1932 Redux?

By now you're all aware of the latest financial calamity coming out of Wall Street with Lehman Brothers declaring bankruptcy and Merrill being bought out by Bank of America. Meanwhile, the American Insurance Group is teetering on the abyss and forced to lean on their subsidiaries for $20 billion in loans.

One has to wonder if standard depository banks are also endangered. The Federal Deposit Corporation (FDIC) created during the New Deal era is ultimately just an IOU. If this financial calamity however extends to depository banks all of us are in serious trouble. Thankfully, depository banks are subject to more regulation and have avoided calamity so far. But for how long can they remain immune?

Was it so long ago that George W. Bush and his plutocratic soul mates such as John McCain advocated for putting Social Security into this morass? If Republicans had their way, millions of elderly Americans would be confronting poverty right now.

Our current mess is the direct result of conservative ideology that pushed for the deregulation of the financial services sector. Consequently we're on the same path of economic catastrophe that we found ourselves in 1932 when FDR first ran for president.

With Barack Obama we have some hope. John McCain only offers more lipstick for pigs.

The Winning Narrative

Change is passé. Barack Obama squeezed all the juice out of the change orange since announcing his candidacy in February 2007. Personally, I never thought much of the “change you can believe in” slogan but there is no denying Obama went far with it.

However, Sarah Palin’s selection as McCain’s running mate has convinced the public change is coming no matter who wins. Even worse, the very same corporate media that complained Obama only offered “words” compared to Hillary Clinton’s policy specifics during the primary season now argue that McCain’s lack of specifics does not diminish his stature as a maverick. Is that fair? Of course not! But there is no sense whining about it. These are the cards we’ve been dealt.

So how do we change the narrative? The solution is to present the voting public with a stark choice: progress or calamity. Change vs. more of the same is stale and no longer resonates.

The public does not equate John McCain and Sarah Palin with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. That’s the sense I have from phone banking since both conventions. The GOP pulled off a Houdini escape from their record and the media is letting them get away with it. Sarah Pallin is an inexperienced right wing ideologue. But she has made the McCain brand fresh again whereas the public has been watching the Obama campaign for almost two years.

It’s time to replace change vs. more of the same. Instead, every day until November 4th the Obama campaign needs to hammer two messages:

1. Obama-Biden equals progress.
2. McCain-Palin equals calamity.
   

That is the message that needs to be repeated in every advertisement, stump speech, interview, news conference and reinforced by campaign surrogates. One virtue of the progress or calamity narrative is that it happens to be true.

If McCain-Palin is elected more bridges will collapse, as local governments are fiscally incapable today of modernizing our infrastructure. Our roads will remain in disrepair resulting in fatalities. Modernized infrastructure prevents disasters. However, the McCain-Palin ideology favors crony capitalism and bridges to nowhere instead of upgrading our electrical grid, replenishing our shrinking reservoirs and building a mass transit system for the 21st century. McCain-Pallin's inattention to infrastructure will put America on a collision course with multiple catastrophes. America is confronting a water shortage crisis in its southwest as well as more Hurricane Katrina disasters and the deliberate wrecking of FEMA that was professionalized a decade ago under President Clinton.

An Obama-Biden administration will propose creating a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank to help finance revitalizing our transportation. Overall an Obama-Biden administration will prioritize strengthening America’s infrastructure to provide a more stable foundation for a 21st century economy.

Every day millions of Americans are living on the abyss of catastrophe as their HMOs drive them into fiscal insolvency. Under McCain-Palin the plight of the uninsured and under-insured will metastasize as illnesses are not properly treated and families are battered into financial submission paying for treatment. More of the elderly will be forced to choose between paying for food or prescription drugs as the medical industrial complex is strengthened at the expense of wage earners and small business entrepreneurs.

An Obama-Biden administration will propose a national health plan that makes available for all Americans affordable health coverage similar to the benefits enjoyed by members of Congress. Obama’s plan includes the self-employed and small businesses. Click here to read more details.

As the purchasing power of regular folks continues to erode, crime will rise with more people out of work. More children will grow up in households where one or both parents are working multiple jobs and not home to provide supervision and nurturing resulting in an increase in juvenile crime. Local governments under McCain-Palin will be too under-funded to address these challenges because of tax cuts to the rich instead of providing federal aid. Meanwhile, state correctional facilities that sustain itself through incarceration of non-violent criminals for recreational drug use will parole violent criminals due to overcrowding. This is a ticking time bomb in American society that will be exacerbated under McCain-Pallin.

If elected, an Obama-Biden administration will invest over $1 billion to empower low-income wage earners in transitional jobs and career pathway programs that are proven to help low tech laborers succeed in the workforce. An Obama-Biden administration will also work to better help integrate ex-convicts into society with job training, substance abuse and mental health counseling, and ensuring access to employment opportunities. Click here to read more details.

McCain-Palin’s “drill baby drill” energy policy means America will be at Saudi Arabia’s mercy as they continue to buy American real-estate. The very same Saudi Arabia that eighteen of the 9/11 hijackers came from. We will also have no leverage against the evil KGB spy-master Vladimir Putin as he tries to become a 21st century Peter the Great through the power of Russian oil.

Click here to listen to Obama’s August 4th speech in Lansing, Michigan about energy policy.

A McCain-Palin administration would be stocked with delusional zealots who hope to prosecute war with Iran while our overextended military is burdened with two military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. If these zealots have their way, Iran will respond by attacking Israel and Israel will respond with nuclear weapons. Meanwhile if McCain-Palin is elected the Taliban is more likely to prevail in Afghanistan and al Quaeda will once again have bases there and Pakistan to launch terrorist attacks on American soil. Even worse a McCain-Palin administration will further radicalize the Islamic world and make it impossible for moderate voices to emerge.

Click here to either read or watch a video of an October 2007 speech in which Obama outlines a forward looking foreign policy based on rationality and diplomacy.

If McCain-Palin is elected the damage to the federal bench will be irreversible for decades. Not only the Supreme Court is at stake but the entire federal judiciary. McCain-Palin will appoint judges presiding over legal controversies with respect to new technologies and civil liberties. Their Supreme Court will be stocked with more John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas extremists that will protect the rights of government agencies and private industry to retaliate against whistle blowers. And if that isn’t enough, a McCain-Palin administration will ensure America returns to the days of back alley abortions.

Consider what The Nation had to say on June 12th:

“When the U.S Senate voted in September 2007, on whether to restore habeas corpus protections for those detained by the United States, the senators who would emerge as the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees for president parted company.

Illinois Democrat Barack Obama embraced the basic Constitutional principle that individuals who are detained by the U.S. government have a right to challenge their detention -- no matter where they are held.

Arizona Republican John McCain rejected the wisdom of the founders of the American experiment and voted against restoring habeas corpus protections for foreign suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and others who are detained by U.S. authorities.

Today, the Supreme Court said Obama was right and McCain was wrong.”

It is infinitely preferable to have a president who believes in habeas corpus nominating justices for the Supreme Court.

And let’s not forget global warming. If McCain-Palin is elected the civilized world will lose the shrinking window of opportunity to reverse global warming. That means the polar ice caps will melt and Manhattan Island will be underneath the sea.

Click here to watch Obama’s video about energy plan to combat global warming.

McCain-Palin is not simply more of the same. McCain-Palin means irreversible calamity for America and the world. Electing Obama-Biden means progress and hope that America will address the challenges ahead and establish cooperative relationships with the civilized world. The future of civilization may well come down to how effectively we persuade undecided voters in Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio and Pennsylvania on November 4th. That is the sort of urgency we need to convey. Indeed that is the sort of urgency Obama himself must convey.

This isn’t reality television. This isn’t kids stuff. This is a choice between progress or calamity. Starting tomorrow we have fifty-four days to ensure the American people understand that choice.

The Real Stakes

John McCain wants Sarah Palin to distract voters from the real stakes of this election: blood, war and death. Don't let him get away with it.

Obama, McCain & the Infrastructure Thing

Sarah Palin has enabled John McCain to revive the culture war as we argue over who is the real elitist, sexist or patriot. We've seen these sorts of smokescreens from Republicans before. They're diabolically brilliant at distracting voters with visceral appeals to the politics of cultural resentment while exploiting America's dark underbelly of racism and xenophobia. McCain/Palin even have the chutzpah to campaign as patriotic change agents eager to fight on behalf of regular folks while promoting polices that amount to class warfare against wage earners and small business entrepreneurs.

How easy to get caught up in Sarah Palin's polarizing celebrity and lose sight of the real issues at stake. That's exactly what the GOP wants. I too have been consumed by the Palin phenomenon in recent days and the GOP's toxic convention. Well it's time to get back to basics. Obama did a good job of that yesterday with respect to the new unemployment figures. I'd like to take a moment and focus attention on another vitally important issue that's easily overtaken by cultural politics: infrastructure.

Infrastructure is the lynchpin for any nation's ability to compete in a modern global economy. Fifty-two years ago we had a forward looking Republican President named Dwight Eisenhower who signed The National Interstate and Defense Highways Act. The law appropriated $25 billion for the construction of 41,000 miles of interstate highways. It was the largest publics works project in American history at the time. Gasp! It required the power of our federal government.

Ninety-percent of the project was paid through a highway trust fund while the states contributed ten percent of the funding. Eisenhower believed this law vital to America's national security interests to help the military to mobilize troops more effectively in case of invasion by a foreign power. Ultimately, the investment more than paid for itself through jobs, economic growth and the development of the suburbs.

However, the Interstate Highway System also resulted in vehicle pollution and increased our dependence on foreign oil. Hence, with global warming and collapsing bridges our infrastructure requires a twenty-first century upgrade. Senator Obama addresses this issue of infrastructure at his website:

"As our society becomes more mobile and interconnected, the need for 21st century transportation networks has never been greater. However, too many of our nation’s railways, highways,bridges, airports, and neighborhood streets are slowly decaying due to lack of investment and strategic longterm planning. Barack Obama believes that America’s long-term competitiveness depends on the stability of our critical infrastructure. As president, Obama will make strengthening our transportation systems, including our roads and bridges, a top priority."

You can read the rest of Obama's infrastructure program by clicking here. Among the details referenced on his website is his proposal to create a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank. According to the Obama campaign, the purpose of this bank is to,

"expand and enhance, not supplant, existing federal transportation investments. This independent entity will be directed to invest in our nation’s most challenging transportation infrastructure needs. The Bank will receive an infusion of federal money, $60 billion over 10 years, to provide financing to transportation infrastructure projects across the nation. These projects will create up to two million new direct and indirect jobs per year and stimulate approximately $35 billion per year in new economic activity."

Now presidential candidates make many promises and one may have valid criticisms and questions about Obama's program. You might therefore be interested in comparing Obama's infrastructure program with John McCain's. However, when reviewing John McCain's website, his use of the word "infrastructure" is rather non-sequitor. For example:

"America cannot afford to lag in providing its citizens access to 21st Century infrastructure. Our children cannot count on a good education without high-speed Internet access. Without access, our citizens risk being left out of the societal and cultural changes that are sweeping the planet on a wave of innovation. Solving the problems of health care, immigration, climate change, and energy dependence all require connecting our citizens to a world-class network."

Hard to argue with the need for providing high speed Internet access. But what about modernizing our transportation system? Has he thought about that? McCain uses the word infrastructure again with this paragraph:

"As President, John McCain would continue to encourage private investment to facilitate the build-out of infrastructure to provide high-speed Internet connectivity all over America. However, where private industry does not answer the call because of market failures or other obstacles, John McCain believes that people acting through their local governments should be able to invest in their own future by building out infrastructure to provide high-speed Internet services."

Well that's nice. Once again McCain references the word infrastructure with respect to high speed Internet access. Wonderful that the man is finally taking an interest in the Internet and that he has such faith in the ability of local governments to address our infrastructure needs. Never mind that state governments are in dire economic straits and struggling to pay for any infrastructure improvements. As the New York Times recently reported, budgets gaps are forcing states to grapple with the risks of private financing for infrastructure projects to repair crumbling bridges, roads and airports. Among the potential risks is having foreign powers subsidizing repairs to our infrastructure.

Did I neglect to mention that John McCain is not offering a program with respect to modernizing our transportation and infrastructure? However, McCain's website (I wonder if he's read it) uses the word infrastructure three times with respect to America's space program.

For what it's worth, according to dictonary.com, there are three definitions to the word infrastructure:

1. the basic, underlying framework or features of a system or organization.
2. the fundamental facilities and systems serving a country, city, or area, as transportation and communication systems, power plants, and schools.
3. the military installations of a country.
   

Yet when reviewing McCain's website, one can't help but wonder if he understands the meaning of the word. Ironically, the New York Times reported last year that McCain criticized congress following the Minnesota bridge collapse for failing to address infrastructure repairs:

“I think, perhaps, you could make an argument that part of the responsibility lies with the Congress of the United States,’’ Mr. McCain said at a town hall meeting here just outside of Des Moines. “Do you know what we do with your tax dollars every time you go and fill up your gas tank, and that money that flows to Washington as a result of that? We spend approximately 20 billion –b — billion dollars of that money on pork barrel earmark projects.’’

No doubt he had the "bridge to nowhere in mind" that his running mate was for before she was against. I'll give McCain credit for at least using the word infrastructure in its proper context at the time.

The upshot my fellow citizens is that John McCain and his Republican Party haven't applied any serious thinking to infrastructure since President Eisenhower. They don't care. The basics of good government such as infrastructure does not interest John McCain or his party. And if he becomes President America will continue to decline.

Barack Obama as he himself has acknowledged is not a perfect candidate. Personally I wish Obama was bolder and less risk averse. But at least the vitally important issue of infrastructure is on the front lobes of his brain.

Those of you who are activists like myself, please consider talking to people about infrastructure. For much of the summer I've struggled while phone banking against the undercurrent of racism and ignorance (he's a Muslim, he's all talk, he dissed the troops and so forth). However, most recently I have found myself getting traction when interjecting infrastructure into the conversation - even with people who seemed cynical or culturally opposed to Obama. Bricks and mortar is something everyone understands.

Editorial From Anchorage

Governor Sarah Palin is a clever means for the McCain campaign to distract from their abysmal prescriptions for the economy and the Republican Party's record. However, the good people of Alaska won't be scripted and distractions cut both ways. The Anchorage Daily News, Alaksa's most read newspaper just released a blistering editorial:

"Gov. Sarah Palin is taking the wrong approach to Troopergate. She should be practicing the open and transparent, ethical and accountable government she promised when running for governor and boasts about now that she's on the national stage.

Instead, Gov. Palin has begun stonewalling the Legislature's attempt to get the bottom of allegations that she, her family or staff violated ethical or state personnel rules.

As a result, the Troopergate allegations hang over Palin's future and cloud her candidacy for vice president.

The allegations are that she, her family or administration improperly pressured then-Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan to fire Gov. Palin's ex-brother-in-law, state trooper Mike Wooten, who had been in the middle of a custody dispute with Palin's sister.

In July, when legislators started talking about conducting an investigation, Palin denied any wrongdoing and said she welcomed an investigation.

'Hold me accountable,' she said.

The Legislature took her up on that offer. But this week, she basically told the Legislature, 'Never mind.'"

Click here to read their entire editorial.

Thought of the Day

Remember when President Bush boasted he would smoke Osama Bin Laden from his cave? Well the McCain campaign is hoping the media will have an even harder time forcing Governor Sarah Palin to emerge from her hermetically sealed dungeon. If my guess is right however, a daily barrage of scandals and revelations coming from Alaska will force the McCain campaign to schedule some kind of press conference.

Regardless, October promises to be the most anticipated Vice Presidential debate since Dan Qualye and Lloyd Bentsen in 1988. I only hope Gwen Ifill of PBS won't allow Palin to weasel out of tough questions.

Cognitive Dissonance

First let me thank readers of the Intrepid Liberal Journal for their patience. I’m still struggling to resolve my tech issues and continue to only have dial up access. Also, thanks for the emails asking if I’m OK. Rest assured I am fine and even with dialup I wanted to post some of the thoughts rattling in my head.

As we approach the final stretch of this presidential campaign I remain frustrated by the cognitive dissonance among the media and the public. Conventional wisdom suggests that Senator Obama represents dramatic change – almost revolutionary. Senator John McCain however is a conservative maverick we can trust as commander and chief even if we may disagree with him on other issues.

To a large extent this cognitive dissonance was reinforced by Obama’s selection of Senator Joe Biden as his running mate. The commentariat and punditocracy consistently repeated the meme that Obama was addressing his “weaknesses” in his selection of Joe Biden as a “reassuring” figure. Meanwhile, John McCain has once again demonstrated his maverick touch by selecting Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

It seems to me however that John McCain is neither conservative nor a maverick. John McCain is a radical nationalist and zealous proponent of American exceptionalism. His running mate is a compelling person with admirable qualities. It’s impossible not to like her or respect how Governor Palin challenged Alaska’s entrenched corrupt political establishment – a cause many bloggers on both the left and right have an affinity for.

However, Governor Palin is not a person to challenge Republican orthodoxy with respect to cultural issues or global warming. Nor will she represent any counterweight to the neocons that inhabit McCain’s foreign policy shop. Hence, Palin’s selection only reinforces that McCain is captive to the Christian radicals in his own party and has no interest in empowering any counterweight against the radical global vision the Bush/Cheney administration disastrously pursued. Simply put, Governor Palin being a heartbeat away from the presidency is no better than the prospect of John McCain becoming president.

As for Senator Obama my fear is that his presidency would be too risk averse and fail to boldly challenge the mindset that produced our current occupation in Iraq or dramatically reverse the crony corporatism that pervades our culture and economy. Obama will facilitate adjustments in the tax code to provide relief for wage earners and with an enhanced Democratic majority deliver something on healthcare. I’m also reasonably confident his selections to the Supreme Court and the federal bench as a whole will have more respect for the Constitution, civil liberties and protecting whistle blowers who tell truth to power. These are not unimportant things.

However, I am not confident that Obama will come up with a bold new economic and social contract like FDR. This country needs a dramatic overhaul in infrastructure as well as committing to the vision expressed by former Vice President Al Gore that we end our dependence on fossil fuels. So far, I’m not seeing or hearing any evidence beyond platitudes that an Obama presidency will be sufficiently bold. In fairness to Obama though, FDR’s 1932 presidential campaign wasn’t especially bold either.

My sense however is that the Obama/Biden ticket represents a restoration of the corporate centrism of George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Clinton. This brand of corporate centrism cultivates cooperative relationships among democracies and strategic rivals in the name of “stability.”

Under such a regime, when America doesn’t appear to have a dog in a fight such as genocide in Rawanda in the early ‘90s there is a good chance force will not be used. When our energy supply is threatened, as it was when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991, our military will be deployed. Corporate centrism is more socially moderate when the president is a Democrat and certainly preferable to McCain. If nothing else governments will not be toppled gratuitously and allies needlessly alienated. But it’s not good enough.

So my message to all like-minded progressives is that while the cause is better served with a President Obama the fight does not end there. A progressive reform majority is essential in congress as well as state legislatures and governor mansions from coast to coast if America is to become better global citizens abroad that also promotes dignity and economic citizens for all our citizens at home.

Ironically, Obama himself, a community organizer in his youth has advocated for the American people to push for change from the bottom up. So while I am not convinced Obama will be out front on the change we need perhaps his presidency can be a catalyst to the public mobilizing in a direction of national renewal on behalf of working people, civil liberties and social justice. At least I hope so.

Apologies To Readers

As you can see I haven't been active recently. Since the end of July I've had no high speed Internet access at home due to tech issues regarding my PC. All I have is dialup at home and can't maintain a connection long enough to blog effectively. My apologies to loyal readers and I ask for your patience until my tech issues are resolved.