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Gridlock is a Blessing
To Hell with Obama
and His Van Joneses
By Glen Ford
Saved, once again,
by gridlock! In the absence of any serious social
democratic presence in the U.S. Congress – a Progressive
Caucus that went poof! years ago, a Black Caucus
rendered ridiculous by Obamaism—glorious
gridlock was the only force that could derail the
SuperCommittee, just as gridlock saved us from Obama’s
$4 trillion “Grand Bargain” with House Speaker John
Boehner, this past summer.
Gridlock is not a
dependable ally. It’s what the condemned hope happens to
traffic on their way to the execution site. But, with
Occupy Wall Street only a very recent phenomenon,
gridlock was all that stood in the way of Barack Obama
finally consummating his long sought marriage with the
GOP over the past year. Had the Republicans not
repeatedly spurned The First Black President’s offers of
matrimony—for
their own narrow reasons – the disgusting union would
have long ago been accomplished.
The Obama train,
which was always headed in the same fatal direction as
the GOP juggernaut, has been stopped in its tracks,
despite the president’s vow to keep his hand on the
throttle with a veto of any rollback of $1.2 trillion in
automatic federal spending cuts. Having rejected a
partnership with Obama, the Republicans will have great
difficulty finishing off the last remnants of the New
Deal and the Great Society in the coming election year.
Instead, they will be consumed with keeping the military
budget off the chopping block.
In the course of
over six years of intense scrutiny of candidate and
President Obama, we at Black Agenda Report have learned
to read him like a (comic) book. Last
November 3, when Republicans won control of the
House, we wrote:
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We can only hope that the
Republicans are so consumed with
destroy-Obama fervor that they reject his
entreaties to bipartisan collaboration, and
rush to gridlock…. The best outcome that
could result from Tuesday’s Democratic
debacle is that the Republicans overreach
and, in their white nationalist
triumphalism, make it impossible for
President Obama and congressional Democrats
to reach an accommodation with rampaging
reaction and racism. |
The Republicans
were stupid enough to grant our wish, twice spurning
Obama’s shameless collaboration in catastrophic spending
cuts, and finally leaving the matter to the doomed
SuperCommittee.
BAR had Obama’s
number
on December 15 of last year, when he defected to the
GOP on the Bush tax cuts with not even a pretense of a
fight. Obama, we wrote, had entered his “comfort zone”
now that House Democrats were about to become the
minority. He saw the defeat of his own party as putting
him one step closer to a “Grand Bargain” with the
Republicans.
In the 12 months
since the Democrat’s mid-term debacle, Obama has bared
his naked corporatist butt for all to see. We predicted
as much: “Obama is now in his element, where he can
maneuver among fellow rightist Democrats and Republican
Neanderthals, seeking the bipartisan nirvana he has
craved his entire cynical, opportunistic career.”
But within months,
gridlock would thwart his plans. Hallelujah!
However, gridlock
merely delays the trip to the guillotine. Only a mass
movement can defeat massed capital, the master of both
political parties. The Occupy Wall Street phenomenon,
which only emerged in September and is not yet fully
formed, is at constant risk of entanglement with the
phony “movement” conjured up almost four years earlier
in the delusional minds of so-called Progressives for
Obama and their ilk—a
“shake-and-bake” concoction whose only mission was
election of a flim-flam artist as president.
The delusionists
are at it, again, gearing up to award their
brown-skinned Ronald Reagan acolyte another four years
to rut with Republicans. At the point-position of this
well-heeled cooptation brigade is Van Jones, the Obama
staffer who was fired as White House “Green Jobs Czar”
on the ridiculous charge of being a closeted radical.
Occupy DC activist Kevin Zeese has issued a “Memo
to Democratic Operatives” like Jones to “back off
the Occupy movement”:
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The former Obama administration official,
who received a golden parachute at
Princeton and the Democratic think tank
Center for American Progress when he left the
administration, is doing what Democrats always do—see the
energy of an independent movement, race to the front, then
lead it down a dead end and essentially destroy it. Jones is
doing the dirty work of a Democratic operative and while he
and other Dem front groups pretend to support Occupiers,
their real mission is to co-opt it…. |
“The Occupy
Movement,” writes Zeese, “is not part of either
corporate-dominated party and Van Jones is not our
leader. It is corporate rule we oppose. The Obama
administration and the Democrats as well as the
Republicans maintain the
rule of Wall Street. Occupiers have organized an
independent movement that challenges the rule of the 1%
and their Republican and Democratic lackeys. Bought and
paid for with millions of dollars from Wall Street, the
health insurance industry and big energy interests,
Obama and the Democrats are part of the problem, not the
solution.”
The “problem”
menacing all humankind is the rule of finance capital,
backed by the imperial armament of the United States and
its allies, who together account for 70 percent of all
the military spending on Earth. The Sword of Damocles
that hovers over the planet, is Wall Street’s $600
trillion-plus derivatives, financial nuclear bombs
invented to satisfy the capitalist system’s demand for
ever-increasing rates of return on investment.
In May of 2008—far
too late to avert the impending catastrophe—a
virtual Who’s Who of European social democratic leaders,
including former heads of state and ministers of
treasury, posted an Open Letter in the French newspaper
Le Monde, proclaiming that “Mad
Finance Must Not Rule Us.” They were speaking of the
$750 trillion in derivatives at large at the time:
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Financial capital currently represents 15
times the gross domestic product (GDP) of all countries… The
world of finance has accumulated a gigantic mass of
fictitious capital that does very little to improve the
human condition and the preservation of the environment. |
The nominally
“socialist” politicians warned that, “when everything is
for sale, social cohesion disintegrates and the system
collapses.” They urged immediate action to control
financial markets, which “are incapable of
self-regulation.”
But of course,
nothing of the kind occurred. The Meltdown followed a
few months later, and today finance capital is eating
Europe and the United States alive. Europe’s faux
socialists made themselves irrelevant—and are now
paying at the polls—through their own decades of
collaboration with the rise of all-powerful “Wall
Street” structures. The cold, hard fact is that finance
capital, which has seized hegemonic control of all
economic, political, communications and social
mechanisms in the leading capitalist countries, is
incapable of regulation. It must be overthrown, or it
will destroy us all.
The current
gridlock in the United States should be viewed as a
temporary and fortunate respite, a chance to build the
social movement that can save the people from the worst
effects of the system’s inevitable collapse. Humanity has no time for diversions—such
as Democrats.
Glen Ford, BAR executive editor,
can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
Source:
BlackAgendaReport* *
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“Goldman
Sachs is a global bank that specializes
in mergers and acquisitions, asset
management and prime brokerage. It provides
financial advice to corporations and
governments around the world. Its executives
can be found in all key levels of
government—Mark
Carney, head of the Bank of Canada,
Stephen Friedman, Chairman of the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York,
Mario Draghi, President of the European Central
Bank and
Henry Paulson, former Treasury
Secretary (USA) and
Otmar Issing, a one-time
board member of the Bundesbank and ex-chief
economist of the European Central Bank.
Goldman Sachs are the world's foremost experts on
taking over large institutions and running
them. Their people—current and former
Goldman Sachs executives— have been quietly
advising world leaders on economic policy
for years. No one is in a better position to
take over and manage the world, for their
own profit. It was only a matter of time
before they put their expertise into use.
Goldman Sachs's plan is simple: run the economy into
the ground and step in to save the day.
Look at the results so far. In two European
countries, elected leaders have been removed
and replaced with executives with sweeping
powers. What's not apparent from news
reports is that the new leaders of Italy and
Greece are closely connected with Goldman
Sachs.
Lucas Papademos, named new
Greek Prime Minister was former head of
Greece's Central Bank, where he worked
closely with
Goldman Sachs to help the Greek
government mask the true extent of its
deficit.
Mario Monti
was an international adviser to
Goldman Sachs from 2005 until his nomination
to lead the Italian government. He also
worked closely with Goldman Sachs to reduce
the apparent size of Italian government
debt.—
Op-Ed:
The Goldman Sachs project — New world
government?
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Why Do Liberals Keep Sanitizing the Obama
Story?
Excerpts
by Conor Friedersdorf—Nov 22 2011
When I
pleaded with liberals to stop ignoring President Obama's failures on
civil liberties, foreign policy, and the separation of powers, treating
them as if they didn't even merit a mention, the quintessential example
of the troubling phenomenon hadn't yet been published. Now it has. In
New York, one of America's premier magazines, Jonathan Chait, a sharp,
experienced political writer, has penned a
5,000 word essay purporting to defend the president's first term. It
is aimed at liberal critics who, in Chait's telling, naively expected
too much. . . .
Telling the story of Obama's first
term without including any of it is a shocking failure of liberalism.
It's akin to conservatism's unforgivable myopia and apologia during the
Bush Administration. Are liberals really more discontented with Obama's
failure to reverse the Bush tax cuts than the citizen death warrants he
is signing? Is his ham-handed handling of the debt-ceiling really more
worthy of mention than the illegal war he waged? Is his willingness to
sign deficit reduction that cuts entitlement spending more objectionable
than the fact that he outsourced drone strikes to a CIA that often
didn't even know the names of the people it was killing?
These are the priorities of a perverted liberalism. Chait's essay
suggests an ideological movement that finds the ACLU and Center for
Constitutional Rights indispensable, but only when a Republican is in
the White House. One that objects to radically expanded executive power,
except when the president seems progressive. I want to be reassured that
liberalism is better than that.— TheAtlantic
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First
Black President Cuts Funds for Black Higher
Education
Obama Apologist Harris-Perry Says
Support Prez
Because He’s a “Competent” Black Man
The Butchering of Gaddafi Is America's Crime
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NATO: Free Africa from the Africans!
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Blacks Will Never Gain Wealth Parity
The gap between
Black and white households ballooned during the
23-year study period, as white families went from a
median of about $22,000 in wealth to $100,000 – a
gain of $95,000. In the same period, Black household
wealth inched up from a base of $2,000 per family to
only $5,000. The sweat and toil of an entire
generation had netted Black families only $3,000
additional dollars, while white families amassed 100
grand that can be used to send a couple of kids to
college, make investments, help out other family
members, or contribute to the larger (white)
community. The typical Black family has no such
options.
Viewed another
way, the median white family was 11 times richer
than the median Black family in 1984 ($2,000 vs.
$22,000). By 2007, the white household had become 20
times richer than its Black counterpart ($5,000 vs.
$100,000). Any way one
measures it, the numbers show African Americans are
tumbling out of the nation’s economic orbit,
wealth-wise, on a trajectory that can never achieve
parity with whites. I repeat: never.
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Norquist Tells GOP That Raising
Taxes on The Middle Class Doesn’t Count as a Tax Increase—By Travis
Waldron—1 December 2011—Anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist, the president
of Americans For Tax Reform and author of the radical anti-tax pledge
that has played a significant role in hamstringing budget and
deficit-reduction negotiations, has said that it is unacceptable for
those who have signed his pledge to vote in favor of any tax increase.
But now that President Obama and congressional Democrats are backing a
tax cut aimed at stimulating economic growth, Norquist has changed his
tune. . . .
Republicans who have defended those
tax breaks for the wealthy aren’t so sure about holding the Norquist
position, though. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) warned his
rank and file this morning about opposing the extension, telling them
that “taxes are a Republican issue and
you aren’t a Republican if you want to raise taxes on struggling
families to fund bigger government.” Multiple Republican senators,
meanwhile, have come out in favor of the extension, and Sen. Sue Collins
(R-ME) even proposed
raising taxes on some wealthy Americans to pay for it.— ThinkProgress
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News Brief—Killing
the Euro—By Paul Krugman—1 December 2011—I hope, for our sake as
well as theirs, that the Europeans will change course before it’s too
late. But, to be honest, I don’t believe they will. In fact, what’s much
more likely is that we will follow them down the path to ruin. For in
America, as in Europe, the economy is being dragged down by troubled
debtors — in our case, mainly homeowners. And here, too, we desperately
need expansionary fiscal and monetary policies to support the economy as
these debtors struggle back to financial health. Yet, as in Europe,
public discourse is dominated by deficit scolds and inflation obsessives.— NYTimes
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Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 24 November 2011
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