Day: December 3, 2008

Obama’s No Ideology

The ideology of no ideology is nifty. No matter how tilted in favor of powerful interests, it can be a deft way to keep touting policy agendas as common-sense pragmatism — virtuous enough to draw opposition only from ideologues.

Meanwhile, the end of ideology among policymakers is about as imminent as the end of history.

But — in sync with the ideology of no ideology — deference to corporate power isn’t ideological. And belief in the U.S. government’s prerogative to use military force anywhere in the world is a matter of credibility, not ideology.

Along the way, the ideology of no ideology can corral even normally incisive commentators. So, over the weekend, as news broke about the nominations of Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers to top economic posts, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote an article praising “the members of Obama’s new economic team.” Reich declared: “All are pragmatists. Some media have dubbed them ‘centrists’ or ‘center-right,’ but in truth they’re remarkably free of ideological preconception. … They are not visionaries but we don’t need visionaries when the economic perils are clear and immediate. We need competence. Obama could not appoint a more competent group.”

As for competence, it seems that claims of non-ideology often go hand-in-hand with overblown claims of economic mastery. “Geithner and Summers are credited with expertise in crisis management,” economist Mark Weisbrot pointed out on Monday, “but we better hope they don’t manage the current crisis like they did in East Asia, Russia, Argentina or any of the other countries that Treasury was involved in during the 1990s with their help. They helped bring on the East Asian crisis in 1997 by pressuring the governments in the region to de-regulate international financial flows, which was the main cause of the crisis. Then they insisted that all bailout money go through the IMF, and delayed aid until most of the damage was done. Then they attached damaging conditions” to the aid.

After all is said and done, the ideology of no ideology is just like any other ideology that’s apt to be much better at promoting itself than living up to its pretenses. No amount of flowery rhetoric or claims of transcendent non-ideology should deter tough scrutiny. And Judge Judy’s injunction should apply to the ideology of no ideology as much as to any ideology that owns up to being one: “Don’t pee on me and tell me it’s raining.”

From an article written by Norman Solomon.

Cheney Is Cleared–Again

He and former Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales were included in a Texas prisoner-abuse case, Cheney because he invests in a company that invests in prison firms.

A judge dismissed indictments against Vice President Dick Cheney and former Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales on Monday and chastised the southern Texas prosecutor who brought the case.

Three of the eight indictments returned Nov. 17 targeted private prison operator the GEO Group, state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., Cheney and Gonzales as part of an investigation into prisoner abuse at privately run federal prisons in the county.

The indictment against Cheney alleged that his personal investment in the Vanguard Group, which invests in private prison companies, made him culpable in alleged prisoner abuse. Gonzales was accused of using his position to stop an investigation into abuses at a federal detention center.

It is good to be the Vice President, eh?

Auto CEO’s Blow Smoke

Ford Motor Co. will tell Congress that it plans to return to a pretax profit or break even in 2011 when the Detroit Three automakers’ CEOs appear before lawmakers this week to request $25 billion in government loans. Ford CEO Alan Mulally said he’ll work for $1 per year if the company has to take any government loan money.  STOP!  May I see a show of hands of those who believe this BS?

After grilling the CEOs at hearings last month, Congressional leaders demanded plans from the automakers by Tuesday to show that they will survive if they get federal funds. The plan Ford submitted said the company will cancel all management employees’ 2009 bonuses and will not pay any merit increases for its North American salaried employees next year.

Do you really think that a man that makes $20 miilion in bonuses is gonna go quietly into the night?  I have an idea for them–fire ALL management and start over–eliminate the greed—If these guys remain, they will get their blood money somewhere, some how.

All three companies’ chief executives agreed to symbolic steps, including salaries of $1 a year and the elimination of corporate jets to make their case more palatable, and they were traveling to the capital in hybrid vehicles to underscore the point. It’s 520 miles from Detroit to Washington.

These guys are blowing smoke up Congress’ ass.

World Economy Just Sucks

The United Nations says the world economy faces its worst downturn since the Great Depression.

It expects world economic output to shrink by as much as 0.4% in 2009, due to a slump among developed countries – particularly the US and in Europe.

This would mark the world economy’s first year of contraction since the 1930s, the UN said.

The UN expects developed economies to shrink by up to 1.5%, while developing nations should expand by at least 2.7%.

But because of higher population growth in developing countries, income per capita for the world as a whole is expected to fall in 2009.

And the slowing of growth in the poorest countries “suggests a significant setback in the progress made in poverty reduction in many developing countries over the past few years.”

The UN’s World Economic Situation and Prospects 2009 report gives three forecasts for growth next year – a baseline forecast of 1% growth, a pessimistic scenario of a 0.4% contraction and an optimistic scenario of 1.6% growth.

This compares with growth of 2.5% in 2008 and 3.8% in 2007.

The report said that developed economies have led the downturn, but that the global nature of trade and finance meant that economic weakness had spread rapidly to developing countries.

It warned that the international community had been complacent about the impact of the global financial crisis on poorer countries.

They are facing higher borrowing costs and lower export growth.

The UN also says that the downturn highlights key failures in the international financial system.

Where Is The Quality?

Insurers’ government-backed health plans for the elderly have increased taxpayer costs with no evidence of improved care, according to research backing President-elect Barack Obama’s call to lower U.S. subsidies.

Many of the Medicare Advantage plans, as they are called, don’t coordinate care to avoid duplication and ensure the best results, authors said in articles posted today on the Web site of Health Affairs. The plans were devised to offer more benefits than conventional Medicare paid directly by the U.S. government.

About a fourth of the 44 million people on Medicare are covered by the Advantage plans, with the U.S. expected to pay $100 billion this year for the coverage. Congress had increased payments in 2003, helping private insurers led by UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Humana Inc. Obama has called payments to insurers excessive and pledged to reduce funding by $15 billion annually.

Congress and the new president should set clear goals for Medicare, authors of a separate Health Affairs article said. That means facing down ideologues who want Medicare to wither and those who want it to be the foundation of the U.S. health-care system.

Will this be as important on Jan.21 as it was during the run up to the election?  Will the economy trump all other promises or will it be a priority?

Enemy Of The Working Class

If you work for a living then you had better pay attention to what your president-elect is up to…he is appointing people that are not friends of working men and women.

The selection of Volcker that is the sharpest warning to the working class. No other individual in modern US history is so closely identified with the deliberate creation of mass unemployment to drive down wages and smash the organized resistance of the working class to the demands of corporate America. He put into motion policies that led to the destruction of large sections of industry and the explosive growth of financial speculation in the US economy.

Volcker served as Fed Chairman from 1979 to 1987, a critical period in the history of the American working class, in which the official labor movement was effectively destroyed as an instrument of workers’ self-defense, and the unions transformed into what they are today: a mechanism for the suppression of workers’ struggles and the destruction of their jobs and wages.

Runaway price inflation had sparked a series of bitter strikes by workers seeking to defend their living standards, and the Carter administration had suffered a humiliating defeat when more than 100,000 coal miners struck for 111 days in 1977-78 in defiance of a presidential no-strike order under the Taft-Hartley Law. The White House had been unable to cow the miners into submission—they publicly burned copies of the president’s back-to-work order on the picket line—and Carter was compelled to rely on the leadership of the United Mine Workers union to deprive the rank-and-file of any gains from their struggle.

Volcker was brought in to initiate policies that would suppress inflation—and the wages movement in the working class—by driving up the rate of unemployment. Under his leadership, the Federal Reserve rapidly raised interest rates to an unprecedented 20 percent, choking off home-buying and purchases of cars and other durable goods and triggering a series of corporate bankruptcies.

Like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime, Volcker now goes back to Washington as a principal adviser to another Democratic Party administration preparing to bail out bankrupt auto manufacturers at the expense of the auto workers and the working class as a whole. He can rely on his direct personal experience with the UAW bureaucracy to demand that the union finish the job it began three decades ago: transforming what was once the most powerful section of the American working class into a super-exploited mass of low-paid, casual laborers, without any rights.

Volcker’s record from 1979 to 1987 suggests what this “fresh perspective” will consist of. Unemployment in the United States reached 11.3 percent in 1982, double the level of 1975. The average wage of young workers fell 30 percent by 1987. Infant mortality, family violence, drug addiction and other concomitants of economic hardship soared.

But the wealthiest 1 percent of the population saw a staggering 50 percent increase in their wealth during that period. That is why the American ruling elite remembers the Volcker years fondly, and why, acting through their servant Obama, the financial aristocracy has summoned the old reactionary for one last service in attacking the working class.

I have given you something to consider and something of a prophecy….will I be proven right?  You will see.

Carbon Trading: Crisis In Waiting

The plan, at first glance, seems simplicity itself: by charging companies for the right to emit CO2, the government hopes to encourage them to switch to cleaner and greener technologies. It is the latest development in a global campaign to save the planet by making polluters pay.

We are witnessing the birth of the greatest and most complex commodity market the world has seen. Last year alone, permits worth more than £55 billion were traded on the world’s carbon markets – but future trading volumes, if all goes global according to plan, will dwarf these.

Carbon trading schemes originate from the Kyoto protocol on climate change agreed under the auspices of the United Nations in 1997. Governments adhering to Kyoto accept limits on the CO2 their countries can emit. To meet their pledges, they put caps on the carbon outputs of domestic companies, which have to buy annual permits to exceed them.

Permits are bought from governments or from carbon traders, who, naturally, charge a commission. For the City the arrival of carbon trading is a bonanza. The sector already employs about 3,000 people and has created a few dozen new millionaires.

It sounds good news for everyone: governments, taxpayers, City boys and the environment. The reality is a great deal less rosy – indeed some of those closest to the carbon markets say openly that the system is doomed to failure.

Many carbon traders believe they could make the system work but fear the politicians who oversee it will never dare put a sufficiently high price on carbon emissions to make a difference.

The idea is certainly appealing: if a company is emitting too much CO2 it can either make cuts or pay other companies to cut their emissions instead. If it turns out to be cheaper to pay someone in China to plant a forest to absorb carbon dioxide, or a factory in India to install clean technology to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases, then this is allowed, provided the project has been approved under the UN framework convention on climate change. For each tonne of CO2 saved, the convention issues a certified emission reduction certificate, or CER. These are valuable: indeed, they are the nearest thing to currency that the carbon markets acknowledge. Each one is worth about £14.

The original plan was to create a system for transferring wealth from developed countries such as Britain and America to the Third World, hence killing two birds with one stone: cutting emissions and helping international development.

Greed—the buzz kill–will rear its ugly little head and then this will become just another crisis waiting to happen.

Greens Call Obama To Task

This is from a press release of the Green Party on Obama and his appointments.

Green Party leaders called on President-elect Barack Obama to appoint a Cabinet that will pursue real reform, in accord with Mr. Obama’s promise of change in the new administration.

“Democratic and Republican presidents alike have a record of naming industry chiefs, corporate board members and lawyers, and others loyal to wealthy, elite interests,” said Holly Hart, secretary of the Green Party of the United States. “If President Obama truly believes in ‘change we can believe in,’ he’ll appoint a Cabinet that looks like America — not just in ethnic and gender diversity, but in its dedication to the needs of working Americans and the goal of international peace and justice.”
“Barack Obama’s mantra of ‘change’ is already a lie. With Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff, and with Hillary Clinton rumored to be Secretary of State, the Obama White House is ready to pursue much of the same agenda as previous administrations,” said Cliff Thornton, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States. “It’s a twisted irony that some tried to tag Obama as a socialist, a perception that will make it that much easier for his administration to continue the practice of redistributing wealth from middle- and low-income Americans to America’s wealthiest. Bill Clinton was denounced as a liberal by the same right-wing pundits whose corporate buddies he was handing America over to. The same sell-out is going to happen all over again.”

“Voters who elected Barack Obama because of his promise of change and the hope of a progressive administration need to wake up and realize they’re in for yet another fight. Only if the voters hold Obama to his promises can we avoid the same pro-corporate and warhawk policies that came out of the disastrous Clinton and Bush White Houses,” added Mr. Thornton.

Do not think he is listening…..