On Jan 29, 2010, at 3:55 PM, Louis Proyect wrote:
> The problem is that too few high=profile leftists are willing to stick their
> neck out like Ralph Nader
Speaking of Nader, here's Nader speaking of Obama's State of the Union address:
The President's State of the Union Speech is the Big Speech of the year. Yet
there is never an opportunity either for the press or the citizenry to promptly
follow up with any questions or requests for clarifications. As a result, doubt
and misunderstandings fester.
Watching President Obama's speech the other evening before a joint session of
vociferous members of Congress, quiet Supreme Court Justices and military
brass, I jotted down a few items for the White House to consider.
First, Mr. Obama cited the Senate's inaction four times in contrast to the
House of Representatives. To add to his frustration, he cited the Republican
leadership for insisting that "sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any
business at all in this town." What he did not do was to urge his fellow
Democrats to change the filibuster rule by a simple majority vote.
As a legal expert, Tom Geoghegan wrote to Senate majority leader Harry Reid
(Dem. Nev) this week, "the Senate can act to change its rules, any rule, by
majority vote, even a rule requiring a greater one." That means that the
Democrats can change this rule with only 51 of their 59 votes in the Senate and
get these bills passed.
Why President Obama did not tell tens of millions of Americans Wednesday
evening about how to break the logjam, the gridlock on health insurance,
energy, jobs, financial reform and other measures, that they dislike, is a
question only he can answer. "Certainly Senate Rule 22 itself should be
changed, so that there is ultimately a simple majority for a cloture limiting
debate vote," according to Geoghegan.
Second, since dollars invested in energy efficiency and renewable energy have
greater, safer, returns than money going into what Mr. Obama calls “a new
generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants and clean coal
technologies,(which require heavy government subsidies), why did he accord the
latter the same priority as the former?
Third, President Obama promised to double our exports over the next five years.
This really raised eyebrows, leading New York Times reporter Helene Cooper to
write that this highly ambitious goal would require him to persuade China to
revalue its currency by 40 percent, "get global economic growth to outperform
the salad days from 2003 to 2007 and lower taxes for American companies that do
business abroad," plus "forget about strengthening the dollar." He left his own
supporters wondering how he could perform this miracle and not forget his
campaign promise to revise NAFTA.
Fourth, on health insurance reform, Mr. Obama said: "If anyone from either
party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the
deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors and stop
insurance company abuses, let me know." Well, Mr. President, try what you
supported before you became a Presidential candidate--single payer, full
Medicare for all, with free choice of doctor and hospital. Remember you did not
allow single payer adherents to have a seat at the table, the way the CEO of
Aetna did five times in the White House. (For more see SinglePayerAction.org)
Fifth, you alluded as one reason for the multi-trillion dollar deficits you
inherited from the Bush regime was "not paying for two wars." Well, you also
are not pressing for a war tax to pay for your two wars, as Rep. David Obey
(Dem. Wisc) urged you and other Democrats to do a few months ago. What is the
difference and why?
Sixth, the President asserted the need to freeze government spending for three
years, but excluded the well-documented, bloated, wasteful, redundant Pentagon
budget. He also did not go after the huge corporate welfare budget of
subsidies, handouts, giveaways and bailouts. Instead, he left many civic groups
wondering what cuts might be coming for programs relating to food, auto, job
and environmental safety.
Seventh, his brief words of foreign and military policy came across as Bush
redux trying to show how tough he is. He compared notches on his belt in terms
of the number of captured or slain "Al Qaeda's fighters and affiliates." He, of
course, did not make any comparisons with the far greater number of innocent
civilian causalities from drones and other bombings.
These were strange phrasings from a recent Nobel Peace Prize winner who managed
to ignore completely the peace process for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
There was not one sentence on, arguably, the core issue in that tumultuous
region.
Eighth, on the Iraq war, he went over the top, declaring "make no mistake: this
war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home." Not really. Both Bush
and Obama have concluded that 50,000 soldiers will remain in Iraq indefinitely,
with many more in the Persian Gulf region.
American taxpayers will be paying nearly $800 million a year just to guard the
U.S. Embassy and its personnel in Baghdad. That sum alone is greater than
either the annual budgets of OSHA ($502 million to deal with 58,000 work
related deaths in America) or NHTSA ($730 million to deal with over 40,000 road
fatalities.)
I'm sending this column to the White House. You also may wish to send your
observations to President Obama. Citizens should be more than spectators to the
annual state of the union spectacle.
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