The Drums of War are Beating… Again – Tom Rossi

Are you tired of dancing to the same old beat? You should be. That’s because, after the drums of war are beaten, you’re next.

We once followed the drumbeat to Iraq. First we had the now infamous WMD, Weapons of Mass Destruction. Then we had, “Saddam Hussein is a really mean guy who gassed his own people.” Then… of forget it. You know the story. There’s no point in repeating it here. But the war in Iraq, “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” cost the United States somewhere between one and two trillion dollars, depending on whose estimate you believe.

Then the drums told us that Osama Bin Laden was hiding in the mountains in Afghanistan… so we took the war machine there (while still knee deep in blood, theirs and ours, in Iraq), supposedly to bring Bin Laden to justice. This was the country that had whipped the Soviet Union after a ten year, brutal invasion. And remember… the Soviets were right across the border and didn’t have to ship their forces halfway around the world.

Bin Laden wasn’t there.

What did we learn? I mean, We, the people of the United States, not the war mongers. We learned that there is always a justification, and that justification will probably turn out to be false.

We are now being told that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, and North Korea is improving their already-existing nuclear capability. These things might even be true. Hmmm… I remember a justification for the nuclear buildup of the Cold War that said something about, “mutually assured destruction.” Hmmm… It seems to me that the leaders of Iran and North Korea would have to know that the destruction would be about 99 to 1 in our favor.

But the military-industrial-congressional complex want us to be afraid. That way we will keep shoveling money into their pockets. This while the same people want to do away with social security, public education, the Affordable Care and Patient Protection act, etc. These things return value to the majority of the people, instead of enriching the super-minority.

We have gone light-years past “defense.” Remember when the Department of Defense was called the Department of War? That was a lot more honest. Now, the war-investors who profit from both killing and simply preparing to kill (W.E.B. DuBois said: “The cause of war is preparation for war.”) are drooling like Pavlov’s dogs. “Another war’s about to start! Maybe two! Yay!”

But we won’t hear any of that on TV, or in the papers. What we’ll hear is macho talk about America’s “strength,” and scary talk about how easy it could be for scary people out there to hurt us. Inconsistent you say? So what?

What we’ll hear is about how the leaders of these countries are “craaaaazy.” “Why, they’d lob a nuke our way even knowing they’ll lose! Just to make a point! Or even to martyr themselves! We have to get them before they get us!!!”

To question this line of BS will be “unpatriotic.” You have to be for a “stronger” America, otherwise you’re for a “weaker” America. When will we be strong enough? Silly question. It’s like asking a bodybuilder when he’ll have enough muscle. “Dude, if I can just build up my gastrocs a little bit more, I’ll be golden.”

So, the bugle call will sound, and the “patriots” among us will answer without question. But what I love about my country is exactly that: the ability and the will to question, and to learn. I have only one hope for our future…

We won’t get fooled again.

Peace.

-Tom Rossi

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Tom Rossi is a commentator on politics and social issues. He is a Ph.D. student in International Sustainable Development, concentrating in natural resource and economic policy. Tom greatly enjoys a hearty debate, especially over a hearty pint of Guinness.

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Will Obama Walk the Walk? – Tom Rossi

In now two-term President Obama’s inauguration speech today, he certainly “talked the talk” of a progressive, but will he “walk the walk?”

In some ways, he certainly already has. He ended “don’t ask, don’t tell,” he came out in support of marriage rights for all, he appointed two women to the Supreme Court, he finally ended the war in Iraq, and a few other things.

But President Obama has been quite conservative on some big issues. He’s, if anything, increased the country’s war activities, used pilotless drones to assassinate people from the sky, increased spying activities on our own citizens, raided state-legal medical marijuana dispensaries, deported many more aliens than Bush, refused to even consider meaningful legal action against the robber barons that screwed the middle class and our whole economy, and kept merrily in place the same economic voodoo shamans that President Bush had… the same people who enabled the robber barons in the first place.

And all this while supposedly being a communist. Wow!

What I can’t help but wonder is, if Obama is a progressive, why has he hidden it so well, during his first term? I know the conventional thinking – he had to stay near the so-called “center” (which is far to the right of the center, even 15 years ago) in order to have a good shot at re-election. But why? What if he hadn’t been re-elected? Then we would have gone from center-right to far-right… and that means that every one of us except the 1% would have lost.

In addition, Obama now has just four years to accomplish anything, and most of the efforts and attention will be on what should properly be called “gun-mass-murder control” (not “gun control”). We have seen not one hint of consideration, by Obama, to the fact that our present economic pathway is still the same one that led to the current depression.

And it is a depression. Recessions are, by definition, short-term blips – speed bumps, really, in the path of our economic progress. Depressions mean long-term unemployment and long-term troughs in things like the housing market. We’ve had millions of people unemployed for a period of more than a year. That’s a depression.

We need a fundamental realignment of our capitalism away from concentrated profits and diffuse risks to stability and full employment. This is not “wanting ‘stuff’ from the government,” it’s wanting the government to stop working against the people. We’ve heard lots of talk about helping the middle class. Let’s see some real action.

Will the real Obama please stand up?

-Tom Rossi

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Tom Rossi is a commentator on politics and social issues. He is a Ph.D. student in International Sustainable Development, concentrating in natural resource and economic policy. Tom greatly enjoys a hearty debate, especially over a hearty pint of Guinness.

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Shaft Strikes Again – Norman Weekes

There are things we whisper to each other when white folk are not around.

Yes it’s true. When two or more Black folk stand by the water cooler we talk in-house. Most of it need not be shared. ‘They’ wouldn’t understand. It would take hours, maybe years of context to not be misunderstood. But at the risk of having my “Black Enough” card revoked, I’m going to share one of these secret communiques. For about two years now, ever since Obama started getting his ass kicked on every meaningful issue of concern to the Black community I’ve heard this or something like this:

After checking the room, looking over both shoulders one of my beloved – brothers or sisters will lean in and say  “Just wait until the second term. Then we’ll see the real Obama!”

The hope is that unencumbered by re-election politics he’ll transform from Urkel to John Shaft. Maybe even Dolemite. Something other than what he’s already proven to be. The guy we wanted. Not the guy he is – Benson. I can hear the First Lady screaming “Benson! Oh no you didn’t!” Obama’s recent open mic gaff to Russian President Medvedev gave hope to the fantasy. Never mind he was referring to foreign policy and stating the obvious.

I understand the desire to believe that the conformity, reserve and caution is just an act until he’s free to be the real Obama. After all, we’ve done this everyday for hundreds of years. It’s a coping mechanism that has served us well in a persevering kind of way. At the same time we desperately want to believe Obama’s just waiting for the opportunity to “stick it to The Man” even if he is “The Man”.

This theory ignores a cardinal rule of being Black in America. If you get in don’t f-it up for the next brother. The next Black president is alive today. Obama knows this. He may hope the next Black president is living in the White House today. If he is a Super Negro waiting to emerge, checks and balances will temper Obama’s second term. The Republican House and/or Senate along with conservative Supreme court justices who obviously sold their souls for eternal life will keep him in “check”. Wonder if Satan tried to return those souls after a quality check. Caveat emptor Beelzebub.

Second term Presidents rarely get wild and crazy in their second term. Nixon and Clinton were impeached and I’ve had the entire Bush 43 presidency erased from my memory. I don’t think his second term was very memorable but you can look it up.

In the final analysis the Obama we have is way better than any alternative. You know it, I know it, and the American people know it. As William DeVaughn reminds us: Be Thankful for What You Got.

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Norman Weekes is a volunteer in social justice non profits and occasional political activist. 

 

Obama and the Arc of Hopelessness – Norman Weekes

From Alon: I met Norman Weekes over the summer. He is a thoughtful, erudite man. I am very happy that he will write a  couple of posts a month for Left Coast Voices. Welcome aboard, Norm.

Norman Weekes

Obama and the Arc of Hopelessness

“He’s a nigga! Are you a nigga???”

I thought about my brief phone bank exchange with a voter from the Sunshine State while I watched Obama address the Grant Park crowd on election night at the Marriott in Oakland. I phone banked for Obama a few days before and thought about calling my Florida friend. It was a fleeting thought. This was a time for pride and promise.

I didn’t really know Obama then. I didn’t know his rhetoric concealed the fact that he has the guts of Urkel, the bravery of the Scarecrow and would lose a fist-fight to Betty White.

Why resort to name calling and personal insults you say? Why disrespect the man and the office like that? Don’t forget he inherited the Bush economy and the Republicans are bad people blah blah blah. Why? Because I have every right. I’ve been disrespected by Obama’s substitution for rhetoric over action. Name calling? I’d rather be called a punk than be called unemployed (which I am).

Personal? Long term unemployment is very personal. So don’t tell me about being too hard on the President. If you’re still hesitant to criticize the President you may believe OJ was set up and all the Jews working at the World Trade Center called in sick on 9/11. If so, I can’t dialogue with you. We can exchange food recipes but not talk politics.

A couple of weeks ago Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ron Suskind started his book tour promoting Confidence Men, a behind the scenes look at the Obama Economic team. He had access to the team, interviewed the president and reported on the organizational interaction and leadership arc of Obama and his economic advisers. Suskind, a self proclaimed Democrat has been derided by the White House for his reporting and analysis. According to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner the book is filled with “sad little stories” that do not resemble the reality of the time.

Confidence Men

One sad little story is the response by Obama to the banking crisis. In the fear filled days of the crisis the Obama economic team debated as to how to deal with the banks. After listening to his team debate Obama concluded the government needed to take action to boost confidence, hold banks accountable and take control of toxic assets. To simplify, the choice was to act like the government of Japan in the 90’s or Sweden in the same decade. Obama choose a more Swedish like approach and decided to break-up Citibank, at that time the weakest of the” too big to fail banks”. He ordered Tim Geithner, who disagreed with the President to draft a plan to break up Citi.

A few weeks later Obama asks about the plan at a follow up economic meeting sans Geithner. He was told by Christina Romer, Chair of his Council on Economic Advisers there was no plan. Obama replied, “Well there’d better be!” (Goshdarnit!). Suskind says Geithner “slow walked” the policy. Washington is paralyzed but is still great at manufacturing euphemisms: slow-walking a policy, re-litigating policy, uneven policy implementation, etc. Here on Earth it’s called insubordination and regular folk get fired for it every day.

Last I checked Citibank is still Citibank, toxic assets are still on bank balance sheets and Tim Geithner is still treasury secretary. The banks and their investors have still not suffered the consequences of risky investment strategies. It’s mind-blowing Geithner has the balls to blow off the President of the United States. It’s even more amazing he’s still on the team. How arrogant do you have to be to ignore the President on a policy difference rather than resign? What does  that say for Geithner’s opinion of the President? How conflict adverse do you have to be to not fire someone who openly ignored your order?

I’m beginning to understand why single payer disappears, financial reform is weak, job stimulus is loaded with tax cuts (which don’t create jobs) serious job creation is ignored, Bush-based foreign policy continues and Obama gets rolled by Republicans on the debt, tax cuts for the rich and program cuts for the poor and middle class. Obama allows this by not fighting back. It’s that simple. My son asked me a couple of weeks ago why Obama’s getting all this heat. I told him, “Obama’s the guy on the basketball court you can push around and elbow all day long and nothing will happen. People just want to see him fight back.”

Is it his expression or the grey hair?

Erudite criticism is ignored. Criticism from people who use oligarch in everyday conversation is not working. When he has an opportunity to acknowledge he tells the Congressional Black Congress to “stop whining.” There’s no fight in this guy. It’s as if he never had to turn back and fight the bully at school than take an ass-whipping at home. I’m past frustrated and angry.

Hopelessness in Obama is on the horizon. I cried the night Obama was elected. I’m still crying now.

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Norman Weekes is a volunteer in social justice non profits, account executive looking for work and occasional political activist.

Deficit Straight Talk: Bush Out Spends Obama 3 to 1 (by Roger Ingalls)

I’m tired of the Republican trash talk about how fiscally irresponsible the Democrats are when it comes to government spending and economic policy. Those that point fingers and yell the loudest are usually the ones with something to hide. It’s time to set the record straight.

Republican administrations are responsible for nearly 80% of the $14 Trillion deficit. This massive debt building started with Ronald Reagan and skyrocketed under George W Bush. The chart below must be painful for conservatives to look at, especially for the followship that can comprehend such data (Democrats are in blue and Republicans are in Red, source: U.S. Dept. of the Treasury). Democrats have historically maintained or decreased the deficit while the Republicans recklessly spend.

click chart for larger view

Let’s compare our two most recent presidents. The chart below is from the New York Times and is based on data from the Congressional Budget Office. This chart shows contribution to the deficit from policy decisions made during each administration. Obama’s figures are forecasted as a two term president. As we can clearly see, Bush’s massive debt is three times greater than Obama’s.

click chart for larger view

Most striking is the debt contribution from Bush’s tax cut policy that predominately benefited the wealthiest Americans. This policy change alone increased the deficit by $1.8 Trillion and is the single biggest debt building event in American history.

Conservatives are hell-bent on maintaining the Bush tax cuts arguing they help stimulate the economy by giving the rich more money to invest (a revisit of the failed Reaganomic trickle down philosophy). Just one problem, it doesn’t work. GDP growth during Bush’s presidency was a dismal 1.66% – the lowest since the 1940s. Even if the negative affects of the 2008 financial crisis are removed from the data, the Bush era is still a 60 year low with a GDP of 2.39. During this same six-decade period, the Democrat administrations of Kennedy/Johnson, Clinton and Carter had the best GDP growth performances (5%, 4.3% and 3.7% respectively). Does it get any clearer than that, folks? This data comes from the U.S. Dept of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Takeaways:

1)      The Republican policy of lowering taxes to benefit the rich and sold to main-street America as a growth stimulus, does not work. It failed under Reagan and it was catastrophic under Bush.

2)      Republicans spend heavily on defense because it is an easy sell to the public and it benefits big businesses that contribute heavily to their political campaigns. Keep in mind, 75% of the jobs created in America come from small businesses, not the big ones chased by Republican politicians.

3)      To offset their heavy spending, conservatives try to look responsible by cutting social programs that help the poor and elderly. They sell this by highlighting government excesses that they have created in the first place.

4)      Financial policies created by Democrats have historically out-performed Republicans ones because they are inherently balanced with responsible spending and appropriate taxation for a modern society.

Important Note: The Bush tax cuts now expire at the end of 2012. We must hold our representative’s fingers to the fire and make sure they don’t vote to extend this rich man’s benefit package. Again, trickle down Reaganomics never has and never will work!

Closing Challenge: Show me some unbiased government data that even remotely suggests Republican financial policies are better for main-street America than the ones used by Democrats. Real data, not uneducated Tea Party trash talk!

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Roger Ingalls is well travelled and has seen the good and bad of many foreign governments. He hopes his blogging will encourage readers to think more deeply about the American political system and its impact on US citizens and the international community.

Role-Model in Chief? -Tom Rossi

Former pro-basketball player Charles Barkley famously said (eventually in a commercial even) that he wasn’t a role model.

The same applies to a president. A president is not “role model in chief.” He’s not a father figure.

A president is basically a manager. We hire him (maybe her, one day), give him the keys to the store, and say, “You’re in charge for a while. Don’t screw it up.”

But the desire for the feeling of reassurance that you get from a father figure is quite seductive, and it can lead to some undesirable consequences. People tend not only to force this role on the president, but to make his potential for fulfilling father-figure fantasies the basis for giving their votes. I’ve written about “brand worship,” “coolness worship,” “celebrity worship,” and other religions in the United States, but this is another one: father-figure worship.

Let me be clear – there is absolutely nothing wrong with looking up to, respecting, and loving your actual father. What I’m talking about here is the transfer of those same sorts of feelings to what are often false idols.

Seeing the president as a father figure can lead voters to support a president even if the leads the country on a misguided misadventure. Conversely, the people that don’t accept a certain president as matching their imagined father-figure image will reject legitimate policies that the president tries to implement – even if the image-rejectors themselves would benefit from it.

The tendency to look at our presidents as father figures has led to the expectation that presidents will live up to the image. If a president doesn’t match someone’s pre-formed image of a father figure, the president will be unable to overcome this expectation, even if he’s really pretty good at his job.

Maybe we should have presidential candidates give speeches from behind screens so that they can’t be seen. It would be like auditioning on the TV show, “The Voice.” We would be forced to pay attention to policy ideas instead of facades.

-Tom Rossi

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Tom Rossi is a commentator on politics and social issues. He is a Ph.D. student in International Sustainable Development, concentrating in natural resource and economic policy. Tom greatly enjoys a hearty debate, especially over a hearty pint of Guinness.

Tom also posts on thrustblog.blogspot.com

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Osama Been Decayin’ – for about 48 hours now.

(part 3 of “Tax Mysteries Uncovered!” will appear next week)

It’s finally happened. Osama Bin Laden is dead.

 Yesterday, I received a call from a friend telling me to turn on the news. It had just been announced that OBL had been killed. I watched ABC network coverage of OBL’s death for about 45 minutes and started to get curious. I don’t get cable TV, so I went to the computer to check out Fox “News” Channel. There’s a big link to click on at the top of the page that says, “Watch FoxNews.com Live.” I clicked on it and what did I see? A replay of the coverage of the royal wedding.

 Wow.

 Just… Wow.

 I watched about 5 minutes to prove to myself that this was what Fox was really running, and then my Firefox browser crashed.

 Of course, I can’t know if it was just some technical difficulty that our “Fair and Balanced” friends were suffering, but somehow I doubt it. I still have questions about the complete story of 9/11 (Oh, to be a fly on the inside of George W. Bush’s skull right now. But let’s save that discussion for another day.) but one thing is for sure – this is just a huge victory (politically if nothing else) for President Obama. I’m sure it’s taking some time for ill-prepared Fox “News” spinners to concoct something negative or just to formulate a plan to keep the negativity flowing.

We’ll see if I’m right over the next few days. But for now, let’s just read a list of the dead:

 Osama Bin Laden

and…

 The 2012 presidential campaigns of:

Sarah Palin

Donald Trump

Mitt Romney

Michelle Bachman

Etc.

Etc.

Etc.

 By the way, I again tried the Fox “News” live feed on Monday morning at 9:05 am, Pacific time. All the other networks just can’t show enough about OBL. Fox live feed had a show on about how terrible the economy is and how hard it is to get a job.

 One thing of which I am completely certain: Obama haters will go on hating. That’s what they do.

-Tom Rossi

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Tom Rossi is a commentator on politics and social issues. He is a Ph.D. student in International Sustainable Development, concentrating in natural resource and economic policy. Tom greatly enjoys a hearty debate, especially over a hearty pint of Guinness.

Tom also posts on thrustblog.blogspot.com

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