We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, November 10, 2012

The Meaning of Obama's Win

Click here to access article by Michael Hudson from CounterPunch.

Hudson explains how political operatives in the One Percent have cleverly used hopey, changey, African-American Obama to further the agendas of the One Percent.
Obama’s two presidential victories represent an object lesson about how the 1% managed to avoid rescuing the economy – and especially his own constituency – from today’s rush of wealth to the top. Future political annalists will see this delivery of his voters to his Wall Street campaign contributors control as his historical role. In the face of overwhelming voter opposition to the Bush-Cheney policies, the President has averted popular demands to save the economy from the 1%. Instead of sponsoring the hope and change he promised by confronting Wall Street, the pharmaceutical and health care monopolies, the military-industrial complex and big oil and gas, he has appeased them as if There is No Alternative.
He make reference to economist Bill Black who explains more of the details of how Obama is going to proceed in his second term under the guidance of Wall Street ideologues who have formulated their program under the benign sounding title of  "The Third Way". This path provides a way for mainstream media to portray the scalping of the American 99 Percent as a sensible bi-partisan compromise to avoid the draconian, automatic cuts across the board that are due to take effect. (See this as an immediate example of such phony coverage.) Of course, what this "grand deal" will really do is defend the military-industrial budget while slashing social safety nets and other public spending.

However, Hudson, as a dedicated capitalist economist, can see no alternative to this system and lamely calls for a third party to compete with the One Percent that already owns our government as well as the economy.