Talk is cheap

Rick North, a Portland acquaintance, has written an insightful analysis of President Obama's budget deficit speech last week.

Here is what North wrote:

I was glued to my TV Wednesday morning when President Obama made his speech on the budget deficit. Trying to counter the rising tide of discontent among his fellow Democrats who are outraged by the Republicans and dismayed by his constant caving in to them, Obama gave one of his trademark compelling speeches. Love him or hate him, he’s made for the podium.

I was encouraged with what he said and how he came across. As others have suggested, I think this speech was a defining moment in his presidency. But I was disturbed by a number of things he didn’t say – a continuation of missed opportunities.

Here’s my take on some of his major points:

Thumbs Up
· He articulated that the budget was a moral document, not just a bunch of numbers disconnected from real people.
· He clarified the difference in vision between the Republicans (government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich) and Democrats (defense of the legitimacy of government (beyond waging war) and compassion for the poor, sick, elderly, students, unemployed).
· He didn’t budge on privatization of Social Security.
· And privatization of Medicare? Forget it.
· Dismantling of Medicaid and sending it to the states in block grants (in other words, cutting the hell out of it)? No way.
· He pledged to eliminate the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy.

Thumbs Down · The 800-pound gorilla in the budget room is the enormous military budget. Obama only made general references to cutting waste but never touched closing unnecessary bases and weapons systems and getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan. The military is 60 percent of our discretionary budget.
· He didn’t touch taxing capital gains at the same rate as regular income.
· He said that for every dollar of income raised, there would be two dollars of cuts – this should be reversed.
· He didn’t come out strongly about loopholes that allow companies like Exxon/Mobil and General Electric to pay no taxes.
· He never said a word about a tax on the Wall Street’s stock transactions – these are the guys that got us into this financial mess and they should be held responsible to get us out. But as I said in my last update, Obama is hoping to get big bucks from them for the 2012 campaign and I don’t think he has the guts to challenge them.

Even when beautifully delivered, talk is cheap. Obama has, on numerous occasions, made promises he didn’t keep – remember his pledge to restore habeas corpus.

As much as I agree with Rick's assessment, I would add to his "thumbs down" section the President's failure to link human rights and "free trade" (which comes with costs that never make it "free." Think of lost American jobs, exploited workers, environmental crimes). He also neglected to point out the inconsistency between "The American Dream" and our unsustainable consumer economy. He said zero about maintaining and raising the estate tax.

What Obama needs to do to get my vote.

If the president thinks it’s tough dealing with congressional Tea Party freshmen from the hinterland, he’s going to have real trouble winning my vote in the months ahead.

Here’s what it’s going to take.....

Call out the super-rich, every day. I mean publicly shame them. Sorry, but I think that’s what it is going to take. Make it so that the fat cats can run, but they cannot hide.

If it’s Monday, profile the extravagance and greed of CEO #1. If it’s Tuesday, move on CEO #2 etc.

Obama needs to lay out his vision of equity and fairness. He needs to level the income playing field. He needs to connect the dots between the rich and a corrupt and collusive American political system.

In short, he must propose to drastically increase taxes on the rich and super-rich. Shut down off-shore accounts. Stop corporate welfare. Restore the estate tax and raise capital gains taxes.

Replace the current plutocracy with a true democracy.

Some constitutional reform would help. States with 10 percent of the population in this country can block reformist legislation thanks to the filibuster.

“Close the circle” on the Tea Party. By that I mean expose its contradictions and redirect the anger to the real source of our problems. Revive true populism.

Anyone in the administration who has made (or makes) more than $250,000 annually and has wealth of more than $1 million (that includes the president) has a choice. Be fired, resign or sell the mansions, yachts and third homes and give the excess above $1 million away to certified humanitarian organizations serving the poor and the working poor.

Call out the Supreme Court. When the court is worthy of respect, they will get it. We know politics even when it is cloaked in black robes.

End our wars and shut down our military installations here and abroad. We will no longer play the “cop on the block” to the world.

Cut the “defense” budget by two-thirds.

Get non-violent offenders out of the prisons. The exception: white collar criminals. Use the money saved to support education. Not "schools" and the "schools establishment," but education, which needs serious rethinking in the computer age.

Push universal health care. No more fun and games with the health insurance industry.

Get tough with China and Russia on human rights. Link trade with Human Rights. The message: If you want to trade with us, do not oppress your people. That goes for Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Israel, etc. If it gets no response, the result would go a long way to returning jobs to these shores.

Whom will I vote for if none of this happens? I’m writing in Bernie Sanders, or maybe me or my cat.

Speakng the truth takes a hit as Crowley resigns

The State Department's chief spokesman P.J. Crowley has resigned over fall-out from his criticizing the abhorrent military prison treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks leaker.

Can there be any doubt that he was ordered to resign? If Crowley's resignation wasn't invited by the Administration, why didn't Secretary of State Hillary Clinton simply refuse to accept it?

Note that the BBC calls Crowley's remarks a "gaffe" in its headline. Since when is the truth a "gaffe"? Watch how this story is slanted in the media.

What message is the Obama administration sending public servants who want to level with the American people?

Crowley, who served in the Air Force for 26 years, was clearly not willing to accept the Administration's line that Manning's treatment at the Marine brig at Quantico is acceptable. Manning, who has not yet been tried, reportedly has been ordered to sleep naked in his cell, has been shackled and is in virtual solitary confinement.

Our "commander-in-chief" is clearly taking his orders from a military that, astonishingly, hasn't change its inhumane Abu Ghraib ways.

George W. Obama and Abu Quantico

In an earlier post, I commented that how the Obama Administration responds to the harsh and inhumane military incarceration of Pfc. Bradley Manning would speak volumes about this nation's leadership, the state of the presidency and the government.

The New York Times today reported on the President's direct response to a reporter's inquiry about Manning, who is accused (not convicted) of leaking thousands of government documents to WikiLeaks.

Bottomline: The "Commander-in-Chief" takes his orders from the military. Barack Obama is doing nothing to end Manning's abusive retreatment.

Read the story ... and weep.

After you wipe away the tears, write to protest HERE.

Test case for the Truth

Will State Department Spokesman PJ Crowley go defensive and apologetic ("I misspoke etc.") after telling the truth about the treatment of Pvt. Bradley Manning, who is accused of leaking government documents and has been abused and mistreated in a Marine brig in Quantico?

The unfolding of this story will say volumes about our government and the Obama Administration.

I posted about the case earlier comparing it to Abu Ghraib. The humiliating punishment of the still untried Manning seems to be getting worse.

To object to Defense Secretary Robert Gates about Manning's treatment, go HERE.

Obama and Lincoln: Myth and Reality

President Obama’s State of the Union address created its own context and successfully addressed it.

Unfortunately, the context had nothing to do with reality.

Obama portrayed the task before Congress and the government as being an effort to move the nation forward, primarily economically but also strategically.

What American, Democrat, Republican or independent could disagree with that?

The problem is that Congress's real context is political, and it is all about power, not progress.

Sweet reason and cooperation has little to do with keeping, or seizing, power.

Republicans have to disagree to make themselves an alternative. Democrats have to defend themselves and push forward to be distinctive.

In a polarized political world, both can’t win, but both can lose, taking the rest of us down with them.

The reality is that both parties must raise hundreds of millions of dollars in the next year so that they can successfully hold onto or grab more power in 2012.

How do you raise that kind of money. You put forward a program that is “worth it.”

Worth it to whom?

Worth it to those who have the money. That's money to throw at a media-driven political system of attack ads and irrelevancy. Buy the propaganda system and you gain the power.

The political appeal now is not to the people, but to vested interests, primarily multi-national corporation executives and the financial market and hedge fund managers.

Obama’s speech was largely nationalistic myth-making. It shared the theme found in Lincoln’s First Inaugural address in which he sought to heal the ominous and growing divisions between North and South.

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

The words didn’t work for Lincoln, and they aren’t going to work for Obama. We have no “better angels of our nature.” Until “our nature” is fundamentally changed, it will be devoid of angels and inhabited by very human demons — greed and the lust for power.

If there is good news, it’s that President Obama is fully capable of identifying and addressing the problems of reality. The bad news is that if he does, he will be instantly unelectable.

HERE is another commentary that takes a similar, but not identical, tack.

Pausing in a culture of conflict

In President Obama's memorial address yesterday in Tucson, the most memorable and telling line for me was:

"At a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do - it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds."

Why did the President appeal for a mere "pause"? Is that the best we can do?

Why not make our healing permanent and speak and listen with civility, even humility, so that we are truly "one nation indivisible."

Our nasty little secret, and the President knows it, is that we are an adversarial society that thrives on a culture of conflict.

Our economy and political system are rooted in competition built on our baser instincts and emotional appeals. Our legal system is all about winning. Justice is often a lucky happenstance. We place far more value on individuals and their rights (often at the expense of others) than on community and harmony. Our media and our cultural stories describe and explore conflict in detail, often bloody detail. So few of our stories are about cooperation and compassion (though the President poignantly amplified a few in his speech.)

One commentator, the late George Gerbner, described mass media as creating a "Mean World Syndrome." He pointed out that a society steeped in a brutally harsh fiction has a way of transforming that fiction into fact.

The media's millionaire political hate-mongers would be paupers if they suddenly became "healers" instead of slash-and-burn rhetorical "wounders." We are not conditioned to watch a world at peace.

In his media moment yesterday, the President played his role as healer and truth-teller. Sadly, it was only a pause — flicker of light in our darkness.

We need a strong and steady beacon. Where will it come from? What will it be?

Obama to parents: Turn off TV, put away video games

Note in passing: President Obama made one of the strongest, most widely heard appeals ever for media literacy in his speech before the joint session of Congress on Tuesday.

Here's what he said:

….education policies will open the doors of opportunity for our children. But it is up to us to ensure they walk through them. In the end, there is no program or policy that can substitute for a parent -- for a mother or father who will attend those parent/teacher conferences, or help with homework, or turn off the TV, put away the video games, read to their child. (Applause.) I speak to you not just as a President, but as a father, when I say that responsibility for our children's education must begin at home. That is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue. That's an American issue.