"Yes We Can" - No We Won't = Here We're Stuck

When Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, there was excitement and high expectation for creating a government that was honest, and intellectually engaged.  With Obama’s election, there was an excitement about “yes we can” in changing the political culture of Washington and restoring a sense of people working together to address the needs of all of our citizens. There was also a sense of being part of the American dream in that for the first time, we had elected a biracial person, from humble origins, to the highest office in the land. 

On the day of President Obama's Inauguration Speech, leaders of the GOP met and promised to oppose anything that the new president proposed legislatively and otherwise.  This same theme was evident during the 2010 election with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s announcement that the Republican’s primary goal was to make him a one term president. So much for cooperation and attempting to change the culture of Washington.    

Nevertheless, Obama still attempted to reach out to those who were determined to ruin his presidency, by working with them to keep the economy from imploding.  He also attempted to work with them around health care and other issues in a desire to address the needs of the American people.  He asked Bob Gates to remain as Secretary of Defense and John Huntsman to serve as Ambassador to China.  Both were republicans.

The derivatives scandal that brought about the loss of jobs, homes, retirement programs and ravaged public education along with community based safety and social services was a carry over from the Bush administration.  In addition, the Bush administration added mightily, through tax cuts and two unfunded wars, to the increasing national debt. Today’s conservative guardians of monetary responsibility have a memory lapse around such facts.

Obama’s stimulus proposals along with the bailing out of the auto industry, were roundly criticized by his opposition. In truth, his efforts are credited, by most economists, as having saved our economy. Also, it was thought by many economists that a larger stimulus packages would have been even more effective. His opposition refused to accept a larger stimulus package.

Many feel that, given the hand Obama was dealt, he did the best that could have been done in light of what he had to work with.  So, when we are told that today’s anemic jobs market was solely created by Obama in the last three and a half years, it is more accurate to assert that the economy belongs to left over Bush influences, Obama’s policies and the conservatives who opposed his efforts.

It should be noted, that at the time of the bail out, it was projected that in order for us to recover the number of jobs that had been lost due to the derivatives scandal, it would require five years of normal growth just to return to the level of employment that was in force in 2008.  After 2008 we had even more people entering the job market.  This should put the complexity and scope of the recovery in some perspective, not to mention what has been happening in the global economy.

Obama’s much criticized focus on health care was based on several factors that seem, again, to be lost to memory. For the past eighty years, nothing had been done to create a cohesive, affordable health care program for the citizens of this country.  For profit health care costs were going through the roof.  More people were going bankrupt due to catastrophic health care costs than for any other reason.  And, to top matters off, there were an estimated fifty million uninsured Americans going to emergency rooms when their medical needs required professional assistance.  This was an expensive way of providing health care and the costs for this were being absorbed by all citizens.  In short, health care was a huge drain on our economy and it needed to be fixed.

The conservatives fought hard to keep single payer and universal health care from happening.  The notion of changing to a non profit “Kaiser Model” was out of the question.  For the average citizen, the kind and quality of government health care that our representatives were receiving was, likewise, out of the question.  So Obama began to make compromises with the drug companies to make something happen.

The conservative’s mantra is that compromise is defeat and compromise is not a part of their vocabulary.  Obama had established a precedent that he was willing to compromise to get something done. Conservatives perceived this as a weakness on his part that has plagued his presidency since the health care debate.     

Finally, the conservative’s dogma is that regulations hamper the “free market.” The fact that for the past 30 years deregulations set the stage for the derivatives disaster and before that the savings and loan scandal matters not to these people.  That fact that Jamie Dimon, CEO of J.P. Morgan Bank, is, today, doing the same things that brought about the Crash of 2008 demonstrates that conservatives don’t learn from past mistakes and are back to business as usual.  How many of us would want to relive another 2008?

So, what is the conservative’s agenda?  They do anything and everything they can to weaken government. They do this by cutting funds for programs and jobs. Their rationale for this is that if government doesn’t work, the people will become angry and will embrace the need for limited government.

Conservatives believe that within a culture of limited government, opportunities exist for those with money and power to achieve even more.  We are, in fact, living in a money dominated political world where telling lies is common place and the average citizen is on the outside looking in.  Much of conservative finger pointing at Obama as being responsible for the current debt and slow economic recovery, is cut from this clothe of misinformation.

America is no longer a government of WE the People. Instead we live in a corporate dominated world where money and position can buy politicians and policies to make those who have, even more powerful. We are not just coming to fiscal crisis in the months ahead.  At the rate we are traveling down this fiscal and politically oppositional road, our whole American way of life, as we have known it is being threatened. 

As weak as President Obama is touted to be by conservatives, he did prevent our economy from total collapse.  The economy has become stabilized.  We need to read between the propaganda and the misinformation and think through is our economy better off today that it was when he became president?  

His support of and respect for women, alternative life styles, his policies regarding illegal immigrants, his having kept his word about ending our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, his involvement in eliminating al-Qaeda leadership, and preventing genocide in Libya are all evidence of his leadership.  This and his effort to provide affordable health care for all is not a bad record for someone whose efforts his opposition has attempted to sabotage since his taking the oath of office.

One final question to ponder:  Where would we be today if Obama and Republicans did change the culture of Washington?  Where would our economy be today if, the spirit of cooperation that was evident in Obama working with Bush in transitioning efforts had been carried on with O’Connell and the House Conservatives?  We will never know.

One thing is for certain.  Conservatives don’t seem to understand that our survival as a species has been predicated on our working together.  As social beings our strength lies in our embracing an “all for one and one for all” commitment to one another. The survival of the fittest myth is just that, a myth. 

Thanks for stopping by...

Namaste,

Jim           

It's Up to Us!

I find it difficult to remain quiet when I am confronted with how political pathology is tearing the fabric of our society to shreds. 

Our people are drowning in unemployment, underemployment and underwater mortgages. More of our children are going to bed hungry each night and more families are homeless. Our school systems are crumbling and our children’s ability to become prepared for adulthood is being compromised.

How would we feel if we were out of work, through no fault of our own,  and we were facing the threat of unemployment insurance being stopped because we have been out of work for too long? In the op-ed world such is old news, but for those who are facing these realities, their backs are against the wall.  While they die a little each day, those who created this mess go on with business as usual.

We are being told that in preparing for “senior status” we need to accept less. School teachers, are criticized for earning more in retirement than private sector workers.  The implication of this is that something is wrong about someone working for 35 years and retiring with a 45,000 a year retirement program. A retirement program which requires the retiree to pay an additional 900 per month for medical, dental and vision coverage for the retiree and their spouse.

John Diaz’s Editorial on June 3^rd in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled More Sensible Term Limits, in part discussed robo calls that spew out misinformation on various propositions that appeared on the ballot. He states that “such calls are beyond deception.” In today’s world such dishonesty has become common place.

In truth we are living in an era where the “ends justify the means.”  This is predicated, in part, on people holding onto a political dogma.  Dogmas, it has been written, are “collective conceptual prisons... people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of I know. Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas…every dogma crumbles sooner or later, because reality will eventually disclose its falseness.”

The Republican view of how the economy should be run is an example being wedded to a dogma.  Beginning with Reagan’s “trickle down” economy to the present, not one of their economic ideas has worked.  The notion that austerity or that cutting taxes will create jobs is historically untrue. The cutting of taxes during war time is unheard of.  The commitment to not raise revenue, or to compromise with the “enemy” is common place.  Playing “chicken” with the fate of the economy and the welfare of citizens is unconscionable. 

Facts do not change their beliefs.  To Obama’s “yes we can,” conservatives practice “no we won’t.” So we have gridlock.   The problem is that we are all suffering because of such falsehoods and fantasies.

Finally, we are being treated like mindless consumers and not as citizens for whom our representatives are supposedly working.  We are being fed propaganda which is predicated on ‘if we tell a lie often enough, people will begin to believe the lie to be the truth.’  An example of this is that tobacco “is not bad for your health.” Or, after the 2008 sub prime mortgage disaster we don’t need regulations in banking. Or again, government is being too intrusive.  How safe would food, medicines or airplanes be without government?

As the song says “and the times, they are ah changing.”  Where will these changes take us?  Will we wind up a third world country with poverty, poorly educated children, the old eating out of garbage cans?  Or, will we demand something more for ourselves.  It’s up to us.    

 Jim Farwell M.A. / M.F.T.
    farwelljs@yahoocom