Home > The two faces of Barack Obama, by Bill Van Auken (GlobalResearch)
The two faces of Barack Obama, by Bill Van Auken (GlobalResearch)
by Open-Publishing - Thursday 28 February 20084 comments
Appearing before a packed auditorium at the University of Wisconsin Tuesday on the night of his victories in the “Potomac primaries,” held in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., Illinois senator and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama delivered a speech that was notable for its populist demagogy, not only on the war in Iraq but also social conditions in America.
The Wisconsin rally is the latest in a series of campaign events that have drawn large and predominantly younger crowds—20,000 at the University of Maryland and 17,000 in Virginia Beach on the eve of Tuesday’s primaries—and which have seen Obama adopt a more “left” public face.
The Illinois senator has the instincts of an agitator and seeks to give the crowds what he senses they want. In Wisconsin, he linked “record profits” for Exxon to the rising “price at the pump,” provoking enthusiastic applause. He spoke of trade agreements that “ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers for minimum wage at Wal-Mart.” And he pledged to be a “president who will listen to Main Street—not just Wall Street; a president who will stand with workers not just when it’s easy, but when it’s hard.”
Turning to the question of Iraq, he declared that “our troops are sent to fight tour after tour of duty in a war that should’ve never been authorized and should’ve never been waged,” and derided those who “use 9/11 to scare up votes.”
He continued by citing deteriorating social conditions facing average Americans: “the father who goes to work before dawn and then lies awake at night wondering how he’s going to pay the bills;” “the woman who told me she works the night shift after a full day at college and still can’t afford health care for a sister who’s ill;” the retiree “who lost his pension when the company he gave his life to went bankrupt;” and “the teacher who works at Dunkin Donuts after school just to make ends meet.”
He responded with promises of tax cuts for working people, health care reform, better pay and a government that would “protect pensions, not CEO bonuses.”
Echoing the rhetoric of Martin Luther King, he concluded his speech with the vow that “our dream will not be deferred, our future will not be denied, and our time for change has come.”
There is an element in these speeches that would seem to give pause to the Democratic Party establishment and the big business interests it represents. Obama’s rhetorical excursions could be seen as leading into dangerous territory. After all, the Democratic Party has served as an indispensable partner in the Bush administration’s policies of war abroad and social reaction at home.
But this populist primary rhetoric is only one face of Obama. There is another, and it is turned firmly towards the very corporate interests he publicly criticizes, which have poured tens of millions of dollars into his campaign.
On the day after the Potomac primaries, BusinessWeek ran a special report entitled, “Is Obama Good for Business?” While the piece provided no direct answer to this question, the attitude taken by the business magazine appeared to be a qualified “yes,” based in large part on the private discussions that the Illinois senator is holding with top Wall Street and corporate insiders even as he is delivering his public appeals for “change.”
Thus, BusinessWeek noted, last Sunday, after learning of his victory in the Maine Democratic caucuses, Obama sat down at his computer to exchange emails with Robert Wolf, CEO of UBS America, one of his major Wall Street “bundlers,” responsible for bringing in millions in donations from fellow multi-millionaires to finance what Obama refers to as his “movement.” According to estimates made by the Center for Responsive Politics, 80 percent of the money raised by the Obama campaign last year came from donors affiliated with business, with Wall Street leading the pack. More than half of the money came in the form of donations totaling $2,300 or more.
In addition to Wolf, Obama stays in regular touch with Warren Buffett, the second-wealthiest individual in America, with a net worth of some $52 billion. Among his leading economic advisors is Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago professor and prominent advocate of free market policies.
The Volcker endorsement
Perhaps most significant was last month’s little reported endorsement of Obama by Paul Volcker, who was appointed Federal Reserve Board chairman by Democratic President Jimmy Carter in 1979 and remained in charge of the US central bank for nearly seven years under the right-wing Republican administration of Ronald Reagan.
Volcker was responsible for inaugurating a high-interest-rate regime demanded by the dominant sections of finance capital in the name of the battle against inflation. His monetary policy was inextricably linked to the offensive against the working class begun with the firing of the air traffic controllers and the breaking of the PATCO strike and continued with the shutdown of large sections of basic industry and the unleashing of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The ultimate effect of these policies was a vast transfer of wealth from the mass of working people to a narrow financial elite, a process that has continued to this day.
In a statement announcing his backing for Obama, Volcker noted that he had previously avoided involvement in partisan politics. He said that he was moved to intervene now not “by the current turmoil in markets,” but because of “the breadth and depth of challenges that face our nation at home and abroad.” He added, “Those challenges demand a new leadership and a fresh approach.” Obama’s leadership, he concluded, would be able to “restore needed confidence in our vision, our strength and our purposes right around the world.”
Larry Kudlow, the right-wing pundit and former Reagan administration economic advisor, commented on the endorsement earlier this month, noting that he had once worked as a speechwriter for Volcker and describing him as “a great American... a classic conservative... a man of fiscal and monetary rectitude.”
Volcker, Kudlow wrote, “would not have made this endorsement on a whim. Believe me. He never gets involved in these kinds of political decisions.” He concluded by asking: “Is Volcker the new Robert Rubin [the Wall Street insider who directed the Clinton administration’s economic policy]? Is it possible that Mr. Volcker is somehow tutoring Obama? Is it possible that Obama is more financially conservative than originally believed?
”
These are the real relations that are being forged behind the scenes as Obama delivers left phrases from the podium. Those like Volcker see the Illinois senator as a useful vehicle for effecting major changes aimed not at ameliorating the conditions of life for masses of working people, but rather at securing the global interests of American finance capital.
No doubt, they believe Obama, who would be America’s first African-American president, is best suited to confront the dangers posed by continuing economic crisis and rising social tensions. Who better to demand even greater sacrifices from the working class, all in the name of national unity and “change?” At the same time, he would present a fresh face to the world, which they hope would help extricate US imperialism from the foreign policy debacles and growing global isolation that are the legacy of the Bush administration.
Given these big business ties, Obama’s campaign rhetoric about confronting poverty and social inequality involve a level of cynicism and demagogy that is truly staggering. His incessant promises of change are not tied to any radical economic program that fundamentally challenges the profit interests of the giant corporations and Wall Street.
On the contrary, Obama has advanced a conservative fiscal policy, pledging himself to a “pay as you go” approach and stressing the need to reduce debt and deficits. Given that he would take office with a near-record $400 billion deficit inherited from the Bush administration, this already determines an agenda of austerity measures.
On Wednesday, the candidate toured a General Motors plant in Janesville, Wisconsin and put forward a so-called jobs program involving investments in infrastructure and alternative energy that would total $210 billion over 10 years. In the face of the deep-going crisis confronting American capitalism, this is less than a drop in the bucket—and even this drop would quickly evaporate in the face of demands for deficit reduction.
Those who don’t want to talk about capitalism should by rights keep their mouths shut when it comes to poverty and unemployment. One cannot deal with either seriously without confronting the private ownership of society’s productive forces and the immense social inequality that it has created. The defense of jobs and living standards, the right to decent housing, health care and education for hundreds of millions of Americans can be advanced only through a far-reaching redistribution of wealth from the super rich to the broad mass of working people.
Clearly, the likes of Wolf, Buffett and Volcker are backing Obama because they know that he has no intention of going anywhere near such a policy.
As for the question of war, those looking to the Obama campaign as a means of ending American militarism will be sorely disappointed. The Illinois Senator has vowed not to reduce the ballooning US military budget—which consumes an estimated $700 billion annually—but rather to increase it. He has called for the recruitment of another 65,000 soldiers for the Army as well as 27,000 more Marines. He has vowed to put “more boots on the ground” in the “war on terror,” the pretext invented by the Bush administration to justify “preemptive war,” i.e., military aggression aimed at asserting US hegemony over the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia.
As for Iraq itself, his promises to end the war are belied by his pledge to keep American forces in Iraq to defend “US interests” and conduct “counterterrorism operations,” a formula that would see tens of thousands of US soldiers and Marines continuing to occupy Iraq and repress its population for many years to come.
To the extent that Obama’s rhetoric arouses popular expectations—and there are indications that it does—these will inevitably be dashed. In all probability, this will happen once the primary season is over and Obama is confronted by the Republican right as well as elements within the Democratic Party itself with the demand that he clarify his program. Should he capture the White House in November, he will head an administration committed to defending the interests of the American oligarchy both at home and abroad.
Those turning towards the Obama campaign as a means of effecting progressive social change in the US and bringing an end to US militarism abroad will find that the Democratic Party and the corporate and financial interests it represents will allow neither.
These necessary goals can be achieved only through a decisive break with the Democrats and the entire two-party system and the independent mobilization of the working class through the building of a mass socialist movement.
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8073
http://internationalnews.over-blog.com/article-16723108.html
Forum posts
28 February 2008, 10:41
Yes, as the writer points out, Obama relies on Big Business for support. But where are the candidates who didn’t? Nader, Kucinich, Paul, and to some extent, Edwards?
The story implies that there could be another way of doing businsess as a candidate, but what model would that be? What candidate would that be? There are no alternatives. Ron Paul’s crossover internet support didn’t rise to the occasion. Now there are three relatively conventional candidates, at least regarding the prospects of progressive change. So what to do? Stay home? Forget about any kind of change?
The problem, too often, with left wing idealists is that the aim is for a purist kind of governance. But are the people truly ready for such a thing? Take for instance Dennis Kucinch, the marked idealist among the group, and, in many ways, a traditional Democrat. Once he claimed to have seen a UFO in a debate, which many respected pilots and astronauts have also claimed, he became a point of ridicule that reduced him to a posture of insignificance.
This wasn’t merely the result of media oppression, though his basic initiatives never received a fair hearing. Posters all over the internet mocked him. Why? Because the American consciousness is limited to a rather narrow set of acceptable political beliefs. To a great extent those beliefs have been shaped since the 80s by the brilliance of right wing propagandists who have forcibly controlled the public debate and common inquiry.
That control isn’t based on the efficacy of right wing and Neocon concepts, such as globalization, Free Trade, neoimperialism, and the "War on Terror" but upon the public’s willingness to adopt these ideas as standard acceptable policies. Moreover these right wing concepts have been adopted with minimal criticism because the left wing capitulated to the right. Bill Clinton, and others, tilted right with the Third Way style of politics: [<-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way_%28centrism%29]. In other words the left never reestablished itself after Reagan and hence has felt obliged to go along with right wing agendas, such as Mrs. Clinton voting for W’s preemptive war.
An essential problem regarding the widespread appetite for amorphously defined change is a rather ignorant public who doesn’t realze the many intracacies involved in attaining true change.
Many deride the crowds surrounding Obama as if they were identitical to pop events such as the adulation given to Frank Sinatra, Elvis, and the Beatles. It’s not entirely fair, but, undeniably there’s a grain of truth to it. But it’s not Obama’s fault that they seek a panacea without knowing how to get and thus demanding systematic change.
Mrs. Clinton pretends she can raise $55 B by raising taxes on the rich, but is unwilling, like Paul was, to significantly change the tax code. So the rich who are taxed more heavily will move assets and income into shelters and offshore projects. Who’s kidding who here? Additionally, Mrs. Clinton claims to have a plan for mandatory, universal Healthcare, but she’s unwilling to effectively cap costs and contain greed. Why? Like Obama, she’s supported by Big Business.
Yet without that support, there’s no prospect of getting elected. How to change that? Campaign finance reform. Publicly financed races, free or governmentally subsidized air time, increased public interest content that will better inform the public as opposed to the 30 second spots and 527s now ruling the races. Yet McCain-Feingold, which was a step in that direction is now widely perceived to be a mistake for McCain, even by left leaning candidates. Especially now since the Democrats are drawing more funds.
The main obstacle is, the systematic solutions required to fix the core problems are too complicated, too boring, and too involved for the public to be interested. So, instead, people want a toy in every box of popcorn in what’s turned out to be a kind of Cracker Jack politics: a little Healthcare here, cheaper gas there, more affordable college tuition, and the promise of more jobs, foreclosure prevention and homeland security. And that’s about it.
Well, how are those things going to be accomplished? Last year at this time, the Iraqi war was the main concern, but the dismal economy replaced it. Somehow, fewer and fewer people saw a connection between the two. But how is spending over $12B a month not going to affect the dollar? Oil prices?
Apparently, the public doesn’t see it. As a general rule, they feel like they’ve gotten screwed and they want a slice of the pie. So do the politicians. So do the lobbysists. And so too do the corporate patrons of the candidates.
In order to address these issues successfully, Obama is right about this: It’s going to take the public, not just the electorate, to get involved in civic life, foreign affairs, everyday issues. Until that occurs, the status quo will continue.
Since around ’84 the public’s blind eye has been an invitation for exploitation. The middle class erosion that’s inflicted America over the past 15 years isn’t just a result of top-down manipulation but also a consequence of apathy, widespread ignorance about federal issues, and naive expectations for change.
At this point there’s only one hope for true change, like it or not, and that’s Barrack Obama.
1 March 2008, 06:44
We need Ron Paul, not Obama, Clinton, or McCain who are corporate shrills. They don’t represent the people, they represent Corporate America. They take from the men and women, through our labor, and give to the CORPORATIONS.
Attorneys are running the Judicial, Legislative and Executive branches of Government. One major group running the system. Congress consists mainly of attorneys. The real Thirteenth Amendment states that no "TITLE OF NOBILITY" is to hold any government office.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
The 545 People Responsible For Our Woes!!
“This source of corruption, alas, is inherent in the democratic system itself, and it can only be controlled, if at all, by finding ways to encourage legislators to subordinate ambition to principle.” –James L. Buckley
All along we have wondered why the yoke of servitude and peonage could have been placed on innocent American under the color of law. These are laws that are facially unconstitutional and violate the most basic of citizens rights….The Right To Privacy in decisions relatin
1 March 2008, 06:46
The first post did not complete.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
The 545 People Responsible For Our Woes!!
“This source of corruption, alas, is inherent in the democratic system itself, and it can only be controlled, if at all, by finding ways to encourage legislators to subordinate ambition to principle.” –James L. Buckley
All along we have wondered why the yoke of servitude and peonage could have been placed on innocent American under the color of law. These are laws that are facially unconstitutional and violate the most basic of citizens rights….The Right To Privacy in decisions relating to marriage.
Innocent citizens are criminalized by the imposition of laws that are lacking adequate guidelines and are so vague and unclear, judges are unable to rule with any degree of consistency. They are
criminalized by imposing laws under which no two judges are able to arrive at the same conclusion given the same facts of a case. They are criminalized by imposing laws by which the participants are subject to the whims and prejudices of the individual judges.
When the laws are unclear and uncertain, as are those of Florida Statute 61.08, which govern the alimony statutes, the only way the judge can rule on the case is by, in effect, clearly creating a new law (ruling) governing in each case and that follows no rigid guideline as required to do equity between the parties.
Creating laws by the judiciary is a violation of the Separation of Powers between the Judiciary (who administer the laws) and the Legislature (who make the laws) as mandated by the Constitution
Did this happen by accident or was it well planned out by a group of self-serving people who swore am oath of office to uphold the constitutional rights of those whom they purport to represent?
The alimony burdens that have been imposed upon unsuspecting spouses in direct violation of their constitutional right can be traced back to our legislatures and the legislators who pass these
self-serving laws that primarily benefit the state, the legal industry and all the parasites that feed off it to the tune of multi-billions of dollars each year..
Ask yourself: “for what other reason would laws support the lifetime strangle-hold on spouses by retaining jurisdiction over them in the final judgment of dissolution?”
In two separate Florida judicial jurisdictions, the circuit courts, the district court of appeals, and the Florida Supreme Court abrogated their duty to provide a citizen with a declaratory judgment on whether or not the Florida alimony statute 61.08 violated the state constitution.
The cowardly act of the courts refusal to rule on a constitutional issue was simply because the far reaching effect of such a ruling would not only destroy the legal industry’s multi-billion dollar
cash cow but would invalidate, ab initio (back to the beginning), the statute that was unconstitutional as of it’s date of enactment. Follow the filed cases by clicking here.
In reading the following article, it was felt that it accurately reflects where the blame should be placed for such inequitable laws. Even though the article references the U.S. Congress, we can equally apply it to a state congress.
Charley Reese, a writer with the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper has offered a rather fresh look at the national leaders who are responsible for most of the mess we find our nation in. Might mention that Charley is a bonafide "southerner".
THE 545 PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR AMERICA’S WOES!!
By Charley Reese
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don’t write the tax code. Congress does.You and I don’t set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don’t control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court Justices - 545 human beings out of the 300 million - are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton- picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it.
No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator’s responsibility to determine how he votes.
A CONFIDENCE CONSPIRACY
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a SPEAKER, who stood up and criticized G.W. BUSH for creating deficits.
The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes.
Who is the speaker of the House? She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow Democrats, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto.
REPLACE THE SCOUNDRELS
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts - of incompetence and irresponsibility.
I can’t think of a single domestic problem, from an unfair tax code to defense overruns, that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.
When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red. If the Marines are in IRAQ, it’s because they want them in IRAQ.
There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.
Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exist disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation" or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone, have the power. They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses - provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees. We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess.
1 March 2008, 06:49
This message is common to all countries, States.
URGENT!
John B. Thompson, Attorney at Law
1172 S. Dixie Hwy., Suite 111
Coral Gables, Florida 33146
305-666-4366
amendmentone@comcast.net
February 6, 2008
The Honorable Bill McCollum
Attorney General, State of Florida
The Capitol PL-01
Tallahassee, Florida 32399 Via Fax to 850-410-1630
Re: Failure of Florida Supreme Court Justices to File State Loyalty Oaths
Dear Attorney General McCollum:
I have practiced law for 31 years in this state, and I have never encountered a more serious breach of the law by public officials than the one I am writing you about this day. It is all the more troubling and shocking because this flouting of the law is by the Justices sitting on our state’s Supreme Court.
Florida Statute 876.05 mandates (it does not suggest) that all state employees and all elected state officials, including judges, must execute, before they assume office, a written Oath of Loyalty to the US and state constitutions. It must be dated and sworn before a person who takes such oaths, and it then must be filed with the State. I call to your attention AGO 96-41, authored by your predecessor, Bob Butterworth, to show how serious and important a matter this is. The statutory provisions of FS 876.05 through 876.10 are crystal clear as to what must be done and how it must be done.
Today I have received, pursuant to my Chapter 119 Public Records request, the filed Loyalty Oaths of all current Supreme Court Justices. It appears, based upon the records provided by the state, that the Justices have violated the law as follows:
• Justice Quince was appointed in 1998, yet there is no Oath prior to one she executed in October 2007.
• Justice Anstead was appointed in 1994, yet there is no Oath prior to the one he executed in October 2007.
• Justice Wells executed an Oath in October 2007, but the only other one on file is undated and not acknowledged before someone authorized to take oaths (such as a notary), which violates the statute.
• Similarly, Justice Pariente finally executed a proper Oath in October 2007, but the other one on file, like Wells’, has no jurat and is undated, save for a time stamp that indicates it was received on September 15, 1993. She did not come onto the Supreme Court until 1997, so here she was using an old, and unacknowledged at that, Oath from another judicial post. This is violative of the law, as an Oath must be taken for a new post. Thus Justice Pariente has been serving on the highest court in the state for ten years with no Loyalty Oath.
• Justice Cantero, who presently wants to round up lawyers for their lack of manners and suspend them, apparently can’t follow the law either. The state and now I have his Oath of Loyalty but it is undated and unacknowledged. He did manage, along with others, to execute one properly in October 2007, so he, like many of the others, served on the Supreme Court for more than five years (from 2002) with no valid Loyalty Oath on file.
• Justice Bell violated the law as well, not getting around to filing a Loyalty Oath for the Supreme Court post until October 2007, even though he came onto the court in January 2003. On file is his old oath from 1990 when he was a Circuit Court Judge, which is ineffectual for the Supreme Court post.
• Finally, Justice Lewis, now serving as Chief Justice, actually executed a Loyalty Oath before a notary on January 13, 1999. He appears to have been the only one on the court who got it right, although he has not executed a new oath since he survived merit retention in 2006.
The problems presented by the failures of these Justices to follow the law are these:
1. Their judicial rulings made while not in compliance with the Loyalty Oath law can be attacked as legal nullities.
2. These justices are subject to removal from office by a petition for the writ of quo warranto.
3. These justices are subject to False Claims Act (qui tam) proceedings for return of their salaries because the law makes it clear, as does the oath itself, that they are not entitled to pay unless the Loyalty Oath is fully and properly executed.
Beyond that, what we have here is a contempt for the law by the very people who ought to be seen by the public as paragons of obedience to the law.
US Supreme Court Justice Brandeis said it very well: "Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to obey the law scrupulously. . . . If the Government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy." Olmstead v. United States , 277 U.S. 438 (1927).
We now live in a nation in which a former President claimed “I am not a crook” and another wagged his finger while saying “I did not have sex with that woman.” Eventually the truth about both men came out, and our citizens, aware that public virtue is on the wane, take note and act accordingly.
How in the word, Attorney General McCollum, can the Justices of our State Supreme Court, hope to credibly enforce the law while they disregard it—and not just any law. We are talking about the law which requires them to support the Constitutions of our state and nation.
Is it any wonder that this court had its collective head handed to it by the U.S. Supreme Court?
It is high time—in fact, it is beyond time—for your office to do what is necessary to see to it that each and every employee and elected official in this state complies with our state’s Loyalty Oath law. It is there for a reason. It is in fact mandated by Title 4, Sections 101 and 102 of the United States Code as well.
Please proceed with that task, beginning with the Justices on the Florida Supreme.
Regards, Jack Thompson
PS: This problem is so bad that we have down here, as you know, a sitting judge, Dava Tunis, who has actually filed with the state a forged Loyalty Oath. That’s like stealing from someone in the pew next to you money that you then put into the collection plate.