Tag Archives: obama

Political Rants

On capitulation.

Okay, so the president has a bit to apologize for. He’s not alone in that respect – plenty of blame to go around here. Fact is, the administration is certainly wrong to criticize the liberal-left for denouncing the deal he cut with Republicans this week. If the president was painted into a corner, it was not by the left. The Congress members who were dead set against raising the tax issue before this past election were “Blue Dog” conservatives, worried about offending their constituencies – the same voters that would soon send more than half of them packing.

It is now these conservative Democrats that Obama is relying upon during the lame duck session to shepherd this deal through the House. It seems likely that most Republicans will support it, so he hardly needs the entire Democratic caucus. In any case, the capitulation happened a long time ago. At this point, the main thing is making certain that unemployed workers get the help they need. I don’t care how we get there, particularly, so long as they don’t give away the store… and reserve the right to start fighting again fresh on January 1.

There will be a lot to fight about, particularly when you consider how the Republicans have been behaving in the wake of their electoral victory. To wit,

  • Jim DeMint has talked about the possibility of making unemployment insurance more like “a loan” to give unemployed people incentive to go to work. No, really… he’s serious.
  • The main talking point on these upper income marginal tax cuts is that they are “NOT tax cuts”, that to not implement them is, in fact, a tax increase.  I heard Jon Kyl plying this one yesterday. A little wordplay here – perhaps they don’t remember that when they invented these tax cuts nine years ago, they put an end point on them. The tax cut has a time limit; when that passes, it’s over. Extend it, that’s a new cut because it involves additional billions. Got that, Jon? 
  • Tax cuts for the rich don’t add to the deficit. Unemployment benefits do.

You get the picture. One last point… it was mentioned in passing on NPR business news today that American corporations are sitting on $2 trillion in cash. Sitting on it.

Again… do these people really need a tax cut?

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Pay days.

Writing this totally on the fly, so try to read fast and skip over any errors in grammar (or judgment). Have a heart, will you?

Tax fraud. It was probably inevitable that, as the sunset for the Bush 2003 tax cuts approached, the chorus of whining from the well-to-do would begin in earnest. Now we are faced with the remarkable phenomenon of hearing politicians who identify the federal deficit as public enemy #1 argue forcefully for an extension of tax relief for millionaires that will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt over the next ten years. I know Americans have a short memory, but some of you out there must surely remember the 1990s. Were rich people overtaxed in those days? They seemed to be living pretty high at the time. Then their president, W. Bush, had the audacity to deeply cut their taxes with one hand while he launched two pointless wars with the other. Having blown a huge hole in the budget, they now want to stretch it wider. Time to come in now, children. You’ve had enough fun.

Job one. The president has been speaking a bit more forcefully about the economy in recent days. That is good, but not good enough. We need a deeper, broader commitment to the notion of full employment in this country, and to back it up with some appropriate action.  Various T.V. pundits blandly claim that there is little government can do, but I disagree. The fact is, government has to take steps to provide incentive to industry to employ workers in this country. They could start with procurement. The entire Federal Government, including the Defense Department, should require all contracts to be fulfilled with U.S. labor. If we need it, let’s build it here. We’ve got the skills, the money, and a workforce more than ready to do the work.

Would this be in violation of our myriad trade agreements? I hope so. Then maybe we could dump out of them altogether. That is the commitment Obama needs to make. Stop making it easy to export manufacturing and other jobs. Use the power of the federal government to drive domestic manufacturing and service employment. And for Christ’s sake, if people are willing to work and can’t find a job, provide them with work.

There’s plenty that needs doing in this country. Let’s get it done… and put people to work at the same time.

Political Rants

War’s end.

President Obama delivered his second address to the nation this past Tuesday, this time on the subject of the “end of combat operations” in Iraq. Here – unsolicited by anyone – are my comments:

Turn the page. President Obama said it was time to “turn the page” on the War in Iraq. Um… not so fast, Mr. President. I know you are obsessed with looking ahead rather than behind, but if everyone took that attitude (say, local law enforcement), no one would be held accountable for anything. This war was caused by people in our own country – people in positions of authority. Your administration has neglected to even examine the record of those responsible for this disaster. This has emboldened them to the point where they regularly flaunt their guilt in public, secure in the knowledge that they will never pay a price for what they did.

Good intentions? At one point, the president said this:

This afternoon, I spoke to former President George W. Bush. It’s well known that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset. Yet no one can doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security. As I’ve said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it.

I won’t address the “patriot” issue, since that is such a loaded term. But I can most certainly doubt President Bush’s “support for our troops” without any resort to imagination. He sent them into Iraq to die by the thousand, for no legitimate reason, in pursuit of an illegal and immoral war – a war of choice, no less. He shipped National Guard troops overseas in the ramshackle vehicles they used back home, with no armor, no protection. He is no friend of our soldiers or military families. To suggest otherwise is simply obscene.

Dark creations. The president went on:

Along with nearly 1.5 million Americans who have served in Iraq, they fought in a faraway place for people they never knew.  They stared into the darkest of human creations — war — and helped the Iraqi people seek the light of peace.

This passage is worthy of his predecessor. Reading it, one would think we invade Iraq to help the Iraqis.  It also, like so much of Bush’s prose, seeks to cloud the notion of agency behind the initiation of the war itself, as if to suggest that our troops went to Iraq on their own initiative to do good works, as if they were Peace Corps volunteers. This is just a rhetorical cop-out, a between-the-lines attempt to deflect criticism away from those who plan the wars by keeping the focus on those sent to fight them.

His call to Bush reminds me of that closing scene in Animal Farm, when Napoleon the pig was having dinner with the farmer and the other barnyard characters, looking on, couldn’t tell one from the other. Such is our ruling class, I suppose.

luv u,

jp