronald Walters is the Distinguished Leadership Scholar, Director of the African American Leadership Center and Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. His latest book is: The Price of Racial Reconciliation (U. of Michigan Press)
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Humanitarians Unite, You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Chains!!!
This post was shared via the MichigandersforObama distribution list. RGN
Good morning, my caring and wonderfully active peeps.
I have some really great news. I have something, that if it is of interest to you, is a truly fabulous project to get behind.
www.manyone.net/obamasangels/
This last week, I was approached by Gigi from Obama's Angels. They are a nonprofit arm of the DNC created to support Obama's humanitarian initiatives. They reached out to us CAN groups (so cool) to ask us to help them spread the word of their goals and plans. And they are really wonderful goals and plans.
First, let me tell you that they started as we did....with a worry that this incredible movement might die after Election Day. So three months before the election, they were formed to exist whether or not Obama won. Again, very cool.
BACKSTORY:
The "National Council for Obama's Angels - Headquarters, SLC", "Obama's Angels" for short, is a national and international grassroots organization created, and approved as an international and national community service group by the Barack Obama 2008 campaign, before the Presidential Elections.
(see "National Council for Obama's Angels" in the old barackobama.com site -- hey that's us!!!!).
THEIR MISSION:
"Our purpose is to preserve, promote and support President Barack Obama's humanitarian and activist agenda of community outreach and service, inclusive and beyond Party lines, after the the 2008 Presidential Elections. We work to unite people in the United States and in the world, through effective community and humanitarian service."
" Our mission is to do "Good Works" through volunteer service, while inspiring, training and supporting others who are doing the same."
WHAT THEY DO:
Obama's Angels provides logistic support, volunteer labor, community organizing training and "think-tank" support to existing humanitarian and activist organizations that are developing projects which advance President Obama's agenda. We back projects and activities which help to improve our quality of life and help the world to become a more peaceful place.
Don't you just love these guys? I knew you would.
They are having a leadership conference in May. No details have been released yet. The goal is that they want to open Obama's Angels offices all over the U.S. and they want our help.
As they are just putting their speakers together now, please do not bombard their offices with questions about details of the conference because it is being developed as we speak and there is no link to it yet or public announcement. We are the first to know.
It would be really nice, however, to join their web site and get up to speed on their organization. If you are a Camp Obama TEACHER, please do contact them as they are putting together their different seminars for this leadership conference right now and could use your support and knowledge passed on.
Tell them Lisa sent you.
Needless to say, send this everywhere and anywhere. Get the word out. Let's show these naysayers how powerful we can be and how our truly, honorably this nation's 44th President Barack Obama rolls. Community Activism is going to be the #1 fasting growing sector of the United States. And we are going to kick it off. Opening Obama's Angels across the country. Very exciting.
Go people. This is not a drill!!
Lisa Lindo
National USA.CAN Group Administrator (Community Action Networks)
Associate Producer Vote For Change Campaign -- http://obeygiant.com/voteforchange/
You Tube: You Made Me Love You, Obama!
Economic URL: IfTheBuckStopsHereShootIt.com
Twitter: lisalindo
http://My.BarackObama.com/page/group/CaliforniaCAN
http://My.BarackObama.com/page/group/USACAN
http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/hawaiiCAN
Good morning, my caring and wonderfully active peeps.
I have some really great news. I have something, that if it is of interest to you, is a truly fabulous project to get behind.
www.manyone.net/obamasangels/
This last week, I was approached by Gigi from Obama's Angels. They are a nonprofit arm of the DNC created to support Obama's humanitarian initiatives. They reached out to us CAN groups (so cool) to ask us to help them spread the word of their goals and plans. And they are really wonderful goals and plans.
First, let me tell you that they started as we did....with a worry that this incredible movement might die after Election Day. So three months before the election, they were formed to exist whether or not Obama won. Again, very cool.
BACKSTORY:
The "National Council for Obama's Angels - Headquarters, SLC", "Obama's Angels" for short, is a national and international grassroots organization created, and approved as an international and national community service group by the Barack Obama 2008 campaign, before the Presidential Elections.
(see "National Council for Obama's Angels" in the old barackobama.com site -- hey that's us!!!!).
THEIR MISSION:
"Our purpose is to preserve, promote and support President Barack Obama's humanitarian and activist agenda of community outreach and service, inclusive and beyond Party lines, after the the 2008 Presidential Elections. We work to unite people in the United States and in the world, through effective community and humanitarian service."
" Our mission is to do "Good Works" through volunteer service, while inspiring, training and supporting others who are doing the same."
WHAT THEY DO:
Obama's Angels provides logistic support, volunteer labor, community organizing training and "think-tank" support to existing humanitarian and activist organizations that are developing projects which advance President Obama's agenda. We back projects and activities which help to improve our quality of life and help the world to become a more peaceful place.
Don't you just love these guys? I knew you would.
They are having a leadership conference in May. No details have been released yet. The goal is that they want to open Obama's Angels offices all over the U.S. and they want our help.
As they are just putting their speakers together now, please do not bombard their offices with questions about details of the conference because it is being developed as we speak and there is no link to it yet or public announcement. We are the first to know.
It would be really nice, however, to join their web site and get up to speed on their organization. If you are a Camp Obama TEACHER, please do contact them as they are putting together their different seminars for this leadership conference right now and could use your support and knowledge passed on.
Tell them Lisa sent you.
Needless to say, send this everywhere and anywhere. Get the word out. Let's show these naysayers how powerful we can be and how our truly, honorably this nation's 44th President Barack Obama rolls. Community Activism is going to be the #1 fasting growing sector of the United States. And we are going to kick it off. Opening Obama's Angels across the country. Very exciting.
Go people. This is not a drill!!
Lisa Lindo
National USA.CAN Group Administrator (Community Action Networks)
Associate Producer Vote For Change Campaign -- http://obeygiant.com/voteforchange/
You Tube: You Made Me Love You, Obama!
Economic URL: IfTheBuckStopsHereShootIt.com
Twitter: lisalindo
http://My.BarackObama.com/page/group/CaliforniaCAN
http://My.BarackObama.com/page/group/USACAN
http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/hawaiiCAN
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Tasteless, Racist Cartoon: Fight Back!!!
Dear Friend,
Yesterday, the day after President Obama signed his stimulus bill into law, the
NY Post ran a cartoon depicting the bill's "author" as a dead monkey, covered in
blood after being shot by police. You can see the image by clicking on the link below.
In the face of intense criticism, the Post's editor is standing by the cartoon,
claiming that it's not about Obama, has no racial undertones, and that it was
simply referencing a recent incident when police shot a pet chimpanzee. But it's
impossible to believe that any newspaper editor could be ignorant enough to not
understand how this cartoon evokes a history of racist symbolism, or how
frightening this image feels at a time when death threats against President
Obama have been on the rise.
Please join me and other ColorOfChange.org members in demanding that the Post
apologize publicly and fire the editor who allowed this cartoon to go to print:
http://www.colorofchange.org/nypost/?id=1699-158105
The Post would have us believe that the cartoon is not about Obama. But on the
page just before the cartoon appears, there's a big picture of Obama signing the
stimulus bill. A reader paging through the Post would see Obama putting pen to
paper, then turn the page to see this violent cartoon. The imagery is chilling.
There is a clear history in our country of racist symbolism that depicts Black
people as apes or monkeys, and it came up multiple times during the presidential
campaign.
We're also in a time of increased race-based violence. In the months following
President Obama's election there has been a nationwide surge in hate crimes
ranging from vandalism to assaults to arson on Black churches. There has been an
unprecedented number of threats against President Obama since he was elected,
with hate-based groups fantasizing about the killing of the president. Just a
week ago, a man drove from Louisiana to the Capitol with a rifle, telling the
police who stopped him that he had a "delivery" for the president.
There is no excuse for the Post to have allowed this cartoon to be printed, and
even less for Editor Col Allan's outright dismissal of legitimate concerns.
But let's be clear who's behind the Post: Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch, the Post's
owner, is the man behind FOX News Channel. FOX has continually attacked and
denigrated Black people, politicians, institutions at every opportunity, and
ColorOfChange has run several campaigns to make clear how FOX poisons public
debate.
I don't expect much from Murdoch. However, with enough public pressure, we can
set the stage for advertisers and subscribers to think long and hard before
patronizing outlets like the Post that refuse to be held accountable.
You can help, by making clear that the Post's behavior is unacceptable, and by
asking your friends and family to do the same. Please join me:
http://www.colorofchange.org/nypost/?id=1699-158105
Thanks.
Yesterday, the day after President Obama signed his stimulus bill into law, the
NY Post ran a cartoon depicting the bill's "author" as a dead monkey, covered in
blood after being shot by police. You can see the image by clicking on the link below.
In the face of intense criticism, the Post's editor is standing by the cartoon,
claiming that it's not about Obama, has no racial undertones, and that it was
simply referencing a recent incident when police shot a pet chimpanzee. But it's
impossible to believe that any newspaper editor could be ignorant enough to not
understand how this cartoon evokes a history of racist symbolism, or how
frightening this image feels at a time when death threats against President
Obama have been on the rise.
Please join me and other ColorOfChange.org members in demanding that the Post
apologize publicly and fire the editor who allowed this cartoon to go to print:
http://www.colorofchange.org/nypost/?id=1699-158105
The Post would have us believe that the cartoon is not about Obama. But on the
page just before the cartoon appears, there's a big picture of Obama signing the
stimulus bill. A reader paging through the Post would see Obama putting pen to
paper, then turn the page to see this violent cartoon. The imagery is chilling.
There is a clear history in our country of racist symbolism that depicts Black
people as apes or monkeys, and it came up multiple times during the presidential
campaign.
We're also in a time of increased race-based violence. In the months following
President Obama's election there has been a nationwide surge in hate crimes
ranging from vandalism to assaults to arson on Black churches. There has been an
unprecedented number of threats against President Obama since he was elected,
with hate-based groups fantasizing about the killing of the president. Just a
week ago, a man drove from Louisiana to the Capitol with a rifle, telling the
police who stopped him that he had a "delivery" for the president.
There is no excuse for the Post to have allowed this cartoon to be printed, and
even less for Editor Col Allan's outright dismissal of legitimate concerns.
But let's be clear who's behind the Post: Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch, the Post's
owner, is the man behind FOX News Channel. FOX has continually attacked and
denigrated Black people, politicians, institutions at every opportunity, and
ColorOfChange has run several campaigns to make clear how FOX poisons public
debate.
I don't expect much from Murdoch. However, with enough public pressure, we can
set the stage for advertisers and subscribers to think long and hard before
patronizing outlets like the Post that refuse to be held accountable.
You can help, by making clear that the Post's behavior is unacceptable, and by
asking your friends and family to do the same. Please join me:
http://www.colorofchange.org/nypost/?id=1699-158105
Thanks.
Ron Walters on the Stimulus and the Black Community
Ron Walters urges the black community to get on the case for their fair share of the stimulus. RGN
From Stimulus to Recovery: Follow the Money
By Ron Walters
Now that the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” has been signed into law by President Obama, what has happened through much trial and tribulation is tantamount to what Cuba Gooding said in one of his movies – “show me the money.” We have been shown the money, $787 billion, and now it is up to us to get down to business and follow the money and then access it for the good of our communities. The stakes are enormous. This is one of the rare moments in history when a cruise-ship size load of funds docks in our states in a few weeks, but if we are not savvy enough to know enough how to access the funds, that ship could come in and leave us with substantial needs unmet.
The Act is a big one with lots of sections, and you can Google the title of the Act above and look at them all. But I will provide a quick glimpse of a few things in Title 9 on “Labor, Health, and Human Services and Education.”
• $4 billion is added to the Workforce Investment program.
• $500 million of that amount goes to states for adult employment and training activities;
• $1.2 billion will go to states for youth under 24 years old for summer jobs;
• $1 billion will go to states to assist dislocated workers employment and training;
• Another $500 million will be put in the dislocated worker reserve to assist through June 30 2010;
• $50 million will go to YouthBuild programs through June 30, 2010;
• $750 million will provide grants for training and placement of workers for careers in energy efficiency and renewable energy employment
• $120 million will be allotted to fund Community Service jobs for senior citizens.
• $500 million will be given to states to augment their Unemployment Insurance funds
• $300 million for Job Corp.
This is the time for black leaders the various communities to come together and work out a system of communicating information to many people who have been laid off, who are disabled, who are youth, who have been unemployed, who are elderly but want to work, and generally everyone who wants to participate in the program funded by this Act. Citizens themselves who want to participate in these programs, many of which are already going in some states like YouthBuild and some that have been shut down, sho uld contact the office of their elected officials at the local, county, state and national level to find the entry point into these activities.
The Obama Administration has vowed to create a website RECOVERY.GOV for the average citizen to follow how these funds will be used. That will not be a place to access the programs, but to understand how they are being distributed and what effect the funding is having on things like the unemployment rate.
As the debate has suggested, this may not be the last stimulus package needed to jump-start the economy by the spending made possible through job creation. But our national organizations such as the Congressional Black Caucus, Black Leadership Forum, National Urban League, NAACP, National Action Network, RainbowPush, and others should follow the distribution of such funds carefully to see whether or not the black community is getting a fair share of those jobs and the other resources made available by this Act.
I must confess however, to being somewhat worried when I see that Black leaders have not visited the White House to make their position felt on this matter, but on Friday, February 13, 60 Latino and Latina leaders from around the country visited the White House for a briefing by key White House staff. Perhaps we should not have been first in the door among racial and ethnic groups – perhaps we would not have been permitted to be first – but we should make it plain that there is an expectation that the black community would experience a fair distribution of these funds.
Without the black vote, there would be no Barack Obama in the White House. Take away the states where the Black vote influenced an Obama victory: North Carolina, Virginia, District of Columbia, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana, and John McCain would have won the election. Our claim on policy fairness is strong.
Dr. Ron Walters is the Distinguished Leadership Scholar, Director of the African American Leadership Center and Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. =2 0 His latest book is: The Price of Racial Reconciliation (University of Michigan Press)
From Stimulus to Recovery: Follow the Money
By Ron Walters
Now that the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” has been signed into law by President Obama, what has happened through much trial and tribulation is tantamount to what Cuba Gooding said in one of his movies – “show me the money.” We have been shown the money, $787 billion, and now it is up to us to get down to business and follow the money and then access it for the good of our communities. The stakes are enormous. This is one of the rare moments in history when a cruise-ship size load of funds docks in our states in a few weeks, but if we are not savvy enough to know enough how to access the funds, that ship could come in and leave us with substantial needs unmet.
The Act is a big one with lots of sections, and you can Google the title of the Act above and look at them all. But I will provide a quick glimpse of a few things in Title 9 on “Labor, Health, and Human Services and Education.”
• $4 billion is added to the Workforce Investment program.
• $500 million of that amount goes to states for adult employment and training activities;
• $1.2 billion will go to states for youth under 24 years old for summer jobs;
• $1 billion will go to states to assist dislocated workers employment and training;
• Another $500 million will be put in the dislocated worker reserve to assist through June 30 2010;
• $50 million will go to YouthBuild programs through June 30, 2010;
• $750 million will provide grants for training and placement of workers for careers in energy efficiency and renewable energy employment
• $120 million will be allotted to fund Community Service jobs for senior citizens.
• $500 million will be given to states to augment their Unemployment Insurance funds
• $300 million for Job Corp.
This is the time for black leaders the various communities to come together and work out a system of communicating information to many people who have been laid off, who are disabled, who are youth, who have been unemployed, who are elderly but want to work, and generally everyone who wants to participate in the program funded by this Act. Citizens themselves who want to participate in these programs, many of which are already going in some states like YouthBuild and some that have been shut down, sho uld contact the office of their elected officials at the local, county, state and national level to find the entry point into these activities.
The Obama Administration has vowed to create a website RECOVERY.GOV for the average citizen to follow how these funds will be used. That will not be a place to access the programs, but to understand how they are being distributed and what effect the funding is having on things like the unemployment rate.
As the debate has suggested, this may not be the last stimulus package needed to jump-start the economy by the spending made possible through job creation. But our national organizations such as the Congressional Black Caucus, Black Leadership Forum, National Urban League, NAACP, National Action Network, RainbowPush, and others should follow the distribution of such funds carefully to see whether or not the black community is getting a fair share of those jobs and the other resources made available by this Act.
I must confess however, to being somewhat worried when I see that Black leaders have not visited the White House to make their position felt on this matter, but on Friday, February 13, 60 Latino and Latina leaders from around the country visited the White House for a briefing by key White House staff. Perhaps we should not have been first in the door among racial and ethnic groups – perhaps we would not have been permitted to be first – but we should make it plain that there is an expectation that the black community would experience a fair distribution of these funds.
Without the black vote, there would be no Barack Obama in the White House. Take away the states where the Black vote influenced an Obama victory: North Carolina, Virginia, District of Columbia, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana, and John McCain would have won the election. Our claim on policy fairness is strong.
Dr. Ron Walters is the Distinguished Leadership Scholar, Director of the African American Leadership Center and Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. =2 0 His latest book is: The Price of Racial Reconciliation (University of Michigan Press)
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Targeting Obama: White Nationalism Lives!!!! Ted Kefalinos
For various reasons the blog has not been very active of late. The blog will remain to both recognize what will be the transformative the presidency of Barack Obama and provide progressive perspectives on how that transformation is taking place. Elections have consequences. That reality has been exhibited from Day One. Not only has Obama gotten overwhelming praise for the most part of his appointments, his actions are returning our government to its Constitutional principles and governance based on knowledge and integrity.
The lack of activity on the blog has been for several reasons. There were the holidays. Then my wife had serious surgery. Then there was the inauguration. In recuperation my wife has had set backs. Over last few days, however, she is getting the feeling of what it means to be normal.
Having said all of that, one of the concerns among African American and progressives has been that Obama's election would be portrayed as though America had achieved some sort of "post-racial" society and claims of racism would delegitimized. While Obama's election with 45% of America's whites voting for him does not attest to racism being a thing of the past, his election was the result of a NEW MAJORITY in America. He won by a landslide!! The majority of the American electorate rejected the meanness and racism of the Reagan Revolution.
Even so, that white nationalism has ruled America from its inception, it will not die easy. We can see it in the obstructionism of the Republicans. They can only think in their conservative mantras. It was their "let the markets rule" that got us in the mess. Their ideas are bankrupt. Yet, they still think they are in the majority. The ignorance of Rush Limbaugh will take them all down. Obama pledged to reach across the aisle. A part of this problem with the Republicans and Rush Limbaugh is that deeply rooted white nationalism does not die easy or at one election.
That white nationalism does not die easily is evidenced by the deep resentment of many whites that Obama is president. We do know that there is a history of passions around racism and the the white nationalist who espouse such positions. There are several indicators the white nationalist resentment. It is worrying that gun sales have skyrocketed since November 4, 2008. The most democratic media venue, Washington Journal, C-Span's morning call-in, racist passions are very prominent. White nationalist resentment is rearing its ugly head. No where is this ugliness more apparent than the N-word Cookie of Ted Kefalinos. RGN
UPDATE: "Drunken Negro Face" Cookies On Sale at Greenwich Village Bakery
[UPDATE BELOW] At at a time when any decent baker should have been selling racially harmonious black and white cookies by the truckload, one Greenwich Village bakery popular with celebrities and shows like Sex and the City has outraged neighbors by selling a "Drunken Negro Face" cookie in, um, "honor" of President Obama. [Video below.] A shocked customer tells My Fox NY that Ted Kefalinos, proprietor of Lafayette French Pastry, asked her, "Would you like some drunken negro heads to go with your coffee? They're in honor of our new president. He's following in the same path of Abraham Lincoln; he will get his."
Later, her friend stopped by the bakery and said Kefalinos corrected her about the name of the cookies—they're actually drunken "N-word" cookies. She says the backwards baker then repeated the dark suggestion that, like Lincoln, President Obama "will get what's coming to him." Go Secret Service, go!
And it gets worse when Fox's Arnold Diaz goes into the store with a camera and microphone to confront Kefalinos, who suddenly makes Joe the Plumber look like a Rhodes scholar. "I called them Drunken Negro Heads. What's the problem with that?" Kefalinos asks the newscaster with a smirk. "On Inauguration Day I thought it would be cool to change the name to Obama Heads. I just changed it for the day." We suppose Burning Cross Bananas Foster was too complicated to mass-produce.
Kefalinos denies intimating that Obama would be assassinated, and insists that the cookie is "not unflattering. I think it's a fun face... And anyone who says anything else should be ashamed of themselves." Besides, nobody got upset about the "Dead Geese Bread" he sold after the recent Hudson River plane crash. (We're NOT making that up.) Also, Kefalinos insists he can't be racist because, for one thing, "my brother-in-law, he's Cuban." Below, behold the breathtaking train wreck of racist ignorance.
UPDATE: We just spoke with Kefalinos on the phone and he remains utterly oblivious, telling us, "This whole thing was blown out of proportion." He says he's sold out of the "Drunken Negro Cakes" and doesn't plan to make anymore, despite the fact that many customers have been requesting them (he claims). When asked whether he understands that most African-Americans find the word "negro" offensive, Kefalinos explains, "It's a French word. It comes from the French."
Community Board 2 was quick to call for a boycott of Lafayette French Pastry, to which Kefalinos responds, "I'm sorry they feel that way because I was trying to do a nice thing." Not seeming to grasp in any way the degree of outrage he's sparked, he added, "I did it and that's the end of it and it's over."
UPDATE 1/24: Now Ted Kefalinos apologizes: "Seriously, from the bottom of my heart, it was an innocent design I created. It was nothing more than just a piece of art."
Thursday, January 22, 2009
The Ladner Report On Lowery and the Inaugural Benediction
Can you imagine the Negro National Anthem as a key tone in a Presidential inauguration? Heavy!!! RGN
Rev. Joseph Lowery, the iconic civil rights era Baptist preacher and a friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, gave a sobering benediction fitting for the inauguration of President Barack Obama. He started by quoting the lyrics of James Weldon Johnson, who wrote "Lift Every Voice and Sing," in 1901 and often called the Negro National Anthem.
"God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou who has brought us thus far along the way, thou who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path, we pray, lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee, lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee. Shadowed beneath thy hand may we forever stand -- true to thee, O God, and true to our native land."
For the full post see The Ladner Report
Rev. Joseph Lowery, the iconic civil rights era Baptist preacher and a friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, gave a sobering benediction fitting for the inauguration of President Barack Obama. He started by quoting the lyrics of James Weldon Johnson, who wrote "Lift Every Voice and Sing," in 1901 and often called the Negro National Anthem.
"God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou who has brought us thus far along the way, thou who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path, we pray, lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee, lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee. Shadowed beneath thy hand may we forever stand -- true to thee, O God, and true to our native land."
For the full post see The Ladner Report
Victor Navasky on Obama and "The Center"
Victor Navasky has been Lion on the left for many years. His enthusiasm for an Obama presidency seems to be boundless. He trusts the President. Here he provides a perspective on the claim that President Obama is a centrist. What Obama seems to be doing is carrying out a progressive agenda by casting a wide net of inclusion. As a "centrist" in his inaugural ceremony he acknowledged not only the evangelicals but non-believers, as well. Navasky makes the point that Obama is redefining politics in America when he asserts that the President is a "liberal wolf in a centrist's sheeps clothing." RGN
Seeking Obama's Center
Comment
By Victor Navasky
January 21, 2009
Whatever one's feelings about our new president, there was something thrilling about being at the the Huffington Post/Atlantic Philanthropies pre-inauguration bash at the Newseum in Washington with 1,500 journalists and pols, all of whom seemed to be celebrating and exulting in Obama's coming to power.
One had the same feeling earlier in the evening at the home of Myra MacPherson, Izzy Stone's biographer, where left-liberal journalists predominated.
And the next day, as I listened to his inaugural address, although I think I harbored no illusions about the difficult task ahead, I still felt that I was swimming in the same sea of happiness, as I heard him gently but firmly declare the country's liberation from the past (and reject "as false" the Bush administration's notion that national security was incompatible with constitutional liberty, that it is not a question of choosing "between our safety and our ideals"); and then simultaneously rejecting the Clinton administration's notion that the era of big government was over ("The question we ask today is not whether government is too big or too small but whether it works").
Therefore, there was something off-putting the next morning when I turned on my TV only to see pundit after pundit--be it Pat Buchanan on the right, "Morning Joe" Scarborough on the center-right or Mike Barnicle in the center--all praising him as a "centrist."
I had three problems with that:
First, as our friend and backer Paul Newman used to remind us, The Nation was valuable because it helps define where the center is. The center can shift. When Obama added to his ritualistic description of America as "a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus" a new category--"nonbelievers"--it was almost unbelievable, as he quickly helped redefine where the center was.
Second, based on what we know about Obama--his books, his initial intuitive stand against the war in Iraq, his Senate voting record, his campaign, his inaugural speech--I don't believe it. At most, he seems to me a liberal wolf in centrist sheep's clothing.
And finally, faced with the ever-more-dire economic crisis, his commitment to a Keynes-based economic stimulus and renewed regulatory rigor (see his inaugural reference to not letting the market "spin out of control") suggests that, at a minimum, he flunked Centrism 101.
Rather, I prefer to believe that his reach across the aisle, his cabinet appointments and his opening to the renegade Joe Lieberman and his erstwhile opponent John McCain himself are part of his pragmatic plan to advance an agenda that goes beyond anything the so-called center might contain. Whether or not it will work, that is the question.
About Victor Navasky
Victor Navasky, publisher emeritus of The Nation, was the magazine's editor from 1978to 1995 and publisher and editorial director from 1995 to 2005. He is currently the director of the George Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism at Columbia University. His books include Kennedy Justice, the American Book Award winner Naming Names and, most recently, A Matter of Opinion.
Seeking Obama's Center
Comment
By Victor Navasky
January 21, 2009
Whatever one's feelings about our new president, there was something thrilling about being at the the Huffington Post/Atlantic Philanthropies pre-inauguration bash at the Newseum in Washington with 1,500 journalists and pols, all of whom seemed to be celebrating and exulting in Obama's coming to power.
One had the same feeling earlier in the evening at the home of Myra MacPherson, Izzy Stone's biographer, where left-liberal journalists predominated.
And the next day, as I listened to his inaugural address, although I think I harbored no illusions about the difficult task ahead, I still felt that I was swimming in the same sea of happiness, as I heard him gently but firmly declare the country's liberation from the past (and reject "as false" the Bush administration's notion that national security was incompatible with constitutional liberty, that it is not a question of choosing "between our safety and our ideals"); and then simultaneously rejecting the Clinton administration's notion that the era of big government was over ("The question we ask today is not whether government is too big or too small but whether it works").
Therefore, there was something off-putting the next morning when I turned on my TV only to see pundit after pundit--be it Pat Buchanan on the right, "Morning Joe" Scarborough on the center-right or Mike Barnicle in the center--all praising him as a "centrist."
I had three problems with that:
First, as our friend and backer Paul Newman used to remind us, The Nation was valuable because it helps define where the center is. The center can shift. When Obama added to his ritualistic description of America as "a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus" a new category--"nonbelievers"--it was almost unbelievable, as he quickly helped redefine where the center was.
Second, based on what we know about Obama--his books, his initial intuitive stand against the war in Iraq, his Senate voting record, his campaign, his inaugural speech--I don't believe it. At most, he seems to me a liberal wolf in centrist sheep's clothing.
And finally, faced with the ever-more-dire economic crisis, his commitment to a Keynes-based economic stimulus and renewed regulatory rigor (see his inaugural reference to not letting the market "spin out of control") suggests that, at a minimum, he flunked Centrism 101.
Rather, I prefer to believe that his reach across the aisle, his cabinet appointments and his opening to the renegade Joe Lieberman and his erstwhile opponent John McCain himself are part of his pragmatic plan to advance an agenda that goes beyond anything the so-called center might contain. Whether or not it will work, that is the question.
About Victor Navasky
Victor Navasky, publisher emeritus of The Nation, was the magazine's editor from 1978to 1995 and publisher and editorial director from 1995 to 2005. He is currently the director of the George Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism at Columbia University. His books include Kennedy Justice, the American Book Award winner Naming Names and, most recently, A Matter of Opinion.
Remaking America: Halt Tribunals
Obama Acts "In the Interest of Justice" To Halt Tribunals
posted by John Nichols on 01/21/2009 @ 08:45am
Apparently Barack Obama took his oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" a tad more seriously than did his predecessor.
Lawyers for the United States government -- the one now led by Obama -- acted even as the inaugural celebrations were going on to halt the Guantánamo Bay military commission trials.
Obama, in one of his first official acts, ordered a suspension of the trials, which had been adjourned in anticipation of the transition of authority from former President George Bush to his successor.
The motion filed by Obama's lawyers called for a 120-day moratorium on legal proceedings so that "the newly inaugurated president and his administration [can] review the military commissions process, generally, and the cases currently pending before military commissions, specifically."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush administration that initiated the controversial trials, joined in the motion.
The order to halt to the tribunals was issed "in the interests of justice," according to the official request to the military judges.
"The suspension of military commissions so soon after President Obama took office is an indication of the sense of urgency he feels about reversing the destructive course that the previous administration was taking in fighting terrorism," declared Gabor Rona, the international director of Human Rights First.
Obama must, of course, do much more in the interest of justice. "It's a great first step but it is only a first step," notes Rona. "It will permit the newly inaugurated president and his administration to undertake a thorough review of both the pending cases and the military commissions process generally."
But Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who has represented Guantánamo suspects told BBC Radio 4: "It's going to take some work but what he [Obama] is looking at I think here is a very clear-cut distinction between this administration and the last."
That would seem to be a fair assessment of the moment, and the beginning of definition of change we can believe in.
posted by John Nichols on 01/21/2009 @ 08:45am
Apparently Barack Obama took his oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" a tad more seriously than did his predecessor.
Lawyers for the United States government -- the one now led by Obama -- acted even as the inaugural celebrations were going on to halt the Guantánamo Bay military commission trials.
Obama, in one of his first official acts, ordered a suspension of the trials, which had been adjourned in anticipation of the transition of authority from former President George Bush to his successor.
The motion filed by Obama's lawyers called for a 120-day moratorium on legal proceedings so that "the newly inaugurated president and his administration [can] review the military commissions process, generally, and the cases currently pending before military commissions, specifically."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush administration that initiated the controversial trials, joined in the motion.
The order to halt to the tribunals was issed "in the interests of justice," according to the official request to the military judges.
"The suspension of military commissions so soon after President Obama took office is an indication of the sense of urgency he feels about reversing the destructive course that the previous administration was taking in fighting terrorism," declared Gabor Rona, the international director of Human Rights First.
Obama must, of course, do much more in the interest of justice. "It's a great first step but it is only a first step," notes Rona. "It will permit the newly inaugurated president and his administration to undertake a thorough review of both the pending cases and the military commissions process generally."
But Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who has represented Guantánamo suspects told BBC Radio 4: "It's going to take some work but what he [Obama] is looking at I think here is a very clear-cut distinction between this administration and the last."
That would seem to be a fair assessment of the moment, and the beginning of definition of change we can believe in.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Obama Sworn In: History Made
_____________________________________________________________________________________
January 21, 2009
Obama Takes Oath, and Nation in Crisis Embraces the Moment
By PETER BAKER
WASHINGTON — Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday and promised to “begin again the work of remaking America” on a day of celebration that climaxed a once-inconceivable journey for the man and his country.
Mr. Obama, the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas, inherited a White House built partly by slaves and a nation in crisis at home and abroad. The moment captured the imagination of much of the world as more than a million flag-waving people bore witness while Mr. Obama recited the oath with his hand on the same Bible that Abraham Lincoln used at his inauguration 148 years ago.
Beyond the politics of the occasion, the sight of a black man climbing the highest peak electrified people across racial, generational and partisan lines. Mr. Obama largely left it to others to mark the history explicitly, making only passing reference to his own barrier-breaking role in his 18-minute Inaugural Address, noting how improbable it might seem that “a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.”
But confronted by the worst economic situation in decades, two overseas wars and the continuing threat of Islamic terrorism, Mr. Obama sobered the celebration with a grim assessment of the state of a nation rocked by home foreclosures, shuttered businesses, lost jobs, costly health care, failing schools, energy dependence and the threat of climate change. Signaling a sharp and immediate break with the presidency of George W. Bush, he vowed to usher in a “new era of responsibility” and restore tarnished American ideals.
“Today, I say to you that the challenges we face are real,” Mr. Obama said in the address, delivered from the west front of the Capitol. “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.”
The vast crowd that thronged the Mall on a frigid but bright winter day was the largest to attend an inauguration in decades, if not ever. Many then lined Pennsylvania Avenue for a parade that continued well past nightfall on a day that was not expected to end for Mr. Obama until late in the night with the last of 10 inaugural balls.
Mr. Bush left the national stage quietly, doing nothing to upstage his successor. After hosting the Obamas for coffee at the White House and attending the ceremony at the Capitol, Mr. Bush hugged Mr. Obama, then left through the Rotunda to head back to Texas. “Come on, Laura, we’re going home,” he was overheard telling Mrs. Bush.
The inauguration coincided with more bad news from Wall Street, with the Dow Jones industrial average down more than 300 points on indications of further trouble for banks.
The spirit of the day was also marred by the hospitalization of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, whose endorsement helped propel Mr. Obama to the Democratic nomination last year. Mr. Kennedy, who has been fighting a malignant brain tumor, suffered a seizure at a Capitol luncheon after the ceremony and was wheeled out on a stretcher.
The pageantry included some serious business. Shortly after he and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. were sworn in, Mr. Obama ordered all pending Bush regulations frozen for a legal and policy review. He also signed formal nomination papers for his cabinet, and the Senate quickly confirmed seven nominees: the secretaries of homeland security, energy, agriculture, interior, education and veterans’ affairs and the director of the Office of Management and Budget.
When he arrives in the Oval Office on Wednesday, aides said, Mr. Obama will get to work on some of his priorities. He plans to convene his national security team and senior military commanders to discuss his plans to pull combat troops out of Iraq and bolster those in Afghanistan. He also plans to sign executive orders to start closing the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and could reverse Mr. Bush’s restrictions on financing for groups that promote or provide information about abortion.
Delays in the confirmation process have left both the State Department and the Treasury Department in the hands of caretakers. But Hillary Rodham Clinton was expected to win Senate confirmation as secretary of state on Wednesday, and the Pentagon remains under the control of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who was kept on from the Bush administration and did not attend the inauguration so someone in the line of succession would survive in case of terrorist attack.
In his address, Mr. Obama praised Mr. Bush “for his service to our nation as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.” But he also offered implicit criticism, condemning what he called “our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.”
He went on to assure the rest of the world that change had come. “To all other peoples and governments who are watching today,” Mr. Obama said, “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 child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.”
Some of Mr. Obama’s supporters booed and taunted Mr. Bush when he emerged from the Capitol to take his place on stage, at one point singing, “Nah, nah, nah, nah, hey, hey, hey, goodbye.” By day’s end, Mr. Bush had landed in Texas, where he defended his presidency and declared that he was “coming home with my head held high.”
The departing vice president, Dick Cheney, appeared at the ceremony in a wheelchair after suffering a back injury moving the day before and was also booed.
The nation’s 56th inauguration drew waves of people from all corners and filled the expanse between the Capitol and the Washington Monument. For the first transition in power since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, much of the capital was under exceptionally tight security, with a two-square-mile swath under the strictest control. Bridges from Virginia were closed to regular traffic and more than 35,000 civilian and military personnel were on duty.
Mr. Obama secured at least part of his legacy the moment he walked into the White House on Tuesday, 146 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, 108 years after the first black man dined in the mansion with a president and 46 years after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. declared his dream of equality.
Mr. Obama, just 47 years old and four years out of the Illinois State Senate, arrived at this moment on the unlikeliest of paths, vaulted to the forefront of national politics on the strength of stirring speeches, early opposition to the Iraq war and public disenchantment with the Bush era. His scant record of achievement at the national level proved less important to voters than his embodiment of change.
His foreign-sounding name, his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia and his skin color made him a unique figure in the annals of presidential campaigns, yet he toppled two of the best brand names in American politics — Mrs. Clinton in the primaries and Senator John McCain in the general election.
Mr. Obama himself is descended on his mother’s side from ancestors who owned slaves and he can trace his family tree to Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. The power of the moment was lost on no one as the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, one of the towering figures of the civil rights movement, gave the benediction and called for “inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance.”
The Rev. Rick Warren, a conservative minister selected by Mr. Obama to give the invocation despite protests from liberals, told the crowd, “We know today that Dr. King and a great cloud of witnesses are shouting in heaven.”
For all that, Mr. Obama used the occasion to address “this winter of our hardship” and promote his plan for vast federal spending accompanied by tax cuts to stimulate the economy and begin addressing energy, environmental and infrastructure needs.
“Now there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans,” he said. “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.”
He also essentially renounced the curtailment of liberties in the name of security, saying he would “reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” He struck a stiff note on terrorism, saying Americans “will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense.”
“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,” he said. “You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”
But Mr. Obama also added a message to Islamic nations, a first from the inaugural lectern. “To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect,” Mr. Obama said. “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.”
Mr. Obama’s public day started at 8:45 a.m. when he and his wife, Michelle, left Blair House for a service at St. John’s Church, then joined the Bushes, Cheneys and Bidens for coffee at the White House.
The Obamas’ daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, joined them at the Capitol, as did Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain, as well as former Presidents Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and the elder George Bush.
While emotional for many, the ceremony did not go entirely according to plan. Mr. Biden was sworn in by Justice John Paul Stevens behind schedule at 11:57 a.m., and Mr. Obama did not take the oath until 12:05 p.m., five minutes past the constitutionally prescribed transfer of power.
Moreover, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. stumbled over the 35-word oath, causing Mr. Obama to repeat it out of the constitutional order. Instead of swearing that he “will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States,” Mr. Obama swore that he “will execute the office of president of the United States faithfully.”
Following time-honored rituals, the Obamas attended lunch with lawmakers in Statuary Hall at the Capitol, then rode and walked to the White House, where they watched the parade from a bulletproof reviewing stand. They planned to attend all 10 official inaugural balls before spending their first night in the White House.
In his Inaugural Address, Mr. Obama seemed at times to be having a virtual dialogue with his predecessors. “What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility,” he said, “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.” Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton likewise called for responsibility at their inaugurations, but Mr. Obama offered little sense of what exactly he wanted Americans to do.
Mr. Obama also seemed to take issue with Ronald Reagan, who declared when he took office in 1981 that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Mr. Clinton rebutted that in 1997, saying, “government is not the problem and government is not the solution.”
Mr. Obama offered a new formulation: “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.”
Mr. Clinton, at least, applauded the message. In a brief interview afterward, he said Mr. Obama’s installation could change the way America was viewed.
“It’s obviously historic because President Obama is the first African-American president, but it’s more than that,” Mr. Clinton said. “This is a time when we’re clearly making a new beginning. It’s a country of repeated second-chances and new beginnings.”
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