Posts
There’s an annual political ritual in the U.S. called the
State of the Union Address. The president delivers a speech ghostwritten by a
staff of speechwriters which is calculated to the nth degree. Every single word
is parsed in advance for the political effect it might have.
For a day or two leading up the Big Speech, and the evening
and day after, the U.S. political Jabberariat flap their tongues nonstop about
the alleged meaning of the speech. It’s like listening to baseball fanatics
dissect a game play-by-play. Much ado about almost nothing. Like baseball fans,
they are totally engrossed in this nearly meaningless event.
The professional political propaganda establishment media members
seems oblivious to the fact that the vast majority of Americans have no
interest in this ritual and could not tell you one single thing any president said in any such speech the day
after. (I challenge the system’s pollsters to test this, without prompting
those they poll. Just ask “can you name something the president said in his
State of the Union speech last night? What was it?” I’ll bet money less than
10% could name a single specific.)
There is no reason to take anything Obama says seriously. He
is a known con man and serial prevaricator. Even more than most politicians,
every word out of his mouth is designed to manipulate, not honestly
communicate. The only time you can believe him is when he’s promising to do
something evil.
His speech hit on the usual “populist” tropes the Democratic
Party trots out from time to time, posing as fierce advocates for the middle
class and low-wage workers (while behind the backs of those struggling masses
they work assiduously for the interests of their corporate masters and high
finance). Recall that upon taking office Obama immediately appointed Wall
Street’s men in the key power positions, venal conspirators like Lawrence
Summers, Timothy Geithner, Rahm Emanuel, and their ilk. Obama raised more money
from the barons of high finance than any politician in history in 2008.
Obama presented a sort of political wish-list. The only
things that will pass the GOP-controlled Congress are the bad ones, like a call
for a disguised declaration of war against ISIS (the nihilistic terrorist “Islamic
State” and self-declared caliphate) and passage of yet another anti-worker “free
trade” treaty.
“Nobody
is above the law. And if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people
should be prosecuted, just like any ordinary citizen. But that generally
speaking, I am more interested in looking forward than I am in looking
backwards.”
Of
course Obama is obligated under the Torture Convention treaty that the U.S.
signed and ratified to prosecute American government torturers. [1]
Ralph
Nader incisively and succinctly exposed much of the bogusness in Obama’s latest
blather in an interview on Democracy Now. Host Amy Goodman posed a question on “the
whole issue of tax cuts and taxing the rich?” Nader replied:
Well, he was too
vague on that. What he should have done is said that Ronald Reagan supported
capital gains and dividend taxes like ordinary income, so there wasn’t this
split where the rich get lower tax on their capital gains or dividend. And he
didn’t tie in any idea of revenues for the public works program that he touted.
You know, Amy,
State of the Union speeches are signaling presentations. They signal by what
they say, how they say it and what they don’t say. And on that criteria, it
wasn’t a very coherent speech. He stressed civil liberties and never mentioned
what he’s going to do about the renewal of the notorious PATRIOT
Act provisions. He said that there should be more oil and gas production, and
then he warned about climate change. He said there should be strengthening
unions and voices of workers, and then he took it away with the Trans-Pacific
trade agreement, which exports jobs, and he wants to ram through Congress a
voiceless fast track that prohibits amendments and labor from having a role in
that deliberation.
And he didn’t
even mention the hundreds of billions of dollars of commercial fraud on
Medicare and Medicaid and patients in the private sector—hundreds of billions
of dollars of corporate crime he never mentioned. He could have done a
convergence with the Republicans on auditing the Pentagon, which sounds dull,
but it’s a huge issue that the rank and file on both sides support, in contrast
to the leadership in Congress. He could have easily converged, because as
senator, Senator Obama teamed up with Senator Coburn, the Republican, to put
the full text of hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate contracts online,
so competitors, taxpayers, the media, the academia can analyze and prune the
huge waste, fraud and corruption.
Also notice that
he said again, "Close down Gitmo." We’ve heard that song before.
Again, he didn’t mention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at all.
And I think what
is most troubling is what he avoided saying, like he desperately needs funding
for his programs, like day care and so on. And he didn’t mention the squeeze on
the IRS budget by the Republicans, so the IRS now cannot begin to collect what they say is $300 billion
of evaded taxes every year. That’s $300 billion of evaded taxes, not avoided
taxes, which David Cay Johnston will be talking about.
So, I think he
missed a lot of opportunities. And it was not specific enough. It was not
coherent enough. And he could have gone for more convergence with the
Republicans, as I point out in great detail in my book, Unstoppable: The Emerging
Left-Right Coalition to Dismantle the Corporate State.” [2]
Well, that’s a bit naïve at the end. Missed
opportunities? That’s like saying Hitler missed opportunities to make peace.
Obama’s ends aren’t Nader’s. One shouldn’t be fooled by Pied Pipers and con
men.
1] See “Obama’s Impeachable Offenses Regarding Torture,” Dec. 11, 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment