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

Mon Oct 29 14:12:05 UTC 2012

The 1% have cleverly arranged for the re-election of a president who administers their looting of the 99% - and imperialist war, to their interests alone. 

They've done it by seeing to the nomination of an alternative candidate who is just as bad if not worse than the incumbent. They win either way. 

Candidates who advocate policies supported by 80% of the population - WPA jobs, end to foreign wars, Medicare for all, free education, end to foreclosures, infrastructure reform, etc., etc. - are excluded from the sham election process. The danger is that the fraction of the population - about 20% - who can be convinced to support that cynical simulacrum of democracy grows ever smaller, and those who know it's a fake ever more numerous. That's why the Obama administration was so eager to suppress Occupy Wall Street, brutally and illegally: if people get the idea that democracy means rejecting the election system, the 1% are in trouble. 

When the corporate presidential candidate and Congress are inaugurated in January, they should face an enraged populace aware of their illegitimacy, and demanding a reversal of 'bipartisan' economic and military polices - war and austerity.     

On Oct 29, 2012, at 8:32 AM, "E. Wayne Johnson 朱稳森" <ewj at pigsqq.org> wrote:

> Hear! Hear!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 10/29/12 19:59, David Johnson wrote:
>> " 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 "
>> 
>> Obama not only supported the initial bank bailout in the Fall of 2008, holding hands with McCain in solidarity with the Banksters and pressuring members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other dems to change their initial votes against the Bailout, but he also has since given close to 12 - Trillion dollars of OUR public tax dollars to these criminals.
>> Speaking of criminals NOT ONE investigation or criminal charge has been directed by Obama's Justice Department and SEC against the Banksters.
>> Also don't forget that William Geitner and Larry Summers were / are part of the Obama economic team, persuing the SAME policies as Bush and Bill Clinton.
>> 
>> Speaking of Bill Clinton ( the current unofficial Viceroy of Haiti ) if my memory serves me correctly, he was the one who pushed for and obtained ; NAFTA, The China Trade Preference Treaty, an expansion of GATT, the repeal of the Glass-Stiegel Banking Act, ALL of which has played a significant part in the current economic problem we are in.
>> I like Mark WEissbrot's foreign policy analysis, but this statement from him is an over simplification that does NOT addreess the root of the problem which is corporate money controlling both major political parties and of course the dominance of the corporate media, all in effect creating a one-party corporate government with it's official controlled media.
>> 
>> David J.
>> 
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ricky Baldwin" <rbaldwin at seiu73.org>
>> To: "Alex Cline" <rev.a.r.cline at gmail.com>
>> Cc: <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
>> Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2012 6:03 PM
>> Subject: [Peace-discuss] Americans Would Be Worse Off If Obama Were Defeated, WAS: Why we should vote (& much more) against Obama
>> 
>> 
>> 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.
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>>> _______________________________________________
>>> OccupyCU mailing list
>>> OccupyCU at lists.chambana.net
>>> http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/occupycu
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
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