[Peace-discuss] Fw: Will Obama Save America From Capitalism?

[unionyes]

Good article, but very unlikely that Obama will save America from the Banks 
and other corporate interests, since his largest campaign contributor was 
Goldman Sachs.
" He who pays the piper, calls the tune "

David J.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <moderator at PORTSIDE.ORG>
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Sent: Saturday, October 17, 2009 12:10 PM
Subject: Will Obama Save America From Capitalism?


> Color of Law
>
> Will Obama Save America From Capitalism?
>
> By David A. Love, JD - BlackCommentator.com Editorial
> Board
> Black Commentator
> October 1, 2009
>
> http://www.blackcommentator.com/346/346_col_obama_save_america_from_capitalism.html
>
> Michael Moore's new film, Capitalism: A Love Story,
> looks and sounds a lot like a huge conspiracy theory.
> Too bad all of it is true.
>
> Missing this time around were the legions of corporate
> shills employed to discredit this film, the way they
> tried to do with Moore's previous film about the
> healthcare industry, Sicko. Maybe they just gave up.
> There comes a time when no amount of spin will cover up
> the truth. You can sprinkle sugar on a turd and call it
> candy, but in that moment of reckoning, the truth
> becomes self-evident.
>
> American-style capitalism is the system that gives you
> airline pilots buying groceries with food stamps;
> sheriffs and robber barons throwing families out of
> their homes and into the street; corporations taking out
> insurance policies on their own employees; corporations
> slashing jobs to earn record profits; college loans the
> size of mortgages, and people dying because they have a
> pre-existing condition, or can't afford to get sick.
>
> For a number of years, the boosters, the sales
> representatives, the pimps and prostitutes of this
> deeply flawed system did a great job of convincing the
> rest of us that no one else in the world had it better.
> This is the land of opportunity, they told us. The
> reality is that for all of its rhetoric, America is more
> unequal in terms of wealth and income than other
> industrial democracies. Far more economic mobility is to
> be found in those "socialist" European nations that
> conservatives are so loathe to emulate.
>
> America is a nation of sharecroppers. Not in the pull-
> yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps sort of way, either. The
> few at the top now have more than ever because they
> stole it from the many, typically by highway robbery.
> And every day, they continue to dupe the many into
> giving more. Many at the bottom actually believe that
> they will emerge at the top someday, so they don't make
> a fuss. Capitalism, American-style, is that great big
> Ponzi scheme. And apparently, we was had. This is what
> they do, unfettered, unaccountable, and unconcerned.
>
> Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Oversight
> Committee that is investigating the $700 billion bank
> bailout giveaway, a.k.a., Troubled Assets Relief Program
> (TARP), told the Washington Post that "the middle class
> is under terrific assault." Middle class families are
> actually earning about $800 less than a generation ago.
> This reality precipitated the need to have two wage
> earners in each family, and to borrow more and save less
> just to stay above water. But people are drowning by the
> millions.
>
> Meanwhile, the economic puppeteers seem to gloat over
> the fact that they are stealing an ever-increasing part
> of the economic pie at the expense of the multitude. On
> March 5, 2006, Citibank - a TARP welfare recipient of
> late - issued a memo to investors titled, Revisiting
> Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer. Plutnomy is defined
> as, "An economy that is driven by or that
> disproportionately benefits wealthy people, or one where
> the creation of wealth is the principal goal." The
> Citibank memo proclaimed that
>
>    The latest Survey of Consumer Finances, for 2004,
>    has been released by the Federal Reserve. It shows
>    the rich continue to account for a
>    disproportionately large share of income and wealth
>    in the US economy: the richest 10% of Americans
>    account for 43% of income, and 57% of net worth. The
>    net worth to income ratio for the richest 10% of
>    Americans increased from 7.4x in 2001, to 8.4x in
>    the 2004 survey. The rich are in great shape,
>    financially.
>
> Perhaps the most invidious part of the report warns that
> electoral democracy threatens to disrupt the wonderful
> party the rich are having:
>
>    Our whole plutonomy thesis is based on the idea that
>    the rich will keep getting richer. This thesis is
>    not without its risks. For example, a policy error
>    leading to asset deflation, would likely damage
>    plutonomy. Furthermore, the rising wealth gap
>    between the rich and poor will probably at some
>    point lead to a political backlash. Whilst the rich
>    are getting a greater share of the wealth, and the
>    poor a lesser share, political enfrachisement
>    remains as was - one person, one vote (in the
>    plutonomies). At some point it is likely that labor
>    will fight back against the rising profit share of
>    the rich and there will be a political backlash
>    against the rising wealth of the rich. This could be
>    felt through higher taxation (on the rich or
>    indirectly though higher corporate taxes/regulation)
>    or through trying to protect indigenous laborers, in
>    a push-back on globalization - either anti-
>    immigration, or protectionism. We don't see this
>    happening yet, though there are signs of rising
>    political tensions. However we are keeping a close
>    eye on developments.
>
> Capitalism is as capitalism does. Maximization of profit
> above all else - to the exclusion of ethics, morality
> and the public good - is the mark of a vulture society.
> And this arrogant, coldhearted endeavor has been a
> bipartisan effort. Beginning with Reagan, Republican
> administrations have championed drastic cuts to the
> social safety net and massive tax cuts for the
> wealthiest Americans. Meanwhile, the Clinton years
> ushered in deregulation of the financial markets, and an
> end to welfare as we know it. Corporations have far more
> power than a free society can tolerate. And both major
> political parties are the water carriers of this
> plutonomy. They are the field hands for the financial
> interests that currently run the show and drive public
> policy - and are driving this nation into the ground.
>
> The U.S. economy is worse than at any time since the
> Great Depression. In fact, as Simon Johnson of MIT
> recently told Bill Moyers, we are currently experiencing
> elements of a depression.
>
> But in this jobless recovery, where there is one job for
> every six job seekers, Wall Street is doing well because
> its fate is not dependent upon the employment of
> everyday working people. Rather, its fate is dependent
> upon government handouts, paper shuffling, and the
> exotic hustling instruments to which they have grown
> accustomed.
>
> But we have been here before. Eighty years ago, on
> October 24-29, 1929, the stock market collapsed. It was
> a testament to an economic system run amok, unregulated
> and unrestrained, for the benefit of concentrated,
> monopolistic power. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
> ushered in the New Deal - a series of economic programs
> and initiatives based on relief to the unemployed and
> farmers, reform of business, banking and finance, and
> economic recovery. The New Deal meant public works and
> infrastructure programs, economic planning by the
> government, social security, and labor standards that
> favored union growth. There was a sense that workers,
> consumers and farmers should have influence with the
> government, not just corporations.
>
> Today - with the erosion of the New Deal legacy creating
> the huge mess that is early twenty-first-century America
> - President Obama has a golden opportunity to make
> things right. But will his administration step up to the
> plate and bring in the necessary reforms? Just as F.D.R.
> saved capitalism from itself, will Obama save America
> from capitalism? Or is the game already too fixed?
>
> These times scream out for a "new" New Deal. Jobs are
> sorely needed by millions, but will not appear out of
> thin air. The foreclosed and unemployed middle class are
> joining the ranks of the poor and the homeless. The
> national infrastructure is crumbling. And the cartels
> and monopolies of old have returned. A paltry and
> ineffectual stimulus package, accompanied by some
> tweaking at the edges of a carnivorous, predatory
> system, will not make a difference.
>
> If the Obama administration wants to be a truly
> transformational force in American history, rather than
> a slightly-better-than-average, one-term presidency with
> good intentions, it will give America the new New Deal.
> The Obama administration will find the intestinal
> fortitude to take on the banking system, and divest
> itself of Wall Street enablers and Goldman Sachs
> cronies. It will cast out such underwhelming individuals
> as Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, and seek the
> advice of Nobel laureates such as Joseph Stiglitz of
> Columbia, and Paul Krugman of Princeton. It will go
> beyond its laudable plans for a consumer protection
> agency, and either reform the current economic system,
> or replace it entirely with one that reduces the status
> of corporations, and brings economic fairness and
> justice to the people.
>
> In other words, President Obama will do what the people
> voted for in November.
> ______________________
>
> BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member David A.
> Love, JD is a journalist and human rights advocate based
> in Philadelphia, and a contributor to The Huffington
> Post, The Progressive Media Project, McClatchy-Tribune
> News Service, In These Times and Philadelphia
> Independent Media Center. He also blogs at
> davidalove.com, NewsOne, Daily Kos, and Open Salon.
>
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