All the hoo-ha about Obama signing the spending bill despite the dreaded earmarks...
Imagine your truck needs 99 $1 repairs to get back on the road to deliver your load and get paid, but the shop does 100. You think the 100th was unneccessary, but you're no mechanic. Should you refuse the repair, send the truck back to the shop and twiddle your thumbs for days to save a dollar?
A veto of all for a problematic 1% would be stupidity or political grandstanding, and neither describes Obama's style.
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Thursday, March 12, 2009
The Balanced in Power
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Hope and the Clock
The clock is running out on the "permanent Republican majority" so sweepingly orchestrated over the last generation. This grandiose plan resembles the rise of every tyranny in history, combining public rhetoric that idealizes tribalism with backroom powergrabs that care nothing for anyone outside the inner cadre of rich and powerful influence peddlers. Whoever wins the presidency on Tuesday, this assault on republican (as opposed to Republican) freedoms will receive a grievous injury. The impulse behind it will not die, any more than the age-old battle between good and evil can ever be decisively ended. But at least my generation will not be the one surrender to the ignorant, hate-filled clannish straightjacket that keeps the masses enslaved by their own passions to the very rich and powerful.
This is the hope triggered by the Obama campaign and his steady, unruffled calm has been no small element in this uprising. Whether Obama can become a great president or not is almost irrelevant. His power is that he brings home the message of community power rather than injured helplessness. Lobbyists do not own Washington any more, not when individual donations can topple both the Bush and Clinton money machines. More importantly, our few dollars, like drops of water, can swell to oceans of cash for candidates we feel speaks to and for us, not special interests.
This empowerment of voice - for the courts have ruled that money is a form of "speech" and so giving it is a right under the Constitution - this takes us out of the dependent child role in the political family and puts us all on a more nearly equal footing. Corporations and PACs can no longer make my few dollars insignificant by comparison. And so I have hope that I will be heard in the same way an adult with her own income is listened to over the demands of children who want things but do not contribute to the family income.
We are becoming 'adults' in a system that has infantilized us to make us regress in our thinking about public life so that we look to the wise big 'fathers' to do what's best for us. Fear and scapegoating work on children and dependents, whose emotions are more volatile and exploitable. Adults are less afraid than children, in part because they have more personal power. Autonomy gives weight and weight is a key in keeping one's equilibrium. The public has grown up enough to see during the S&L crisis that Oz, far from watching over us, the "man behind the curtain" of deregulation didn't know any more than the rest of us about the forces of capitalism.
As Election Day nears, I think about the month-long recount in Florida eight years ago and the what-to-me-was-obvious machinations of the Republican operation to deliver the election by hook or by crook to George W. Bush. That they succeeded was an almost mortal blow to my sense of security and trust in our system. Until that moment, I had believed that truth would out and that, in the end, cheaters would not prosper.
Now, as I watch the arc of this election season, a bit of that faith is being restored. Not that people are any better, but that reality, as they say, bites. And once bitten by Republican methods, twice shy.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Abraham Lincoln: The Illinois Socialist
All this talk about Obama being a socialist for wanting the wealthy to pay higher taxe rates than those in the middle ignores the realities of society. After all, it was Abraham Lincoln himself who introduced a tiered income tax to pay for the Civil War "... with taxable incomes up to $10,000 taxed at a 3 percent rate and higher incomes taxed at 5 percent." (From the US treasury website) Higher taxes for the wealthiest who have benefited the most from the system is not Socialist, or Marxist, or whatever name you want to apply - it is a traditional all-American value called fairness.
Why is it fair? Take a look at the opposite idea and see how it sits. Do you think it is fair for those who have benefited LEAST from the current system to pay the most in taxes? That's the system we have now. Time to stop asking the poorer to cover the costs of living in this country for the richest 5%.
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Who Is Barak Obama?
The vicious innuendo that fills the new RNC ad as well as the McCain campaign ads and speeches needs to be met head on. I hope Obama develops an ad campaign with the same slogan, the same techniques, and answers the sleazy lies with the truth in clear images and words that rebuke the falsehoods and shame the ad makers.
Who is Barak Obama?
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Palin's Call to Embrace the Dark Side of Our Nature
Deepak Chopra wrote a column called Obama and the Palin Effect that explains the appeal of Palin. Instead of looking at the facts of the candidates or the role of the press, he looks at the unconscious emotional dynamics at play in the electorate. The press may be promoting the idea that the McCain Republican campaign is once again outfoxing the Democratic machine, but the real culprit is found in the American psyche and how people may wish for change in the abstract while being terrified about losing the little they have should change really happen. It is the call for change that is triggering this fear; the Republicans are simply fanning the flames and capitalizing on it.
In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision.Here lies the the key Bill Clinton's, and to a lesser degree, Hillary Clinton's success. They did not just inspire people to their cause; they simultaneously soothed the fears that their call for change evoked. Folksy and friendly, they reassured the populace that the changes that were coming would not ask anything of them and give everything to them.
Look at what she stands for:
--Small town values -- a denial of America's global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.
--Ignorance of world affairs -- a repudiation of the need to repair America's image abroad.
--Family values -- a code for walling out anybody who makes a claim for social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don't need to be heeded.
--Rigid stands on guns and abortion -- a scornful repudiation that these issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.
--Patriotism -- the usual fallback in a failed war.
--"Reform" -- an italicized term, since in addition to cleaning out corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who doesn't fit your ideology.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Obama Tagging
Obama’s opponents are trying to tag him like a gang in the ghetto of American political speech. I’d like to see the candidate boldly incorporate the tags, redefining them and making them part of his platform. If people see this divisive language being defused and de-clawed, they will begin to have hope again for the future of American politics, and isn’t that what his campaign is all about? Here is one tag I’d like to see him embrace.
He will raise taxes. Two-thirds of all corporations paid no taxes last year. Your darn right, we need to raise taxes. Make no mistake. Corporations use the benefits from taxes more than individuals. It is trucks that eat up roads, not cars, and taxes are needed to build heavy-duty highways and to keep them in repair. Corporations use a disproportionate amount of the national infrastructure. Their massive requirements for energy and water and waste management depend on massive public utilities networks. Schools educate their workers for them. They damage the environment and then the public needs to clean up. It’s time they started paying for what they use instead of getting a free ride on the back of the average American worker.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
The Softball Ex-Press
The blogosphere and supporters of Barack Obama have been railing over the mild-mannered treatment John McCain has received from the main stream media. The examples of glossing over his inconsistencies, mistakes and downright lies are so numerous, the voices pointing them out sound like broken records in their call for more balanced reporting. There are several reasons, however, why this gentle treatment makes sense, though none of them are about truth or the interests of the body politic. They are all about the nature of the news in the post-journalism era and the human preference for equally matched opponents.
The MSM is fighting for its life. The advertiser-driven model that pays for news wants eyeballs on the page. The big problem in covering McCain in the news is that nobody really cares about him. Obama is the story. Obama gets the eyeballs glued to the TV so that the advertisers can market their razor blades or deodorant. It has nothing to do with fairness. Obama is a celebrity, and every detail of his day will be picked apart endlessly by a ratings-driven broadcast news system (thanks to Reagan) hosted predominantly by spokesmodels instead of reporters. (Who but a bevy of spokesmodels would think that photoshopping a competitors face would be a legitimate attack against their reporting as was done at Fox News this week?) Since ratings are all, the ‘news’ must find or manufacture controversy and excitement in the subjects of interest to its viewers. And the only political subject of interest is Obama.
But it seems the media are actually bending backward to try and frame McCain’s failings and gaffe’s in a positive light. McCain’s non-joke that exporting cigarettes to Iran would have the benefit of killing our enemies was headlined by the Associated Press as a moment of fun spousal play when Cindy McCain poked hubby in the back for his comment. Or how about the headline that shows McCain leading Obama among the all-important voting bloc of pet-owners. This goes beyond picking apart Obama. It seems the MSM is actually supporting McCain by white-washing his image for him.
The election year ratings are at the core of this artificial 'balancing' of the candidates. If only one candidate is likely to be elected, if there's no real contest, then there's no news. Some semblance of a competition has to be maintained if coverage of the election is going to draw enough viewers and readers to keep news departments afloat. That presidential press corps is expensive. What's the point of spending all that money if the race is over. People will not watch a sport if the outcome is known beforehand. The Yankees playing my office baseball team would not draw much in the way of fans. After the 217th home run by the Yanks in the first inning, who would keep watching. Golf lets people of unequal skill play each other. Think of the MSM bias as being McCain's high handicap score. The media is actually raising McCain and trying to lower Obama so that the American people will be uncertain of the outcome and tune in.
Some argue that this is a betrayal of the protections offered the Fourth Estate. News should be impartial and serve the public interest. And the public needs to know just how awful McCain is. These folks are looking at the McCain campaign as a fair fight and want the blows by each side to be covered evenly. But let's face it; on a human level, it's not a fair match. No one wants to see the shame of an old man brought to face his decrepit and degenerated state. The more awful McCain is, the more I see a pathetic old man. And hitting a weak man when he’s down elicits a reaction against the messenger. The news tries to be a happy place despite the litany of death and destruction, and rubbing grampa’s nose in the mess he’s making smacks of senior abuse. They can’t admit it because he is the presumptive Republican nominee, so they avoid noticing his decline and keep us all focused on the glory that he enjoyed in his prime.
Such is the softball game played by the press with the McCain campaign. It is not a love affair with him and his maverick image. It is a self-serving posture of neutrality with all the trappings of a kangaroo-court where the verdict has been decided beforehand: the two Presidential Candidates are locked in an even battle for the White House. Details at 11.
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