BARACK OBAMA’S CHANGE ONLY MEANT
HE INTENDED TO DUPE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE FOR THE BENEFIT OF HIS WALL ST. DONORS
EVEN MORE THAN BUSH DID IT FOR BIG BUSH SAUDIS OIL & CARLYLE GROUP –
HALLIBURTION.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-obama-duped-nation-but-his-bankster.html
*
“All of
these writers proceed from a fact of American life that is becoming impossible
to deny: the sharp divergence in the fortunes of the banks and investors, on
the one hand, and the broad mass of the population, on the other. The Wall
Street giants, the very firms that precipitated the financial crisis, are doing
better than ever. They are planning record bonuses while unemployment continues
to soar and wages are declining at a rate not seen in decades.”
*
“Herbert
(“Safety Nets for the Rich,” October 20), adopts a populist tone, complaining,
“Even as tens of millions of working Americans are struggling to hang onto
their jobs and keep a roof over their families’ heads, the wise guys on Wall
Street are licking their fat-cat chops over yet another round of obscene
multibillion-dollar bonuses—this time thanks to the bailout billions that were
sent their way by Uncle Sam, with very little in the way of strings attached.”
*
Underlying
both columns is the concern that the Obama administration’s promises of “hope”
and “change” are increasingly perceived by those who voted for Obama as hollow
phrases. Rich complains that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is “tone deaf”
and that “an air of entitlement” wafts from the administration.
People are
beginning to feel that they have been duped into lending their support to a
government that is unreservedly serving the interests of the banks. To the
layer of the liberal establishment represented by Obama’s journalistic would-be
advisers, the eruption of opposition to the Obama administration would be an
unmitigated disaster.
*
ON OBAMA’S AGENDA FOR THE COMING
WEEK:
1. Lie to the American people
about “change”.
2. Look at himself in the mirror,
and go hunting for red-carpet photo ops.
3. Hand over billions to bankster
criminals.
4. Hold the hand of a bankster
that might think he’s headed for prison.
5. Work on the OBAMA NO BANKSTERS
REGULATION, as written by the BANKSTERS.
6. Hispander for LA RAZA and the
illegals’ votes.
7. Bend over to the ground and
kiss the Saudi ass for BIG BUSH SAUDI BIG OIL and the CARLYLE GROUP.
8. Cash Bush War Profiteer, DIANNE
FEINSTEIN’S pimp-husband’s “DONATION”.
9. With a straight face, tell the
American people that the RECOVERY (FOR BANKSTERS) is in full force, and staggering
unemployment will be soon ameliorated with QUICKIE AMNESTY = EXPANSION OF THE
MEXICAN WELFARE STATE.
10. Send a billion or two to
NARCOmex and a note reminding them that we only fight for borders in
MUSLIMLAND, and here, our borders are wide open for the convenience of the
MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS.
*
US bankers cash in despite phony pay
restraint
24 October 2009
The
executive pay regulations announced Thursday by the Obama administration’s “pay
czar” and the Federal Reserve represent a cynical attempt to placate public
outrage over Wall Street bonuses while allowing the financial speculators to
continue awarding themselves multi-million-dollar compensation packages.
According
to the report issued by the Treasury Department’s special master for
compensation, Kenneth Feinberg, at least 66 of the 138 bank and corporation
executives under his jurisdiction will receive government-approved compensation
packages totaling more than $1 million a year.
The
average pay for all 138 executives is $2.5 million a year. All of them work for
seven companies bailed out with tens of billions in taxpayer dollars: Bank of
America, Citigroup, AIG, General Motors, Chrysler, GMAC and Chrysler Financial.
General
Motors’ CEO Fritz Henderson will see his 2009 compensation more than double
from 2008, to $5.5 million. Meanwhile, under the forced bankruptcy of the
company at the hands of the Obama administration, GM workers have suffered mass
layoffs and deep cuts in pay and benefits.
Feinberg’s
report, and a second document issued by the Federal Reserve calling for vague
new principles to guide compensation packages at the banks regulated by the Fed,
have been presented by both supporters and opponents in official circles as a
serious check on the self-enrichment of the financial elite.
The
Wall Street Journal published an editorial denouncing the measures as
the end of “what used to be known as American capitalism.”
The
Obama administration was happy to be accused of being anti-Wall Street. It gave
the president a chance to adopt a populist pose and present himself as sharing
the outrage over bankers’ salaries felt by working people.
“I’ve
always believed that our system of free enterprise works best when it rewards
hard work,” Obama said Thursday at the White House. “But it does offend our
values when executives of big financial firms—firms that are struggling—pay
themselves huge bonuses even as they continue to rely on taxpayer assistance to
stay afloat.”
This
rhetoric is 180 degrees at odds with reality. The Obama administration made
available up to $23.7 trillion in loans, guarantees and direct cash infusions
to the big financial institutions. Its number one priority has been to rescue
these institutions, which play a central role in the world capitalist system
and serve as the principal guardians of the wealth of the ruling elite.
Obama
commissioned the Feinberg report to provide political cover as the economic
crisis deepens. American society is heading into an unprecedented social and
political crisis—beginning with a winter in which foreclosures, evictions,
utility shutoffs and spreading homelessness will unfold against the backdrop of
record bonuses on Wall Street.
The
White House is also supplying a bit of rhetorical ammunition to its liberal
defenders, such as the Nation magazine. They are increasingly being
discredited by their praise for the “progressive” character of the new
administration, even as Obama betrays all of his election-year promises and, in
all essentials, continues the policies of Bush and the Republicans—wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, bailouts for the wealthy, wage and benefit cuts for workers,
attacks on democratic rights.
Obama’s
comment about the “free enterprise system” rewarding “hard work” has been
echoed by media apologists and spokesmen for the bankers, who are bemoaning the
supposed chilling effects of the token restraints on pay.
A
worried New York Times wrote: “Pay experts said the plan, which emerged
Wednesday, could lead to the departure of the very executives needed to return
the firms to health, a prerequisite to repaying taxpayer support.”
Neither
from the White House nor in the press is there any examination of what these
individuals have done—what heroic labor they have performed—that is worth
incomes in the seven, eight and even nine digits.
These
financial parasites produce no real value. On the contrary, these are people
who are largely responsible for the greatest financial collapse since the
1930s, one in which their personal greed and recklessness played a significant
role.
What
does an investment banker do? Judge from the quarterly reports filed by Goldman
Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, which have repaid their cash injections from the
Troubled Asset Relief Program and are therefore exempt from even the token
limits set by Feinberg. The two banks earned bumper profits and set aside
near-record sums for bonuses, not by funding startup ventures and small businesses,
as the mythology of “free enterprise” would suggest. Their profits came almost
entirely from speculation—gambling on the price swings of currencies, stocks
and bonds.
The
proper fate of many of these gentlemen would be criminal investigation and
prosecution, and the forfeiture of their personal fortunes to contribute to
providing relief to the millions of people whose lives have been devastated by
the economic consequences of their actions.
The
Times noted, in its account of the Federal Reserve plan to regulate bank
salaries, “The officials emphasized that the plan was not intended to make pay
packages more socially equitable but was part of a broader effort by the Fed to
shore up the stability of the banking system.”
Why
should reducing social inequality be ruled out as a goal of public policy? The
spectacle of individual bankers and CEOs raking in incomes greater than those
of 500, 1,000 or even 10,000 working people is not only an outrage, it is a
symptom of a deeply diseased and reactionary social order.
As
the Times account demonstrates, to the extent that the new regulations
have any substance, beyond their public relations value, their purpose is to
curb the speculative excesses of a few bank executives in the larger interests
of the financial aristocracy as a whole.
The
working class has no interest in supporting Obama’s fig leaf of pay restraint
for the banks—which will be cited as justification for even more draconian
attacks on the wages and benefits of workers. The working class must fight not
for a “reformed” capitalism, but the abolition of the profit system and the
reorganization of economic life to serve the needs of the vast majority of
humanity, those who work for a living.
This
means the building of an independent political movement of the working class,
based on a socialist and internationalist program, to establish a rationally
planned and democratically controlled world socialist economy.
Patrick
Martin
*
WSWS.ORG
get on their free NO ADS news emails
The great unmentionable
22 October 2009
The past week has seen a number of worried commentaries from liberal supporters of Obama on the state of social and political relations in the United States.
Among the columnists who have written along similar lines are Frank Rich, Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert of the New York Times, and Katrina vanden Heuvel of the Nation.
All of these writers proceed from a fact of American life that is becoming impossible to deny: the sharp divergence in the fortunes of the banks and investors, on the one hand, and the broad mass of the population, on the other. The Wall Street giants, the very firms that precipitated the financial crisis, are doing better than ever. They are planning record bonuses while unemployment continues to soar and wages are declining at a rate not seen in decades.
The proliferation of these columns is itself an indication of the depth of social tensions and the level of popular disillusionment with the Obama administration. Sensing the anger that is building up, the authors write as advisers to the administration: How can this opposition be contained?
Herbert (“Safety Nets for the Rich,” October 20), adopts a populist tone, complaining, “Even as tens of millions of working Americans are struggling to hang onto their jobs and keep a roof over their families’ heads, the wise guys on Wall Street are licking their fat-cat chops over yet another round of obscene multibillion-dollar bonuses—this time thanks to the bailout billions that were sent their way by Uncle Sam, with very little in the way of strings attached.”
Rich (“Goldman Can You Spare a Dime,” October 18) refers to the projected 2009 bonuses of $23 billion at Goldman Sachs as compared to the $200 million the bank is allocating to its own education foundation. He likens this to the dimes handed out by Standard Oil’s John D. Rockefeller at the beginning of the 20th century.
Both Herbert and Rich urge that stronger measures be taken, with the former advocating the break-up of Goldman Sachs and the latter expressing hope for a revival of Teddy Roosevelt-style trust busting.
Underlying both columns is the concern that the Obama administration’s promises of “hope” and “change” are increasingly perceived by those who voted for Obama as hollow phrases. Rich complains that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is “tone deaf” and that “an air of entitlement” wafts from the administration.
People are beginning to feel that they have been duped into lending their support to a government that is unreservedly serving the interests of the banks. To the layer of the liberal establishment represented by Obama’s journalistic would-be advisers, the eruption of opposition to the Obama administration would be an unmitigated disaster.
Vanden Heuvel (“Happy Days?” October 16) is perhaps the most explicit in stating this position. “There is a growing danger that the public face of the Obama administration’s response to this Great Recession is the Bank Bailout,” she writes. “There is a real threat to the possibility and promise of the Obama administration.”
Her advice to Obama is to adopt more of a left tone. “The administration needs to switch this frame.” Following “a multi-trillion-dollar giveaway to get Big Banks back on track for billion dollar bonuses,” she writes, “It’s time for the Obama administration to act with equal boldness on behalf of regular folks.”
The central aim of these figures is to prevent workers from drawing broader conclusions about the nature of the government and the two-party system. They are engaged in a deliberate cover-up. From the beginning, the administration has been, and could only be, a government of the financial and corporate elite. The administration’s actions are determined by the class interests it represents.
On Wednesday, the Obama administration revealed that it is planning on imposing cuts in executive pay at seven companies with substantial bailout funds. The plan has the air of preemptive damage-control in the advance of bonus announcements later this year—the sort of measure that will be hailed by Obama’s liberal supporters. The steps will do nothing to address the social crisis of the working class, and the small number of executives affected will still receive compensation hundreds times that of the average worker.
In their various criticisms and complaints, what all these writers refuse to discuss is the “great unmentionable” of American politics: socialism. Unwilling to address the objective basis for the social and economic crisis and broach the only real alternative, their commentaries remain utterly banal. In the end, they are reduced to making moral appeals to the banks and pleading with Obama.
Michael Moore’s recent film, Capitalism: A Love Story, is made of the same stuff. After presenting a portrait of the crisis confronting millions of working people, Moore ends his film by calling for the replacement of capitalism not with socialism, but “democracy.”
He holds up Franklin Roosevelt and New Deal reformism as the ideal of democracy from the past, and pseudo-populists like Democratic Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, as well as Obama himself, as its incarnations in the present. (In a recent column, Moore pleads with those who are angered by Obama’s policies: “Don’t abandon the best hope we’ve had in our lifetime for change.”)
The avarice of the financial elite, the blatant inequity of record bank bonuses and declining wages, along with the participation of the Obama administration in this process, are invariably presented as misfortunes.
However, the contrast between depression conditions facing the majority of the population and windfalls for the wealthy is a contradiction only in appearance. They are two sides of the same process. It is through a sharp attack on living standards, jobs, wages and social programs that the financial elite is seeking to safeguard its wealth.
This, in turn, is inextricably linked to the private ownership of the corporations and banks and the subordination of the economy to profit and the interests of the wealthy—that is, to capitalism.
This proscription of socialism has a history. American liberalism long ago compromised itself by wholeheartedly embracing post-war anti-communism, which was the means through which it lined up behind the global ambitions of American imperialism. With the full support of the trade unions, socialists and militants were driven out of the labor movement.
The rejection of socialism was bound up with the rejection of class as the fundamental category of social analysis. Politics based on race, gender, sexual orientation and other identities was elevated in its stead, and became the principal foundation of the Democratic Party and the preoccupation of the broad milieu of “left” petty-bourgeois groups.
The absolute exclusion of a socialist and class analysis has helped lend American politics—and media commentary—its particularly impoverished character. And it has left the working class without a viable perspective to defend its interests.
The past year, however, has not passed in vain. Broad sections of the working class are drawing certain conclusions. The ideological edifice of capitalism has been discredited in the eyes of millions of workers, who are rapidly losing confidence in the market and all official political institutions.
The immense class anger over the social crisis and disillusionment with the Obama administration have not yet taken an open political form. They will, however, and as this happens, the great principles of the socialist movement will experience a powerful revival in the working class—in opposition to the Democratic Party and its liberal supporters.
It is on these principles that the Socialist Equality Party, and only the Socialist Equality Party, is based.
Joe Kishore
*
NEW YORK TIMES
October 20, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Safety Nets for the Rich
The headlines that ran side by side on the front page of
Saturday’s New York Times summed up, inadvertently, the terrible fix that we’ve
allowed our country to fall into.
The lead headline, in the upper right-hand corner, said: “U.S.
Deficit Rises to $1.4 Trillion; Biggest Since ’45.”
The headline next to it said: “Bailout Helps Revive Banks, And
Bonuses.”
We’ve spent the last few decades shoveling money at the rich like
there was no tomorrow. We abandoned the poor, put an economic stranglehold on
the middle class and all but bankrupted the federal government — while giving
the banks and megacorporations and the rest of the swells at the top of the
economic pyramid just about everything they’ve wanted.
And we still don’t seem to have learned the proper lessons. We’ve
allowed so many people to fall into the terrible abyss of unemployment that no
one — not the Obama administration, not the labor unions and most certainly no
one in the Republican Party — has a clue about how to put them back to work.
Meanwhile, Wall Street is living it up. I’m amazed at how passive
the population has remained in the face of this sustained outrage.
Even as tens of millions of working Americans are struggling to
hang onto their jobs and keep a roof over their families’ heads, the wise guys
of Wall Street are licking their fat-cat chops over yet another round of
obscene multibillion-dollar bonuses — this time thanks to the bailout billions
that were sent their way by Uncle Sam, with very little in the way of strings
attached.
Nevermind that the economy remains deeply troubled. As The Times
pointed out on Saturday, much of Wall Street “is minting money.”
Call it déjà voodoo. I wrote a column that
ran three days before Christmas in 2007 that focused on the deeply disturbing
disconnect between Wall Streeters harvesting a record crop of bonuses —
billions on top of billions — while working families were having a very hard
time making ends meet.
We would later learn that December 2007 was the very month that
the Great Recession began. I wrote in that column: “Even as the Wall Streeters
are high-fiving and ordering up record shipments of Champagne and caviar, the
American dream is on life support.”
So we had an orgy of bonuses just as the recession was taking hold
and now another orgy (with taxpayers as the enablers) that is nothing short of
an arrogantly pointed finger in the eye of everyone who suffered, and continues
to suffer, in this downturn.
Whether P.T. Barnum actually said it or not, there is a sucker
born every minute. American taxpayers might want to take a look in the mirror.
If the epithet fits...
We need to make some fundamental changes in the way we do things
in this country. The gamblers and con artists of the financial sector, the very
same clowns who did so much to bring the economy down in the first place, are
howling self-righteously over the prospect of regulations aimed at curbing the
worst aspects of their excessively risky behavior and preventing them from
causing yet another economic meltdown.
We should be going even further. We’ve institutionalized the idea
that there are firms that are too big to fail and, therefore, “we, the people”
are obliged to see that they don’t — even if that means bankrupting the
national treasury and undermining the living standards of ordinary people. What
sense does that make?
If some company is too big to fail, then it’s too big to exist.
Break it up.
Why should the general public have to constantly worry that a
misstep by the high-wire artists at Goldman Sachs (to take the most obvious
example) would put the entire economy in peril? These financial acrobats get
the extraordinary benefits of their outlandish risk-taking —
multimillion-dollar paychecks, homes the size of castles — but the public has
to be there to absorb the worst of the pain when they take a terrible fall.
Enough! Goldman Sachs is thriving while the combined rates of
unemployment and underemployment are creeping toward a mind-boggling 20
percent. Two-thirds of all the income gains from the years 2002 to 2007 —
two-thirds! — went to the top 1 percent of Americans.
We cannot continue transferring the nation’s wealth to those at
the apex of the economic pyramid — which is what we have been doing for the
past three decades or so — while hoping that someday, maybe, the benefits of
that transfer will trickle down in the form of steady employment and improved
living standards for the many millions of families struggling to make it from
day to day.
That money is never going to trickle down. It’s a fairy tale.
We’re crazy to continue believing it.
*
IN OBAMA AND HIS BANKSTER CONTROLLED AMERICAN, WITH OPEN
BORDERS AND “NO LEGAL NEED APPLY”…
HERE’S WHAT IT’S LIKE FOR NON-BANKSTERS:
Atlanta homeless shelters strain under economic crisis
By Naomi Spencer
23 October 2009
As the economic crisis deepens, Atlanta, Georgia, emergency providers are straining to accommodate more than 7,000 homeless people, including many newly homeless families.
Along with rising unemployment and a growing number of home foreclosures across the US, the homeless population is swelling far beyond the capacity of emergency facilities. Urban centers have felt the impact most sharply, with service organizations facing budget cuts at the same time that thousands are thrust into poverty and foreclosure.
According to an October 12 report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Atlanta’s Salvation Army cannot open a nearly completed homeless shelter for families because of a lack of funds. Similarly, the city’s Midtown Assistance Center, an agency providing emergency financial assistance, announced in August that it had spent twice its monthly $24,000 budget on aid in the month of July. The agency assists employed workers and those in job training who do not receive public assistance.
Another area service provider, MUST Ministries, reported that it aided 29,000 people last year, and requests for assistance are up 25 percent this year. Annette Lee, MUST Ministries’ resource development coordinator, commented to the Journal-Constitution of September 29: “It’s no longer just hourly wage workers. These are professionals—from bankers to people with masters and PhD’s…. We are seeing more and more people who are above the poverty line.”
Metro Atlanta has lost nearly 143,000 payroll jobs in the past year, according to the most recent Labor Department figures, and well over a quarter million workers are unemployed in the city. Foreclosure filings have surged, with more than 97,000 foreclosure notices served in the metro area so far this year, up from the already high 79,400 in 2008.
According to Census Bureau data released in September, nearly 26,000 metro Atlanta families fell below the poverty line in 2008—before the sharp economic decline of 2009—representing an increase of 19 percent over 2007.
The Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, a large walk-in shelter downtown, is now serving more than 700 people each night and anticipating far higher numbers as the weather turns colder. The Task Force is often the only emergency shelter open to men, after other city shelters fill with families.
According to employees, the shelter has come under attack from a local business group, Central Atlanta Progress (CAP), which wants the agency closed. The Task Force filed a lawsuit in July against CAP and members of city government on charges of harassment and interference. According to the lawsuit, the city refused to issue certifications to the Task Force that would have allowed the group to obtain government funds, despite the agency’s compliance with city requirements.
The shelter has also had its water shut off by the city twice in the past year without explanation. CAP officials have publicly expressed the opinion that the shelter breeds crime and encourages laziness among the homeless population. In September, the city petitioned to have the Task Force’s lawsuit dismissed. That petition was denied by Fulton County Superior Court.
According to Anita Beaty, director of the Task Force, more than three-quarters of the people who sleep at the shelter earn a living during the day, but not enough to afford rent in the city.
“Atlanta has been trying to hide poverty so they attack us for keeping poverty out front,” shelter employee Troy Harris told the Journal-Constitution. “If the city was doing what it says it is doing in placing people in housing, we wouldn’t have 700 people a night in here. We are the visible truth of Atlanta.”
Atlanta’s political establishment has taken several measures over the past decade to push out the poorest layers of the population and gentrify the downtown area. In the mid-1990s, in preparation for hosting the Olympics, the city initiated a systematic destruction of public housing.
The first city to open public housing units to the poor in the 1930s, Atlanta now bears the distinction of being the first city to have all of them closed down. In the past 15 years, the city has torn down some 15,000 units in 32 housing projects. According to a 2007 study by the Georgia Institute of Technology, as the number of units was halved and replaced by mixed-income communities, only one third of displaced residents were able to resettle.
As part of the same broad strategy of gentrification, beginning in 2003 Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin issued a series of orders banning such acts as donating food to the homeless on downtown streets, soliciting donations and sleeping in public areas. Atlanta police, posing as tourists, have staged a series of undercover street sweeps, arresting dozens of homeless people for asking for money.
The policies in Atlanta are not unique. Virtually all major cities in the US have put in place measures to criminalize homelessness and push shelters, clinics and other services outside of the downtown areas. As the economic crisis deepens, those pushed out of their jobs and homes will come under increasing attack, as the ruling establishment seeks to obscure the social realities.
In July, the National Coalition for the Homeless issued a report on this trend throughout the country. A survey of 235 cities found that one-third have ordinances in place banning “camping” in public areas, and 30 percent banned “sitting/lying” in public areas. Nearly half of all cities surveyed had bans on “loitering” and begging.
*
SHOCKING FACTS ON OBAMA’S FUNDING OF THE MEXICAN SUPREMACIST
MOVEMENT OF LA RAZA
*
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obama-mexican-supremacist-party-of-la.html
*
*
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/wikileaks-exposed-obamas-la-raza-open.html
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