The Second Year of the Obama Administration: Facts, Opinions and Discussions

And the sooner people face the reality that our system is a, as I said years ago, a clientocracy serving special interests, the sooner we can decide what kind of system we want or need to prosper again.

But please don't fall for Sen. Schumer's crocodile tears. He's as big a part of the problem as anyone. A pretender.

 

Well, I don't think either should be allowed to, so there you go.

And, ShaneP, seeing as I have no control over Senator Schumer's political fortunes nor does he represent my state, I was unaware that he had said anything related to the issue.

 

There used to be a difference. Unions were sorely needed and helped improve the working landscape.

But today many unions are power players and can have great political clout.

So unions and corporations should both be allowed if any of them are allowed. It can't be exclusive. It's up to voters to be discerning and educated.

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darthramza Schumer has called for hearings on the ruling. Schumer, you can have hearings until you're blue in the face. The ruling is inviolate and out of your power thirsty hands thanks to the U.S. Constitution.

In a perfect world darthramza, you and I would have our dream of only individual citizens donating to campaigns and those campaigns being more grass-roots and austere.

But we live in a country with powerful self-interest. As such, we have to make the best with that imperfect system. That's what the framers of the Constitution foresaw: that this nation might not be so enlightened. That's why we have a redundant system, as clunky and sometimes frustrating as it is. The alternative is worse.

 

Can you tell me what the difference is between a union and a corporation?

Isn't it that a union's intention is that it's existence is meant to improve the living standards of its members while the intention of a corporation is to increase profits for the owner or shareholders of that corporation?

 

I would say that a union's intent is to enrich itself and to make sure that no prophit is made by the corporation. And a corporation's intent is to provide a good or service.

Perspective is everything, isn't it?

 

I would say that a union's intent is to enrich itself and to make sure that no prophit is made by the corporation. And a corporation's intent is to provide a good or service.

Perspective is everything, isn't it?

It's not a matter of perspective because then we're not talking about the same thing.

A union is never created with the explicit intention of enriching itself. Any such organization is not a union: why would anyone sign up to an organization that TELLS you it's just trying to enrich itself? Likewise any union explicitly trying to ensure no money is made by a corporation is self-defeating: the problem generally comes in where a corporation claims it needs to make X amount of money, and the union does not believe them.

Likewise a corporation whose intent is only to provide a good or service with profit margin as a secondary concern isn't a corporation definition I'm familiar with unless it's a non-profit organization or charity -- perhaps something like UNICEF which has a paid staff but, supposedly, does not itself make an actual profit.

 

The union's mission is to aggregate the individual power of workers in order to negotiate the price of their labor on an equal footing with the employer.

 

Why that sounds an awful lot like... SOCIALISM!?!?!?!!

 

There is nothing more socialist than a labor union. And exactly that kind of socialism is what created American middle class wealth in the 20th century.

 

Well, I wouldn't actually call collective bargaining of private workers "socialist". But unions were traditionally tied to socialist movements because the capitalists were tied to the ruling classes.

Another thing that tied unions to socialism, particularly Fabian socialism, is the idea of minimum wage, universal provision(welfare and unemployment insurance), etc.

But unions themselves were not socialist in the strictest terms. But they did have ties and affinities with some of the socialist movements.

However, the U.S. unions were far less radical than their European counterparts.

But they did help contribute to the rise of the middle class, along with loosening trade restrictions and the common markets that developed post-WW2 in Europe.

If anything, labor unions were closer to syndicalism. In fact, in Spain and Italy is where those movements gained their greatest momentum and practice with federated unions forming governments.

 

Because by law, I have to pay dues if I'm a member or not for one of my jobs?

 

Because by law, I have to pay dues if I'm a member or not for one of my jobs?

If it was an organization that professedly just trying to make money for itself, that law would not exist.

 

They were talking about Brown's win on Fox news quite extensively. Huckabee said that it's probably the beginning of Obama's re-election, since it'll inspire him to be more centrist. While that's laying it a bit thick, I hope he's right, and that Obama can make some real substantive progress in the coming year.

 

I think he is preparing to tap into populist anger and go after the banks/corporations. Get ready for an epic struggle, starting with the State of the Union on Wednesday.

 

As I've said for a year, we will be able to judge Obame's first year after he gives his State of the Union address.

If only the staunch supporter of the President could learn to spell the name correctly. This does not reflect well toward the level of support or commitment.

I too am willing to wait for the State of the Union address next week. It appears that Obama is being maneuvered into a position that is more manageable for Conservatives. Marginalizing the amount of damage Obama can inflict is essential. His responses during the State of the Union will determine the necessary next steps on my part.

On a preliminary side note, I?m starting to warm up to David Axelrod as an unintended ally. What an idiot. I hope Obama keeps him close.

 

goodbye.

 

Here is an interesting Newsweek piece... Obama isn't losing support because he's liberal, he's been governing as a center-right centrist for the past year. He's losing support because he's following his head, and not his heart. There are other articles critical of Obama at Newsweek too,


http://www.newsweek.com/id/232167

The Trouble with Barack
Obama is accused of being too radical, but he's been governing from the middle for a year. So why all the anger? Because he's leading with his head, not his heart.

First, a bit of personal history. I am a Southerner, a churchgoer, and a swing voter in presidential elections. I believe America is a center-right nation. I am at work on a biography of George H.W. Bush. I pay plenty of taxes already, thanks, and I have no automatic faith in government's capacity to solve problems. I share these details to make clear that I am not a reflexive lefty. Far from it.

That said, I hope President Obama does not take the conventional message from the Democrats' drubbing in Massachusetts (where they lost a Senate seat they'd held since 1952, the year John Kennedy beat Henry Cabot Lodge): go to the center, Mr. President. Turn right before it is too late?or, at the very least, stop trying to do so much. Even my friend David Brooks of The New York Times?a columnist whom Obama reads very closely?believes the president tried to change the equation of American life in favor of too much government, too radically and too quickly.

To me, however, the evidence fails to support the contention that the Barack Obama who governed from Jan. 20, 2009, to Jan. 20, 2010?the day after Scott Brown's defeat of Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts Senate race?was a Chicago Che or even an unreconstructed Great Society liberal. Obama is essentially a centrist. His world view cannot be easily consigned to the familiar categories of left and right. In fact, those categories have been obsolescent since George W. Bush effectively nationalized the banks and Obama won the nomination on a center-right cultural platform. No matter how simplistic competing cable networks try to make things, when you have a Republican president behaving like a European socialist and a Democratic president who opposes gay marriage and has added troops to Afghanistan, you are living in a volatile ideological age.

And yet many Americans?or at least many politically engaged Americans, who are the ones who count most in such matters?appear to think Obama has been a revolutionary who is only now learning his lesson. In an interview with Jonathan Karl of ABC News, Sen. Evan Bayh, the Indiana Democrat, said, "There's going to be a tendency on the part of our people to be in denial about all this ? If you lose Massachusetts and that's not a wake-up call, there's no hope of waking up." Bayh continued, "The only way we are able to govern successfully in this country is by liberals and progressives making common cause with independents and moderates. Whenever you have just the furthest-left elements of the Democratic Party attempting to impose their will on the rest of the country, that's not going to work too well." It is a neat and familiar storyline. But that does not make it accurate.

Yes, the deficit is too great, our debt is too deep, unemployment is too high, and the health-care debate has been confusing and counterproductive. And yes, the stimulus bill added to that deficit?but a great deal of the package cut taxes, and even conservative economists agree it has helped (and many liberals think it was too small, so there is a big damned-if-you-do element at work here).

A few counterintuitive points: Obama was not about to socialize American medicine. The president's health-care plan was to the right of where Richard Nixon was on the issue more than 35 years ago. The bailouts of Wall Street and Detroit automakers either began under the previous administration or seemed essential to averting greater economic calamity. (A tough sell, these preventive wars. "It's always hard in politics to make the ca

 

This is an interesting opinion piece from a generally left-leaning magazine as evidenced by such covers as this:

[image=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/85/20091123_Newsweek_Palin_Cover.jpg/424px-20091123_Newsweek_Palin_Cover.jpg.png]

[image=http://www.kneedeepinthehooah.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/newsweek-socialist-cover.jpg]

From the article: "We are all socialists now"

We remain a center-right nation in many ways?particularly culturally, and our instinct, once the crisis passes, will be to try to revert to a more free-market style of capitalism?but it was, again, under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years: prescription drugs for the elderly.

the numbers clearly suggest that we are headed in a more European direction.

Bush brought the Age of Reagan to a close; now Obama has gone further, reversing Bill Clinton's end of big government.

The catch is that more government intrusion in the economy will almost surely limit growth (as it has in Europe, where a big welfare state has caused chronic high unemployment)

The Obama administration is caught in a paradox. It must borrow and spend to fix a crisis created by too much borrowing and spending.


It is indeed a paradox because it doesn't make sense--and now Obama is looking to how he can stop spending due to pressure from the American people (especially evidenced by the election of Scott Brown). Much of the failing of the recent health care plans has been due to the fact that the public knows how much we'll need to spend to follow through with it (especially if Mass. health care is any indication of what it will mean for the nation).

Bush spent $1.8 trillion in 2001, according to government budget figures that have been adjusted for inflation based on 2000 dollars. Using the same formula, former President Bill Clinton spent $1.6 trillion in 1993.

The last president to clock in under $1 trillion was Gerald Ford, who logged a $982 billion budget in 1975. Post-war Dwight Eisenhower even brought Uncle Sam's tab down to $556 billion in his first year, 1953.

Obama's first-year budget, adjusted for inflation, is about five times that. His 2009 budget is also close to 21 percent of that for Clinton's eight years in office -- Clinton's spending added up to $13.5 trillion over his two full terms. Bush spent $16.8 trillion from 2001-2008.

As for more evidence on big government (the author apparently agrees that it is in fact, big):

President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama's budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016? nearly double the amount accumulated under Pres­ident Bush over the same number of years. Overall, the public debt level would double over the next decade to $15.4 trillion ($12.5 trillion in inflation-adjusted dollars). (See Chart 1.) At 67 percent of GDP, this would constitute America's largest debt burden since immediately following World War II.

The data used for the above can be found here: Economic Report of the President 2009

It doesn't help that unemployment is so high, whereas under Reagan's years in office it dropped substantially--rising at first only after the Carter years and his own adoption of big government policies. Similarly, however, Carter was made to blame for the spike that rose to nearly 10% unemployment during Reagan's second term if I'm not mistaken. However, it fell tremendously over the following years, rose slightly, and then continued to fall under Clinton (during the years where big government was coming to a close). Yet, big government has been adopted as the only solution thanks both to Bush and Obama (and possibly some of Clinton's later actions leading into the Bush administration). The

 

That was a touching Meacham opinion piece, but it lacks credibility and strongly resembles an attempt at damage control. Obama has not led as Centrist. His actions come straight out of the Saul Alinsky playbook and I do not expect him to change. We shall see.

 

This is what my post above is all about

Very concise.

 

Asterix, there has always been big government, even under Reagan and Clinton and the Bushes. Bush 43 did do some very socialist things, from socializing prescription drugs for the elderly to spending 700 billion to prop up the banks. You can be right-wing, and be socialist, Republicans just don't like to admit it is socialist when they do. Obama is to the left of Bush, but has still been governing from the center-right, very similar to Clinton's "Third Way." The author is just claiming that as good as it is to be cool and intellectual, you also have to get emotional and show what you want in your heart for this country too, instead of always being diplomatic as Obama has been on the domestic issues this first year. Also, Asterix, we have always been socialists, since FDR at least.

 

To be right-wing however, does not diminish leftist actions and thus it is pointless to bring up (when attempting to argue for Obama as a centrist)--I am calling the author of the opinion piece you posted on his own errors in the context of his article--all I ask is that you look at it in context of his article.

It is arguable how "socialistic" this country actually is, but the author himself goes on about the "end of big-government" era and refers to it as such--so again, my response is meant to be read in context of the article and not entirely what you or I think is true of the country.

If you'd like to assert that he has been governing from center-right, I'm sure you yourself could write a much more substantial and well thought out article than the one you have posted above. Of course, it all depends on the definition of "center"

The author above essentially asserts that to govern like a European socialist is to govern from the center-right.

Interesting idea I heard from my father--when he was a little boy he proposed that the political spectrum was not so much a linear gradient, but something circular.

 

The "soundbite" of the 80's and 90's was the "end of big government," but it wasn't in fact. I think Meacham is arguing Obama needs to develop a few soundbites to help define the tone and vision of his own era. And yes, I believe the left/right spectrum isn't always that accurate in reflecting the complexities of politics and government.

In my opinion, for Obama to have been considered "radical" or some extreme "leftist", he would have had to attempted to: nationalize the banks (instead of giving out loans), nationalize the auto indutries (instead of loans and bankruptcy temporary stewardship), put extreme taxes on the rich and corporations (instead of letting the Bush tax cuts expire), set up a plan to phase out gasoline-powered cars and heavy penalties on heavy-polluting factories/powerplants (instead of the House passing a cap-and-trade system, which will probably not even make it in the Senate), outright expand Medicare to cover every from cradle to grave in that single-payer system (instead of reforming insurance policies and advocating a public option before even being willing to compromise on that), nationalized college education and centralize public education to the federal department, etc. That's what I would expect from a true leftist.

 

That was a touching Meacham opinion piece, but it lacks credibility and strongly resembles an attempt at damage control. Obama has not led as Centrist. His actions come straight out of the Saul Alinsky playbook and I do not expect him to change. We shall see.

That's really only because the term 'Centrist' in America is the equivalent of 'Conservative' in most other first-world nations.