I thought I had been transferred back to 1993. People may forget that the economy was disastrous then too, though not cataclysmic like now. And just like Obama did tonight, Clinton offered a neoliberal solution to neoliberal problems. And just like tonight, he made big promises of a new accountability (remember reinventing government?), threw the left a few bones, and closed with a dramatic finish with anecdotes of show people brought in to personify it all.
By the time Obama got to "compete in the global economy" and "meet the challenges of the 21st Century," I felt ill.
Especially as I knew that, just today, he had, as I predicted repeatedly, abandoned his pledge to get our troops out of Iraq.
The U.S. military will leave behind a residual force, between 30,000 and 50,000 troops, to continue advising and training Iraqi security forces, the two officials said. Also staying beyond the 19 months will be intelligence and surveillance specialists and their equipment, including unmanned aircraft, they said.
No mention of the mercenaries - corporate army.http://
I heard things I liked tonight. Don't get me wrong. But in the central issue of our time, the corporatization of our economy and country, and the failure of the neoliberal's globalization regime that threatens our democracy, our sovereignty, our very way of life (what's left of it), and most importantly, our ability to address the environment and the unsustainability of Western corporatism, we just reverted back to the 90s. I suppose that's one form of change.
Of course, on the change front, George Bush is an easy act to follow. If his presidency were a comedy act, Obama would have the best gig in town. SO we all marveled at a president who can actually construct a coherent sentence and delighted over the power of the spectacle - our new president in his first presidential moment. And yes, he was good.
But Obama's adoring public, who don't even know what neoliberalism is and how it has ruined their lives and decimated every economy it has ever touched, including ours, will never be the wiser. They'll back their man, without question, as he ensures that, even if his plan pulls us out of the abyss, it will guarantee that we'll be right back in it in another 15 or 20 years.
That's what Clinton did. Short remedy for long term disaster. But when all was said and done, the very forces of our demise were stronger when Clinton left than when he arrived. And this is the best we can expect from Obama I'm afraid. He demonstrated tonight he has no intentions of dismantling the neoliberal architecture that has seen our country slowly turn into a second rate economy. No mention of restoring the manufacturing base. No mention of anything that will upset the Oligarchs. They all just got a big DUI, but we're not going to take their keys. In fact, we're going to buy them a new car.
And let's not forget, we're not just bailing the parasite class, we're borrowing money to do it. No, Mr. Obama, you are doing this to help the bankers. There are many ways to restore the flow of credit without bailing out crooks and thieves.
I'm sorry, but this show doesn't work on me anymore. I've seen it too many times, only to see the reality come out quite differently. And frankly, Mr. Obama's promises don't work any more either. I see him now as a Trojan horse. A fresh new face on an old enemy - free market, neoliberal, Freidmanism.
To us, he talks a good game. But always, always does he talk around the central issue. Are we going to reverse the Thatcherization of our country? Or are we going to just try to make it more palatable?
Delude yourselves all you want. His policies and personel answer the question. Larry Summers has a record.
Mark Ames, Nation - After his stint in the Reaganomics brain trust, [Summers] returned to Harvard to serve as one of the university's youngest professors. In 1988, he was Michael Dukakis's chief economic advisor, but when that campaign failed to bring Summers to power, he turned to America's great rival, the former Soviet Union, to try out his economic experiments. In 1990, Lithuania, a restive Soviet republic seeking independence, hired Summers to advise on that country's economic transformation. Poor Lithuania had no idea what it got itself into. This was Summers's first opportunity to tackle a country in economic crisis and put his wunderkind theories into practice. The results were literally suicidal: in 1990, when Summers first arrived, Lithuania's suicide rate was 26 per 100,000 and falling. Just five years after Summers got his hands on Lithuania's economy, life became so unbearable under the economic transition that the suicide rate nearly doubled to 46 per 100,000, worse than any other ex-Soviet republic in transition. In fact, it was the highest suicide rate in the world, suggesting something particularly harsh and brutal about the economic transition in that country as opposed to the others, where suffering and pain were common. Things got so bad that in 1992, after just two years of Summers-nomics, the traumatized Lithuanians voted the communist party back into power, the first East European nation to do so -- even though just a year earlier Lithuanians actually died on the streets fighting communism.
Ames left out Summers and Bill Clinton's involvement in destroying Russia's economy with the same prescription of free market, neoliberal idiocy. (That story deserves its own diary.) And now Obama has made him his economic czar?
Most people don't even know what the fuck I'm talking about. Freidmanism? What is that? And many won't see the striking familiarity to any one of Bill Clinton's bullshit SOTU speeches. I actually stood up and applauded to one of those, in my friends living room. Way back then, I was a believer too.
Now I just see a recurring pattern. Democrat comes in on a mandate to fix "Republican economy". Great sales job. Throws scraps and keeps "Republican economy" intact. Here's a clue. It's not a Republican economy. Bill Clinton signed the bill that allowed the securitization of subprime mortgages. He signed NAFTA. And he allowed the mass concentration of the media oligopoly that ensures that the people have no idea what other choices are actually available to them.
And now we have Obama. And Larry Summers. Talking about our workers competing in the global economy. Even making the same claim that the path to prosperity, in a global economy, is better education. Oh, and to really put that Arkansas flavor into it, higher standards for teachers. All the while, ignoring that it's cheaper to "educate", train the Chinese to build lasers and circuit boards. Another thing Ricardo didn't consider. Indian students can learn nuclear physics online now. For free.
I do believe Obama is a decent guy. He wants to help. He just lacks the vision to know what to do. He seems to actually believe the propaganda that has destroyed our economy, our nation. "I don't want big government", he said being quite sincere. But he apparently has not problem with big corporation. So big, that they cannot be allowed to fail. Not a word about that.
Here's my word about that. I can vote in my big government. I can't vote at AIG, BOA, or Citi. Think about it. They are so big and important for our country that we have to borrow money from our children to save them, yet we have no vote in how these companies are run. That is not democracy. It is corporotacracy.