[Peace-discuss] Americans Would Be Worse Off If Obama Were Defeated, WAS: Why we should vote (& much more) against Obama

Sun Oct 28 23:58:48 UTC 2012

Most Americans know that the outcome of this farcical election will not change the US government's military and economic policies, regardless of who is elected president.

The election is a distraction for the 20% - the "political class" - who don't realize that (or pretend not to). 

Once it's over, we can perhaps get back to opposing the government's crimes. 

It will take an effort on the order of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements.  

On Oct 28, 2012, at 2:04 PM, Jenifer Cartwright <jencart13 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Yeah, it's a no-brainer... but sadly some voters have no brain (or heart... or courage).
> 
> --- On Thu, 10/25/12, Ricky Baldwin <rbaldwin at seiu73.org> wrote:
> 
> From: Ricky Baldwin <rbaldwin at seiu73.org>
> Subject: [Peace-discuss] Americans Would Be Worse Off If Obama Were Defeated, WAS: Why we should vote (& much more) against Obama
> To: "Alex Cline" <rev.a.r.cline at gmail.com>
> Cc: "peace-discuss at anti-war.net" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
> Date: Thursday, October 25, 2012, 6:03 PM
> 
> CENTER FOR ECONOMIC AND POLICY RESEARCH
> ________________________________________
> 
> Americans Would Be Worse Off If Obama Were Defeated
> [http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/americans-would-be-worse-off-if-obama-is-defeated]
> By Mark Weisbrot
> ________________________________________
> This article was distributed by McClatchy Tribune Information Services on October 24, 2012 and published by The Sacramento Bee  [http://www.sacbee.com/2012/10/25/4937631/obama-is-correcting-the-massive.html]and other newspapers. If anyone wants to reprint it, please let CEPR know, by replying to this message.
> ________________________________________
> It was in the 1980 presidential contest that Ronald Reagan first asked the question, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" It was a fitting introduction to the Age of Greed – don't think about your fellow citizens or your country or the world, was part of the message – and it ushered in the most massive upward redistribution of income and wealth that America has ever seen. Over the ensuing three decades the United States would become a much more unequal [http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/minimum-wage-raise-is-the-least-we-can-do-to-civilize-america] society, where the majority of people could no longer aspire to a middle-class existence. The Reagan presidency itself was a disgrace in other respects too, making America infamous in the hemisphere for its sponsorship of genocide [http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/clintons-apology-to-guatemala-is-a-necessary-first-step/] and torture in Central America [http://files.uniteddiversity.com/More_Books_and_Reports/Noam_Chomsky-Turning_the_Tide _US_intervention_in_Central_America_and_the_Struggle_for_Peace.pdf] [pdf] and dictatorships [http://articles.latimes.com/1987-01-02/local/me-1475_1_human-rights] elsewhere.
> 
> Now comes Mitt Romney in the Reagan tradition, hoping to win the presidency on the basis of America's weak economy over the past four years. But there are a number of problems with his argument. First, the obvious: President Obama didn't create the economic mess that we are looking at -- he inherited it from the previous government. Although both Democratic and Republican politicians contributed to the $8 trillion housing bubble that caused [http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/books/the-end-of-loser-liberalism] the Great Recession, it cannot be blamed primarily on the Democrats and certainly not on Obama himself.
> 
> The question then is whether the Obama Administration has done enough to turn things around in the past four years – and most importantly, whether Romney might do better. I have criticized President Obama for not pursuing a much larger stimulus, as have other economists [http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/books/the-end-of-loser-liberalism] such as my colleague Dean Baker, and Nobel laureates Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz. The federal stimulus only replaced about one-fifth of the private spending lost in 2009-2010 due to the bursting of the housing bubble; and half of this stimulus was canceled out by the budget tightening of state and local governments.
> However, the federal stimulus did create an estimated three million jobs [http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/papers/2010/wp10-17bk.pdf] [pdf] that would not otherwise have been there. The administration's rescue of the auto industry, also opposed by Romney and his party, probably saved another 1.5 to 2.5 million jobs [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/opinion/sunday/a-million-jobs.html]. So, if you think that Obama didn't do enough in his first term, you would not want Romney for the next four years, because he and his party were opposed to the measures that actually did save millions of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars of income for Americans. In fact, the Congressional Republicans cut $100 billion [http://deanbaker.net/books/plunder-and-blunder-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-bubble-economy.htm] out of the federal stimulus package that would have gone to state and local governments so that they would not have pushed so many people into the unemployment lines, including teachers and firefighters.
> 
> On the positive side, President Obama's health care reform [http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/obama-health-care-reform-is-a-step-forward-hopefully-toward-medicare-for-all] – which Mitt Romney wants to repeal – helps tens of millions of Americans. The most important provisions do not kick in until 2014, when some 30 million additional Americans will have health insurance, and people who have pre-existing health problems will not be discriminated against in obtaining insurance. Some of the provisions have already taken effect, for example allowing parents to keep their children on their insurance policies up to age 26.
> 
> People might also want to take into account whether they will be better off four years from now if President Obama loses. Perhaps most worrisome are Romney's pledges to cut Social Security [http://www.mittromney.com/issues/social-security], the bedrock program that stands between most of our senior citizens and a life of poverty. He also wants to cut other important government programs in order to raise [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/22/the-full-transcript-of-the-third-presidential-debate/] military spending by $2 trillion over the next decade – while most of the country is really sick of our involvement in pointless wars. These are not policies that will make Americans better off four years from now.
> ________________________________________
> 
> Mark Weisbrot  [http://www.cepr.net/index.php/mark-weisbrot/]is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C He is also president of Just Foreign Policy [http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/].
> 
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> 
> ________________________________________
> From: occupycu-bounces at lists.chambana.net [occupycu-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of C. G. Estabrook [cge at shout.net]
> Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2012 2:32 PM
> To: Alex Cline
> Cc: occupycu; peace-discuss at anti-war.net
> Subject: Re: [OccupyCU] Why we should vote (& much more) against Obama
> 
> Maybe it comes from the position supporters of the administration have to assume in order not to notice its crimes.
> 
> On Oct 25, 2012, at 1:39 AM, Alex Cline <rev.a.r.cline at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > all this covert shilling I've been doing lately is putting my back out
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 10:14 PM, ya'aQov <yaaqovz at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Rachel,
> >
> > ocCUpy's list is not moderated; Carl takes full advantage of that for his exploits; we each can moderate our inboxes by filtering his eMails to spam/delete; but he keeps coming with new eMail addresses, he's got the means; he also doesn't work 40 hours a week, and is not too tired to trick those who do and are too tired to keep creating filters.
> >
> > Income+health insurance-wise, Carl is not part pf the 47% and can afford any president; and as Shakespeare said ('Julius Caesar'), Carl is an honorable man.