Entity: The Obama Administration

[Cranius]

Roberto Unger, Obama's professor, says that the president must be defeated:



Accompanying article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/1 ... 02812.html

His complaints:

"His policy is financial confidence and food stamps."
"He has spent trillions of dollars to rescue the moneyed interests and left workers and homeowners to their own devices."
"He has delivered the politics of democracy to the rule of money."
"He has disguised his surrender with an empty appeal to tax justice."
"He has reduced justice to charity."
"He has subordinated the broadening of economic and educational opportunity to the important but secondary issue of access to health care in the mistaken belief that he would be spared a fight."
"He has evoked a politics of handholding, but no one changes the world without a struggle."

[Mark Van Deel]

As an analysis of everything that's wrong with the Democrats (and most other Western supposedly centre-left parties), that's pretty good. As an argument for voting against Obama, though, it's pretty dumb. How the hell would Obama losing make it any more likely that this guy's plan would be implemented? Even in the vanishingly unlikely event that the Democrats took an election defeat as the signal to radically reconstruct themselves as a proper party of the left, the next time they held the presidency they'd be up against a GOP that had learned that the way to defeat a Dem president is to obstruct everything to the point of crippling the economy. Made easier by having control of the Supreme Court.

[Cranius]

Arguing that the Democrats need to be defeated in order for the party to be reconstructed -- as Unger does -- is pretty bizarre. Things can get an awful lot worse, as they're likely to under Romney.

[AnthonyCinder]

Jimmy Carter gets a not crap from me.

And yeah, this Unger thing is ridiculous. I guess his logic is that having President Magic Underwear for four years and the damage that will cause is worth it in order to reshape the Democratic party.

Even if you buy the idea that it's worth it (which I don't), there's absolutely no reason to think that the Democratic party would get more liberal after four years of Mittney. I mean, we had eight years of Bush, and then....

Yeah.

[jimmy two hands]

As a naive young college student during the 2000 election, I remember arguing the same thing as this Unger guy.

[AnthonyCinder]

As a naive young college student during the 2000 election, I remember arguing the same thing as this Unger guy.

You voted for Nader, huh?

[Andrew.]

I haven't taken the time to investigate who Unger is. His points of criticism, as quoted by Cranius, are dead-on. I'd challenge anyone on the PRF to rise against the points quoted. Anyone who did would reveal herself as a hardcore reactionary. But that leads us to Cranius's own reply:

Arguing that the Democrats need to be defeated in order for the party to be reconstructed -- as Unger does -- is pretty bizarre. Things can get an awful lot worse, as they're likely to under Romney.

The whole fucking point--the big enchilada--is that the problem isn't a matter of personnel or party: it's systemic. It's political-economic. The sick transparency of the Obama Administration being not just Wall-St shills but expansionist national security state hardasses, expanding neocon policy--mass-murdering dark-skinned common people (including children you fucking liberals) every month--is plain for any rational human being to see.

It's fucking plain as day. And you can oppose it or not.

Many rational human beings, who love poetry and have graduate degrees, look the other way. They crawl up the walls of this message board. That's how ideology works. Technocrats like Wood Goblin continue to stand behind war crimes and injustice, without owning up to the fact that's what they're doing.

And Harvard scholars like Unger make incisive--necessary--points against the Obama Admin while making juvenile, historically myopic arguments about how the worse electoral outcomes go, the better electoral politics will become.

And that's because all the genius and learning of 6-figure faculty in Ivy League institutions is precisely why such people are never political mentors. I was smart enough and scholarly enough to be welcomed into 1st-tier US PhD programs. And I left, because when I got involved in labor organizing on campus none of my supposed intellectual mentors stood with us. Not one.

[jurgis rudkus]

I barely graduated from high school and yet I too can detect bullshit. Can I get a little credit over here?

Seriously though, Andrew, cut the self-aggrandizing and the scolding... Makes people discount/disregard your posts.

[numberthirty]

I barely graduated from high school and yet I too can detect bullshit. Can I get a little credit over here?

[BClark]

As an analysis of everything that's wrong with the Democrats (and most other Western supposedly centre-left parties), that's pretty good. As an argument for voting against Obama, though, it's pretty dumb. How the hell would Obama losing make it any more likely that this guy's plan would be implemented? Even in the vanishingly unlikely event that the Democrats took an election defeat as the signal to radically reconstruct themselves as a proper party of the left, the next time they held the presidency they'd be up against a GOP that had learned that the way to defeat a Dem president is to obstruct everything to the point of crippling the economy. Made easier by having control of the Supreme Court.

And yeah, this Unger thing is ridiculous. I guess his logic is that having President Magic Underwear for four years and the damage that will cause is worth it in order to reshape the Democratic party.

Even if you buy the idea that it's worth it (which I don't), there's absolutely no reason to think that the Democratic party would get more liberal after four years of Mittney. I mean, we had eight years of Bush, and then....

Yeah.

i think there's a kind of mistaken notion running through this thread that we, as a populace, really accomplish things politically by electing the right president. which is understandable because voting in presidential elections is the only thing that most folks do to participate. but the fact is that the president is almost always responsive to private interests first and foremost, as is the senate. our hopes to concert our voting efforts in presidential (or even senate) races to effect change are transparently futile. rather than speculate on how we can finally elect the right president after years of futility, we should be more concerned about the the crippling stagnation of congress, where we actually have some chance to elect our own and hold the elected responsible; or how to organize the kinds of bottom-up movements that applied pressure to bring about change from presidents, as with the new deal and civil rights act. outside of that, in the white house and senate, they answer to privileged interests long before they think about voters. that's how presidential and senate races almost always come down to the same choice: pro-business candidate A or pro-business candidate B. we're kidding ourselves to be scratching our heads about how to make the most of those high-level elections.

like andrew said, the problem is systemic. and making excuses for why you will again vote for obama (understandable), is different than making excuses for obama and continuing to cheer him on as a good guy when he's a pro-corporatist with command responsibility for state terrorism.

[tocharian]

Andrew, I honestly have no idea what the answer here would be but do you maybe think that Obama does a few hideous horrific things in order to hold on to power so as to prevent someone like Romney from taking over and doing nothing but hideous horrific things?

I know I wouldn't want any position of enormous global power because you absolutely have to selectively do something awful in order to ensure that some sociopath doesn't take over and indiscriminately and gleefully do an avalanche of awful things.

Your outrage is awesome, but I think we mostly need to be upset at the American voting public for not sharing it. The real problem is people just do not care.

[BClark]

Andrew, I honestly have no idea what the answer here would be but do you maybe think that Obama does a few hideous horrific things in order to hold on to power so as to prevent someone like Romney from taking over and doing nothing but hideous horrific things?

perhaps obama sees it like that, i can't speculate, but if he does i can hardly say it's all that noble, but rather a perverse sort of expediency. fact is, he doesn't have to kill civilians (to command bombings with the obviously predictable consequence of massive civilian casualties) in the AfPak region in order to "hold on to power" and prevent the return of a republican white house.

[Ben Abraham]

Unger makes some very astute analysis of the prerogatives of the Democrats and Republicans. Especially with his criticism of Democrats just putting a "human face" to achieve the same objective as the Republicans. A good example of that would be when the Democrats had a majority in the Senate, House, and Presidency...apparently that wasn't a filibuster proof majority...and therefore we had to cave in to every absurd Republican obstruction regarding financial regulations, healthcare, whatever. To believe this excuse, you would have to think that Democrats are incredibly naive and simple. I do not. Democrats are smart people and there are some that do advocate for change for the middle and poor class, but by and large the Democratic party are bankrolled by the same people that write checks to the Republicans. That is why they never fight or struggle, as Unger puts it, it's because they simply do not give a shit.

I disagree with Unger's solution of defeating Obama in November will motivate the Democrats to become more liberal. That's laughable. If that didn't happen after 8 years of the Bush administration, it's hardly going to happen after a Romney administration. There can be no real effective change in politics until there is substantial election finance reform which equalizes the balance of power. But seeing as how Citizens' United have led to even more corporate influence, I don't think that will happen anytime soon.

[numberthirty]

I disagree with Unger's solution of defeating Obama in November will motivate the Democrats to become more liberal.

Let's say this comes to pass. Who are these more liberal Democrats going to vote for? Are there Democrats who won't just take the fat cash and play ball?

[AnthonyCinder]

As an analysis of everything that's wrong with the Democrats (and most other Western supposedly centre-left parties), that's pretty good. As an argument for voting against Obama, though, it's pretty dumb. How the hell would Obama losing make it any more likely that this guy's plan would be implemented? Even in the vanishingly unlikely event that the Democrats took an election defeat as the signal to radically reconstruct themselves as a proper party of the left, the next time they held the presidency they'd be up against a GOP that had learned that the way to defeat a Dem president is to obstruct everything to the point of crippling the economy. Made easier by having control of the Supreme Court.

And yeah, this Unger thing is ridiculous. I guess his logic is that having President Magic Underwear for four years and the damage that will cause is worth it in order to reshape the Democratic party.

Even if you buy the idea that it's worth it (which I don't), there's absolutely no reason to think that the Democratic party would get more liberal after four years of Mittney. I mean, we had eight years of Bush, and then....

Yeah.

i think there's a kind of mistaken notion running through this thread that we, as a populace, really accomplish things politically by electing the right president. which is understandable because voting in presidential elections is the only thing that most folks do to participate. but the fact is that the president is almost always responsive to private interests first and foremost, as is the senate. our hopes to concert our voting efforts in presidential (or even senate) races to effect change are transparently futile. rather than speculate on how we can finally elect the right president after years of futility, we should be more concerned about the the crippling stagnation of congress, where we actually have some chance to elect our own and hold the elected responsible; or how to organize the kinds of bottom-up movements that applied pressure to bring about change from presidents, as with the new deal and civil rights act. outside of that, in the white house and senate, they answer to privileged interests long before they think about voters. that's how presidential and senate races almost always come down to the same choice: pro-business candidate A or pro-business candidate B. we're kidding ourselves to be scratching our heads about how to make the most of those high-level elections.

like andrew said, the problem is systemic. and making excuses for why you will again vote for obama (understandable), is different than making excuses for obama and continuing to cheer him on as a good guy when he's a pro-corporatist with command responsibility for state terrorism.

I completely agree with both your assessment of Obama and of voting. I just think this Unger guy's idea of a solution (or what he seems to be suggesting) is futile.

[BClark]

As an analysis of everything that's wrong with the Democrats (and most other Western supposedly centre-left parties), that's pretty good. As an argument for voting against Obama, though, it's pretty dumb. How the hell would Obama losing make it any more likely that this guy's plan would be implemented? Even in the vanishingly unlikely event that the Democrats took an election defeat as the signal to radically reconstruct themselves as a proper party of the left, the next time they held the presidency they'd be up against a GOP that had learned that the way to defeat a Dem president is to obstruct everything to the point of crippling the economy. Made easier by having control of the Supreme Court.

And yeah, this Unger thing is ridiculous. I guess his logic is that having President Magic Underwear for four years and the damage that will cause is worth it in order to reshape the Democratic party.

Even if you buy the idea that it's worth it (which I don't), there's absolutely no reason to think that the Democratic party would get more liberal after four years of Mittney. I mean, we had eight years of Bush, and then....

Yeah.

i think there's a kind of mistaken notion running through this thread that we, as a populace, really accomplish things politically by electing the right president. which is understandable because voting in presidential elections is the only thing that most folks do to participate. but the fact is that the president is almost always responsive to private interests first and foremost, as is the senate. our hopes to concert our voting efforts in presidential (or even senate) races to effect change are transparently futile. rather than speculate on how we can finally elect the right president after years of futility, we should be more concerned about the the crippling stagnation of congress, where we actually have some chance to elect our own and hold the elected responsible; or how to organize the kinds of bottom-up movements that applied pressure to bring about change from presidents, as with the new deal and civil rights act. outside of that, in the white house and senate, they answer to privileged interests long before they think about voters. that's how presidential and senate races almost always come down to the same choice: pro-business candidate A or pro-business candidate B. we're kidding ourselves to be scratching our heads about how to make the most of those high-level elections.

like andrew said, the problem is systemic. and making excuses for why you will again vote for obama (understandable), is different than making excuses for obama and continuing to cheer him on as a good guy when he's a pro-corporatist with command responsibility for state terrorism.

I completely agree with both your assessment of Obama and of voting. I just think this Unger guy's idea of a solution (or what he seems to be suggesting) is futile.

indeed, i agree with you and others in this thread that he's wrong to presume a defeat of obama would guarantee a leftward reform of the democratic party. i think unger does have some very good assessments but i'm not with him on that particular point.

Unger makes some very astute analysis of the prerogatives of the Democrats and Republicans. Especially with his criticism of Democrats just putting a "human face" to achieve the same objective as the Republicans. A good example of that would be when the Democrats had a majority in the Senate, House, and Presidency...apparently that wasn't a filibuster proof majority...and therefore we had to cave in to every absurd Republican obstruction regarding financial regulations, healthcare, whatever. To believe this excuse, you would have to think that Democrats are incredibly naive and simple. I do not. Democrats are smart people and there are some that do advocate for change for the middle and poor class, but by and large the Democratic party are bankrolled by the same people that write checks to the Republicans. That is why they never fight or struggle, as Unger puts it, it's because they simply do not give a shit.

I disagree with Unger's solution of defeating Obama in November will motivate the Democrats to become more liberal. That's laughable. If that didn't happen after 8 years of the Bush administration, it's hardly going to happen after a Romney administration. There can be no real effective change in politics until there is substantial election finance reform which equalizes the balance of power. But seeing as how Citizens' United have led to even more corporate influence, I don't think that will happen anytime soon.

+1
i think though that citizens' united is not a final nail in the coffin. it's a particularly significant and lasting victory for private interests because it comes from the supreme court. that branch is always hardest to roll back, for obvious reasons. but it's a very unpopular decision. i think that by sustaining the ongoing public pressure on our government regarding this issue, there is hope for better campaign finance reform legislation. then again, mccain-feingold wasn't that far back in the past, and already its accomplishments have been very much compromised by citizens' united.

[Ben Abraham]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/insider-poll-legal-experts-now-expect-supreme-court-123441478.html

And that is the end of healthcare reform. Good thing I'm going to California.

[Andrew.]

Glad we all agree Unger is being idiotic when he thinks a Republican presidency is best for rebuilding some principle into liberal politics. Real Ivy League caliber stupidity. I would say that it's also refreshing to see no one rise to the defense of the Obama Admin's sociopathic murderousness, but Jehovah fuck a witness, I have enough common sense not to praise liberal silence as a positive virtue.

[Andrew.]

Obama Trade Document Leaked, Revealing New Corporate Powers And Broken Campaign Promises

"Bush was better than Obama on this," said Judit Rius, U.S. manager of Doctors Without Borders Access to Medicines Campaign, referring to the medication rules. "It's pathetic, but it is what it is. The world's upside-down."

Trans-Pacific negotiations have been taking place throughout the Obama presidency. The deal is strongly supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the top lobbying group for American corporations. Obama's Republican opponent in the 2012 presidential elections, Mitt Romney, has urged the U.S. to finalize the deal as soon as possible.

How dumb is it that unions pour millions of dollars into Democratic coffers so that the Dems can secretly negotiate a mammoth free trade agreement that's shaping up to be as bad as NAFTA or worse.

While Obama disappointed many progressives by backing trade deals with Korea and Panama that had been drafted during the Bush administration, Tucker said he finds the TPP draft more disturbing because the substantive work on it happened under Obama.

Union officials also expressed outrage over the leaked info or distress over the state of the negotiations. Joseph Nigro, the president of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air Rail and Transportation Workers, said over email that the leak showed that “this Administration would seek to extend the worst parts” of “horrible trade agreements like NAFTA.” Nigro said the leaks offered an example of why his union “will only support and work for those candidates and parties that serve to support working people.” Without mentioning Obama by name, Nigro urged “supporters of this measure” to “cut out the caviar, celebrity photo ops and cocktail parties and spend a day in the shoes of the average working person and seeing the damage it will cause.”

“This is what happens when you get an administration that is pretty much in the lap of corporate America,” said Chris Townsend, the political action director for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America and a longtime Obama critic. “That’s who they perform for, and that’s who most of them will go to work for after they lose the election in November.”

Although the TPP has been branded a “trade” agreement, the leaked text of the pact’s Investment Chapter shows that the TPP would:

Limit how U.S. federal and state officials could regulate foreign firms operating within U.S. boundaries, with requirements to provide them greater rights than domestic firms;
Extend the incentives for U.S. firms to offshore investment and jobs to lower-wage countries;
Establish a two-track legal system that gives foreign firms new rights to skirt U.S. courts and laws, directly sue the U.S. government before foreign tribunals and demand compensation for financial, health, environmental, land use and other laws they claim undermine their TPP privileges; and
Allow foreign firms to demand compensation for the costs of complying with U.S. financial or environmental regulations that apply equally to domestic and foreign firms.


While 600 official U.S. corporate advisors have access to TPP texts and have a special role in advising U.S. negotiators, for the public, press and policymakers, this leak provides the first access to one of the prospective TPP’s most controversial chapters. In May, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs and Global Competitiveness – the committee with jurisdiction over the TPP – filed legislation to open the process after he and his staff were denied access even to the U.S. proposals for the TPP negotiations.

Last month, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk defended the unprecedented secrecy of TPP negotiations by noting that when the draft of a major regional trade pact was released previously, it became impossible to finish the deal as then proposed.

“The top U.S. trade official effectively has said that the administration must keep TPP secret because otherwise it won’t be able to shove this deal past the public and Congress,” said Wallach. “The airing of this one TPP chapter, which greatly favors foreign corporations over domestic businesses and the public interest and exposes us to significant financial liabilities, shows that the whole draft text must be released immediately so it can be reviewed and debated. Absent that, these negotiations must be ended now.”

The TPP is the first trade pact the Obama administration is negotiating. Today’s leak further complicates the administration’s goal of completing TPP negotiations this fall. Already the TPP timeline was generating political headaches for the Obama re-election campaign, as repeated U.S polling shows that majorities of Democrats, Independents and Republicans oppose more NAFTA-style trade deals.

http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/pressr ... fm?ID=3630

[unsaved]

Scott Stapp tells FOX "News" he has had enough.

“I’m just disappointed,” he said. “I had really high hopes and high expectations and was really inspired by President Obama, and I still am. I mean, he’s an amazing speaker. Um, I just found his — in my opinion — uh, his administration ineffective. A lot of promises, but no real delivery.”

“My heart and soul,” he continued, “would really love for someone like Reagan or FDR to come back and give us a new deal. Be bold, be committed. Don’t care what anybody thinks.”