Obama, the Democrats and the Republicans have all reached a deal. They've resolved to make deep, punishing cuts to the living standards of the majority of Americans. $39 Billion in cuts will be made (though, of course, the cuts won't be made to the budget of the two (three?) ultra-expensive, as yet unpaid for, wars and occupations).
This is just such a great day for America. "Partisan squabbling" was set aside for more basic goals that both parties share. I just love the way Democrats and Republicans came together to pursue a cause they're both passionate about, namely austerity. I'm so pleased that the parties were able to "transcend politics", reach across the aisle, and do what's best for the ruling class. This warms my heart, you know? This is just like that magical moment when Obama and the Democrats came together with the GOP to extend Bush's tax breaks for the rich. At the end of the day, there's nobody quite as talented as Obama at bringing Democrat and Republican together around a common message of "prosperity for the few, austerity for the many". What an achievement. God Bless America.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
"Deal" Reached, Obama Elated
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Bullshit on stilts
said Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana. “I just believe in the disinfectant of the sunshine. The more we have got questions on both sides, gradually the American people are going to see more and more and more that we really do need health care reform.”Complete robotic balderdash. I could be a Democratic Senator, it's easy. Just keep repeating nonsense like this over and over: "both sides" "American people" "bipartisanship" "moderation", "good ideas" blah blah blah. And for that matter, I could get a job as a political analyst with the New York Times without changing my tune. Take a listen:
"Mr. Obama will face adversaries who are well prepared to joust with him on the finer points of health policy before a large audience that will be judging both sides and looking for signs of bipartisanship."Let's see what we have here. The NY Times is telling everyone that they're looking "for signs of bipartisanship". Are they? Do we have any basis whatever for this claim? If that's true, then why did so many people vote for Democrats in 2008 if they were first and foremost concerned about this nebulous idea of "reaching across the aisle"? If we don't have any determinate idea about what should be done and which party should do it, why do we even have elections?
[..]
"One way Mr. Obama could throw Republicans off stride would be to make a bold opening offer to embrace one of their health care priorities, like limiting medical malpractice lawsuits — an idea one Democrat close to the White House said had been under consideration."
What else is the NY Times pontificating about? Well, they've got a brilliant strategy that would enable Obama to "throw the Republicans off stride". Evidently what he should do is start off the negotiation by offering to embrace "tort reform". What a brilliant idea, indeed, one that has worked wonders for Obama throughout his presidency so far. In effect the advice is to focus on "bipartisanship" in itself, rather than the ostensible goal of whatever policy is in question.
Why doesn't he just ask the Republicans nicely and then claim that they're "mean" if they say no?
Suppose you're buying a car. In a capitalist society, buyers and sellers are pitted against one another in an agnostic relationship in which their interests fundamentally diverge. Buyers want to purchase low and sellers want to sell high.
Now, you don't walk up to the salesperson and begin by offering them some piece of "what they want" and expect them to then to reciprocate. Market transactions are not reciprocal (and this, in my view, is a knock against the market itself). What the salesperson will do in this case is simply continue their strategy of trying to get the highest price they can. That is their goal, not trying to arrive at some compromise because that has some intrinsic worth.
If you start off with a tepid demand, the effect of more compromise is an even more watered-down and tepid demand.
Health care isn't a "debate", it isn't a "compromise" and it isn't a "conversation". It is a power struggle. Whatever ends up in the final bill will be the result of the relative balance of power (broadly construed). And we forget this at our own peril.
The ideological fantasies pedalled by the NY Times under the guise of "analysis" obscures the basic facts about how politics functions in a society like ours. The Republicans (even less than the Democrats) don't care about health care reform: their goal is to derail it and forestall and serious change. Does anyone really doubt that this is true?
The Democrats realize something has to change, but their goal is to "change" it in such a way that nothing important really changes. This is, admittedly, less obvious to many people, but no less true. Of course, is the paper of record actually stuck to gathering the appropriate facts and scrutinizing the statements of politicians.... perhaps it would be more obvious than it is at present.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Is Obama too far Left?
Yes, according to self-serving wanker Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Indiana). I quote: "Whenever you have just the furthest-left elements of the Democratic Party attempting to impose their will on the rest of the country, that's not going to work too well."
I don't have a TV, but I'd be curious to know whether he was able to tell that bold-faced lie with a straight face. Since it's his job to say shit like this with a straight face, I suppose I'm naive to think that he'd have any problem pulling it off.
"Furthest left elements"? Like who? Firebrands like Ben Nelson, Max Baucus and Joe Lieberman?
Or maybe Bayh is referring to all of the "radical Left" Goldman Sachs alums that staff the Obama cabinet?
First of all, it's news to me that there even is a Left in the Democratic Party. But to the extent that there's anyone remotely progressive in the party at all, they are a marginalized minority who rarely make any trouble for a party who's willing to concede to the Right on everything that matters. The House Progressive Caucus, for example, briefly toyed with the idea of refusing to vote for a bill that didn't have a public option... but of course they all caved on that "threat." And don't even get me started on how all of these "life long single-payer advocates" suddenly sat down and shut up when the "reform" discussions began (i.e. the ones in which "all options were supposed to be on the table").
The fact of the matter is that Democrat leadership has been talking about "moderation", "bipartisanship" and "caution" ever since 2008. Democrat apologists have been clamoring for "centrist" policy all along. Moreover, right-wing hacks like Bayh himself have been the ones with the most influence on policy.
Of course, in a way I'm wasting my time in taking Bayh at his word, when he knows full well that he's bullshitting. Bayh is simply trying to increase his leverage and individual power by weighing in against his own party. He's regurgitating Fox News talking points in order to try to piggy-back on whatever steam the GOP has picked up since Scott Brown. And what's more, like the majority of the complacent members of his party, he probably feels that there is very little at stake in taking this tack (i.e. I doubt very seriously that he's losing sleep over whether or not there are cuts to education, large numbers of uninsured and unemployed, and so on).
SW.org has an excellent editorial on this phenomenon, here. The analysis here is, in my view, right on.
If millions of people are furious with Obama, it can't be because his Administration and the Democratic supermajority are "too far Left" and are "imposing their agenda against their will".
People voted for Obama in droves because he said he was going to tax the rich and spend it on health care. Polls routinely show that people want the government to provide a national health insurance plan. Oregon recently passed a referendum designed specifically to tax the rich.
If people are furious with Obama, it's because he's not Left enough. That is, because he and his Congress are sitting back passively while education and transportation are cut, public employees are laid off, 50 million are uninsured, unions are busted and black unemployment reaches double digits.
What have the Democrats done since 2008 that Bush didn't already do? Aside from the stimulus bill, which was tepid (i.e. much smaller than the situation required) and conservative (i.e. loaded with tax breaks), what the fuck have they done? Escalate the war in Afghanistan, consider privatizing Social Security, propose spending freezes (exempting Pentagon spending of course), and spend months on a "health reform" bill that at the end of the day looked more attractive to health insurance corporations than to ordinary Americans.
Did we even need to elect Democrats in 2008 to get all of that? There's reason to think that even Bush would have been convinced to pass a modest stimulus bill like the one Obama put forward, if his last months in office are any indication.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Why the Republican 'no' vote on the stimulus bill is brilliant
By brilliant, of course, I mean tactically cunning.
At the end of the day they have only one weapon: a filibuster that they can threaten to use only if they can be sure that the Democrats cannot muster one solitary vote from the GOP caucus. But the filibuster is not a trump card; everything depends on the circumstances. Even the presidential veto, which is more aptly thought of as a trump, is not absolute. Think, for example, of Clinton's confrontation with the congressional republicans over welfare reform, which he vetoed twice before being pressured by the perceived threat of upcoming elections to cave in and sign the bill that 'ended welfare as we know it'. The filibuster, which is less powerful than a veto by and large, is even more susceptible to external pressure.
If the Obama, who has been clamoring about the 'dire situation' and the 'need for action', would act in concert with Democrats to paint the Republicans as obstructing much needed reform, I fail to see how the GOP would come out on top here. This seems to me to be a losing battle for the Republicans and one that, once lost, would have further consequences for their ability to act as a serious obstructionist threat.
But this doesn't appear to be Obama's manner of proceeding. As we have seen, after the Republicans have already exacted compromises and concessions from a powerful Democratic congress and president, they are under no obligation to vote in favor of the bill. The text of the bill will be the same and since it will pass either way, the Republicans are in a position to vote 'no' and prime the pumps for even more concessions in the future. If they were to play into the 'bipartisan trap' and play nice, they would abdicate their ability to be effective obstructions of the Democrat's legislative agenda. They are doing precisely what any politically savvy opposition should do; they are ensuring to the best of their ability that the result (legislation) is as watered-down and tilted rightward as is possible under present circumstances. The Republicans use this rhetoric about 'bipartisanship' to get some influence, then after they have left their stains all over the legislation they back off and claim that: "there was nothing bipartisan about that bill at all" and self-righteously vote against it. They take the bait, get concessions and then back off such that the result appears to look exactly as it would have looked had the Democrats simply confronted the Republicans head-on.
The Republicans are doing remarkably well at this. It doesn't hurt that they have many conservative allies within the Democratic Party who are on the fence at best about whether tax breaks or spending should be paramount. The bill that is likely to pass the Senate is something like 45% tax cuts and the rest is spending. Over 200 billion in spending was cut out of the bill, although the Republicans had no problems last year with letting figures larger than that fly out of the hands of the federal government into the greedy arms of the financial industry.
We can almost already hear the magnificently moronic Mitch McConnell rejoinder, when it becomes clear that this stimulus bill doesn't 'fix' the current crisis, that 'gummint spending' simply doesn't work.
Friday, January 30, 2009
EFCA and "Bipartisan" government
"Republicans and big business are going all out to stop the Employee Free Choice Act. How will labor respond?"
Right. And I suppose my question here is whether Obama and Co. will seek a 'bipartisan' (read: pro-business tainted) approach to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Is Obama going to listen to the 'ideas' of the Republican Caucus's union-busting morons before throwing in support for a bill to pass it? Does he want an EFCA that reflects the support of 80 senators rather than 60? Let me say, emphatically, that I do NOT want to see such a bill. The extent to which Republicans might support an EFCA bill is precisely the extent to which it would have anti-labor provisions that would dilute the effectiveness of it as law. The Republican congress of the early postWar years did not seek bipartisanship as such as their goal: they waged concerted class war and rammed-through the Hartley-Taft anti-union bill to roll back the gains that labor had made in the 30s with the Wagner Act.
The EFCA is a VERY contentious issue for Capital (and consequently, most conservatives). They are aware of the stakes, and will do anything in their power to destabilize an effort to pass the EFCA. They've already begun their media war. The VP of the US Chamber of Commerce has already announced that the passage of the bill would be 'armageddon' and that he would do everything in his power to fight it tooth and nail.
But, you might say, this shouldn't matter. The US Chamber of Commerce doesn't vote on the bill directly. The Republicans do not have the votes to even filibuster the bill (after Franken is seated and assuming at least Liberman or one Republican breaks camp). Haha. Were it only that simple. A lot of details remain to be seen. But one thing is for sure (and here I agree with the ISO): active non-electoral struggle will be necessary for the bill to get the support it needs to pass. Labor will have to give this push its all, because frankly there hasn't been an opening for this kind of legal change in more than three decades. Although we could certainly argue about whether Clinton could have passed it in his first 100 days in 1993... he could have, perhaps, but it is clear in retrospect (and probably at the time as well) that his presidency wasn't an opening for that sort of change but a repudiation of it.
Bipartisan rhetoric isn't going to get the EFCA accross the finish line.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Bipartisanship?
One vote short of a super-majority in the Senate, with punishing majorities in the House and control of the White House, the last thing we should be hearing is talk about "bipartisanship". We hold elections for a reason, and the consequence of the last two is that the GOP has been thoroughly hammered and rejected as the ruling party. The Dems need one vote (if we include Lieberman in the Dem caucus) to push through any proposal they like and overrule a filibuster.
Yet despite these electoral mandates, despite the huge momentum of political capital buoying up the new President-elect, we are given tepid, half-way proposals for action.
Paul Krugman writes in his most recent column:
Is the plan being limited by a lack of spending opportunities? There are only a limited number of “shovel-ready” public investment projects — that is, projects that can be started quickly enough to help the economy in the near term. But there are other forms of public spending, especially on health care, that could do good while aiding the economy in its hour of need.Or is the plan being limited by political caution? Press reports last month indicated that Obama aides were anxious to keep the final price tag on the plan below the politically sensitive trillion-dollar mark. There also have been suggestions that the plan’s inclusion of large business tax cuts, which add to its cost but will do little for the economy, is an attempt to win Republican votes in Congress.
Whatever the explanation, the Obama plan just doesn’t look adequate to the economy’s need. To be sure, a third of a loaf is better than none. But right now we seem to be facing two major economic gaps: the gap between the economy’s potential and its likely performance, and the gap between Mr. Obama’s stern economic rhetoric and his somewhat disappointing economic plan.
"Political caution"? "An attempt to win over Republicans"? A friend has suggested to me that the rhetoric of bipartisanship could be being implemented in an attempt to forestall the inevitable obstruction from the Republican congressional minority. But we aren't talking about rhetoric here. Obama's stimulus plan is a concrete policy proposal, and I cannot see any reason to blame Republican opposition for its tepid and 'cautious' (which is to say, unduly conservative) character.
When this 'cautious' spending regimen doesn't work wonders, what will Democrats say to idiotic morons like Mitch McConnell when they inevitably start bantering that "gummint spending doesn't work"?
We would be mistaken in a characteristically liberal fashion, however, if we simply assumed that "political caution" meant only throwing a bone to the Democrat's electoral opponents. Obama and company took power with the blessing (and financial backing) of powerful business interests, and the Administration already has representatives of Capital sitting in cabinet posts. In short, there is a general sense in which Obama's crew aims to keep Capital supportive of the new Administration. But we should not confuse this with prudence, expediency or economic wisdom: this is an expression of the new Administration's ideological trajectory and economic alliances.
FDR's administration made the nearly-fatal mistake of trying to balance the budget after an initial round of massive government spending and quasi-Keynesian initiatives, a similar example of political 'caution' which derailed and obstructed the ability of the spending initiatives to generate recovery by stimulating demand. This example is different in many important ways, but the strategy was mistaken for the same reasons as Obama's apparent flip-flopping, hodge-podge approach.
