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Banned
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The problem is, you don't have the luxury of the interminable amount of time, dc_dux and Charlatan, doing it "your way"....will take. Events will overtake the country, and Obama, unless he starts addressing what he will do to "shake things up", and "the man", Obama's elite sponsors, won't like that....won't like it at all.
I don't think Obama has it in him....and I'm not alone.....
Quote:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhil..._b_106926.html
Jason Furman And Barack Obama
Posted June 13, 2008 | 09:08 AM (EST)
Last night at a political meeting in my neighborhood, progressive writer and occasional Huff Post blogger David Sirota used the addition of centrist economist Jason Furman to the Obama team as an object lesson in placing too much faith in politicians. "Barack Obama is an empty vessel," Sirota said, and then mixing his metaphors he added that Democrats have been projecting onto Obama's character what they want to see. Sirota's tone was utterly dispassionate; he said he didn't begrudge Obama doing what it takes to win the election. For Sirota, the rise of Furman proves a central argument of his new book The Uprising--that real political and social change begins on the city and state level. Here Sirota and his activist audience were in perfect agreement, and it was the current local issues like the impact of the doubling in size of the Safeway that people were talking about. Even in this politically-engaged group, few people had heard of Jason Furman, and that fact should be another object lesson--this one for the media and pundits.
2008-06-03-otb_onthetrail_v2.jpgThe urge to shake the Furman cup and read the tea leaves is irresistible, nevertheless. In the few days since the announcement of Furman as Obama's chief economic adviser, political and economic observers have suggested two different explanations. The first is a familiar narrative: in predictable Democratic mode, Barack Obama is tacking toward the political center so that he can win in November. I reject this thinking, because such a self-confident man as Obama would disdain such maneuvering -- at least for now. Sirota's observation is subtler reasoning, with which I partially agree. Yes indeed many Democrats have been projecting onto Obama what they want to see. But the ascendancy of an economist who has praised Wal-Mart and who finds merit in lowering the corporate tax rate does not necessarily mean that Obama is selling out the liberal progressive platforms he ran on during the race for the Democratic nomination.
Observers need to look not at the tea leaves but at the cup. Jason Furman's economic views tell us little about a theoretical Obama presidency's economic tilt because, for one thing, Obamanomics are still a work in progress. With the sometimes artless confidence of his generation, Furman admitted as much at least twice in his debut on the press conference call circuit Tuesday. In answer to a question from Slate's John Dickerson about "pay as you go," Furman said, "Over the course of the campaign these things do tend to get fleshed out -- further." Later he said, "In terms of tax credits, you'll hear more over time. . . He [Obama] will tell you at the same time how that proposal will be paid for." .....
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"The answer" to solving this crisis won't be to move in the direction of the "Harvard men", or the men from Goldman Sachs, who helped cause it !
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/bu...ef=todayspaper
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
Published: June 12, 2008
Acting quickly after securing his party’s presidential nomination, Barack Obama picked a well-known representative of Bill Clinton’s economic policies as his economic policy director and signaled this week that the major players from the Clinton economics team were now in his camp — starting with Robert E. Rubin.
Patrick Andrade for The New York Times
Jason Furman is Barack Obama’s economic policy director.
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
Senator Obama, Democrat of Illinois, hired Jason Furman, a Harvard-trained economist closely associated with Mr. Rubin, a Wall Street insider who served as President Clinton’s Treasury secretary. Labor union leaders criticized the move, and said that “Rubinomics” focused too much on corporate America and not enough on workers.
“For years we’ve expressed strong concerns about corporate influence on the Democratic Party,” John J. Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, said Wednesday in a statement implicitly critical of the symbolism of the appointment, no matter Mr. Furman’s economic skills.
The Obama camp has cast Mr. Furman, 37, as an experienced operator in Democratic election campaigns, whose task is to tap the expertise of economists representing a broad spectrum of views. “My own views, such as they are, are irrelevant,” Mr. Furman said.
The Democratic Party often struggles to balance the conflicting demands of corporations and labor, and Mr. Furman’s appointment rang some alarm bells that Mr. Obama might be tilting toward the corporate side — a tilt that Mr. Rubin says does not exist. He argued in an interview on Wednesday that his views were essentially in line with Mr. Obama’s already stated policies.
“I totally support Obama,” Mr. Rubin said, acknowledging his long allegiance to Hillary Rodham Clinton. “I was not going to leave Hillary until she pulled out,” he said, adding: “I think Barack Obama is very well equipped to provide the presidential leadership that the country very badly needs in a rapidly changing world.”....
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Quote:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...&type=politics
The populist uprising
David Sirota, Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Monday, June 9, 2008
American history is the history of populist uprisings. From the Revolutionary War to the coalfield wars, from labor organizers to anti-tax crusaders, from the New Deal to the current conservative era, backlashes to the status quo have defined every major political era. These uprisings have given us candidates from Barry Goldwater to Howard Dean, and presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan - and the populist uprising that delivered Barack Obama the Democratic presidential nomination means history could be forged once again.
What are populist uprisings? Loosely defined, they are a welling up of anger toward the established order - revolts that are often the precursor to a full-fledged social movement. The uprising against inequality during the Great Depression fueled the labor movement and the New Deal, which raised wages and created the middle class. The uprising against Jim Crow laws in the 1960s became the civil rights movement, which made America more equal. The uprising against liberalism during the late 1970s became the conservative movement of the 1980s, which deregulated the economy and fed the military-industrial complex.
It is that rebellion three decades ago that tells us we are indeed experiencing another uprising.
Just like the late 1970s, America currently faces the telltale signs of all insurrections: an economic emergency, a financial meltdown, an energy crisis and a national security quagmire.
Political analysts say this is bad news for the Right because George W. Bush sits atop today's mess, and conservatives have responded by running away from the president and by attempting to channel the outrage into their old anti-tax, anti-immigrant, anti-government agenda. But that misunderstands what has changed.
According to Gallup's survey data, the public has not only lost confidence in the political system as it did in the late 1970s, but also in corporations. In 1979, 1 in 3 Americans told Gallup's pollsters they had confidence in big business. By 2007, less than 1 in 5 expressed the same confidence. In 1979, almost 2 out of 3 citizens said they had faith in banks. Today, only 2 out of 5 say the same thing.
This is the real problem for a conservative movement that has become a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America. Unlike 1980, when Ronald Reagan rode the conservative uprising to a landslide victory, the country is not looking for a movement that gets the government to back off big business, nor are we looking for politicians who pretend the Enrons and Bear Stearnses are victims. This uprising is searching for a movement that gets big business back under control and leaders who are serious about aiming "law and order" rhetoric not at dark-skinned people, but at the royalists whose greed is driving the economy into the ground.
As I found in reporting my new book, "The Uprising," some already recognize this new political topography. For instance, New York's Working Families Party has become a powerful grassroots force for economic justice in Wall Street's backyard. Unions have boosted their membership by the largest margin in a quarter-century. Shareholder activists are finding more support for initiatives that challenge corporate misbehavior. Even some Republicans, such as Mike Huckabee, have bashed CEOs and berated lobbyist-written trade policies.
Whether this ferment becomes a transpartisan social movement will depend on a number of questions. Will the Democratic Party stop demoralizing its grassroots base and break free of its moneyed faction that gave us travesties like NAFTA? Will mavericks like Huckabee reshape the GOP? And most important, is the presidential election hype going to trick Americans into believing candidates are social movements, rather than one of many vehicles for them?
The answers will determine whether this is a fleeting uprising of ineffective protest or a movement about wielding power - yet another forgotten moment or, finally, an historic one.
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I think you are going to be surprised about how bad it gets. It would be nice to have a president who is on "our side", when the shit storm lets loose and the soup and unemployment insurance office lines extend for blocks.....
Last edited by host; 06-14-2008 at 08:56 PM..
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