Barack Obama is the largest governmental obstacle to the continuation and completion of Martin Luther King’s mission.

Bill Moyers had an excellent conversation with James Cone and Taylor Branch about what could be called, “MLK’s unfinished business;” Moyers called it, “James Cone and Taylor Branch on MLK’s Fight for Economic Equality.”  I recommend checking out the whole conversation, which starts out this way:

You may think you know about Martin Luther King, Jr., but there is much about the man and his message we have conveniently forgotten. He was a prophet, like Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah of old, calling kings and plutocrats to account, speaking truth to power.

Yet, he was only 39 when he was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4th, 1968. The March on Washington in ’63 and the March from Selma to Montgomery in ’65 were behind him. So were the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. In the last year of his life, as he moved toward Memphis and fate, he announced what he called the Poor People’s Campaign, a “multi-racial army” that would come to Washington, build an encampment and demand from Congress an “Economic Bill of Rights” for all Americans – black, white, or brown. He had long known that the fight for racial equality could not be separated from the need or economic equity – fairness for all, including working people and the poor. That’s why he was in Memphis, marching with sanitation workers on strike for a living wage when he was killed.

Popular notions of Martin Luther King’s work celebrate his mission as one that was fundamentally about racial justice.  Moyers and his guests point out that this conventional wisdom seriously understates the scope and scale of King’s vision and mission. King’s mission was not only to advance the interests of African-Americans but to demand and implement a culture of social and economic justice.

Now that the academic and evidentiary support for austerity is shot full of holes, President Obama has an opportunity to perform a face-saving extrication from his position.  Will he do it?

A recent study by a grad student at the University of Massachussets has pointed out critical errors in celebrated Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff’s study which has been the much-cited intellectual underpinning of the austerity movement.  In short R-R’s study showed a correlation between high levels of national debt (with a stated critical threshold point at 90% of GDP) and slow economic growth.  The results of the study have been often stated as proof that debt at 90% GDP causes slow economic growth and that austerity measures must be employed to bring down debt.  

Reinhart-Rogoff quickly achieved almost sacred status among self-proclaimed guardians of fiscal responsibility; their tipping-point claim was treated not as a disputed hypothesis but as unquestioned fact. For example, a Washington Post editorial earlier this year warned against any relaxation on the deficit front, because we are “dangerously near the 90 percent mark that economists regard as a threat to sustainable economic growth.” Notice the phrasing: “economists,” not “some economists,” let alone “some economists, vigorously disputed by other economists with equally good credentials,” which was the reality.

Many prominent economists had previously pointed out another major error in the way that the study has been used by those who favor austerity:

There were good reasons for not accepting the Reinhart and Rogoff results even before this error was uncovered, as many of us had argued. Most importantly there is a serious issue of the direction causation. Countries tend to have high debt levels because their economies are doing poorly.

Unfortunately, there was not much press notice of the causation problem in R-R’s study, probably because it’s the kind of story that the media find too difficult to explain.  But when the grad student from the University of Massachussets discovered spreadsheet errors in their work, now there was an issue that our news media could latch onto with confidence that it was within their ability to explain it.  Consequently it has gotten quite a bit of coverage and R-R’s study has been discredited.

President Obama has done a brilliant job for the 1%.

 

Under Mr. Obama’s leadership, after a tremendous, near utter collapse of the economy brought about by a corrupt finance sector, trillions of public dollars have been poured into the coffers of bankers. One recent study showed that the big banks got an annual government subsidy of $83 billion dollars a year – equal to the amount of their alleged profits.  Hold onto your hats, another recent study, by Chris Whalen and endorsed by noted economist Nouriel Roubini demonstrates that the subsidy is much larger, at least $780 billion dollars a year:

$360 billion in Federal Reserve subsidies, by creating an artificial “spread” in interest rates

$120 billion in federal deposit insurance (through the FDIC, backed by the Treasury)

At least $100 billion in government-guaranteed loans, especially mortgages

At least $100 billion in monopolistic advantages in the secondary market for home mortgages

More than $100 billion in fees in the over-the-counter (OTC) derivative market. (The lack of capital required in these transactions and other special dispensations from the Fed provide the zombie banks with unlimited leverage and almost no public scrutiny.)

The first study indicates that the too big to fail banks are barely breaking even and they are getting fat and demanding on our largesse; the second study indicates that they are indeed not profitable at all.  They are nothing but corporate welfare queens with a large budget to purchase politicians.

Surely it has an historical meaning and there are some roundabout descriptions of modern progressivism online like this one from Wikipedia:

Today, members of the Green Party of the United States are most likely to self-identify as liberal progressives. In the U.S. Congress, the Congressional Progressive Caucus is the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party, and it is often in opposition to the more centrist or conservative Democrats who form the Blue Dogs caucus. It is also in near-continuous opposition to the Republican Party.

But what does it mean when say, the leader of the Democratic Party, President Obama proclaims himself a Progressive:

“I am someone who is no doubt progressive.”

… and then later proceeds to describe himself as a, “moderate Republican?”

“The truth of the matter is that my policies are so mainstream that if I had set the same policies that I had back in the 1980s, I would be considered a moderate Republican.”

Further, what does it mean when three quarters of the Congressional Progressive Caucus won’t stand up for the indispensable legacy of the progressive New Deal and Great Society advances, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid?

Three-Quarters of Progressive Caucus Not Taking a Stand Against Cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid

For the social compact of the United States, most of the Congressional Progressive Caucus has gone missing.

While still on the caucus roster, three-quarters of the 70-member caucus seem lost in political smog. Those 54 members of the Progressive Caucus haven’t signed the current letter that makes a vital commitment: “we will vote against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits — including raising the retirement age or cutting the cost of living adjustments that our constituents earned and need.”

… Addressed to President Obama, the letter has enabled members of Congress to take a historic stand: joining together in a public pledge not to vote for any cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. …

The Progressive Caucus co-chairs, Raul Grijalva and Keith Ellison, signed the letter. So did Barbara Lee, the caucus whip. But no signer can be found among the five vice chairs of the Progressive Caucus: Judy Chu, David Cicilline, Michael Honda, Sheila Jackson-Lee and Jan Schakowsky. The letter’s current list of signers includes just 16 members of the Progressive Caucus (along with five other House signers who aren’t part of the caucus).

What about the other 54 members of the Progressive Caucus? Their absence from the letter is a clear message to the Obama White House, which has repeatedly declared its desire to cut the Social Security cost of living adjustment as well as Medicare. In effect, those 54 non-signers are signaling: Mr. President, we call ourselves “progressive” but we are unwilling to stick our necks out by challenging you in defense of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; we want some wiggle room that you can exploit.

Yes, that’s right the President, who has, “no doubt” that he’s a progressive wants to cut the social safety net, despite the fact that he made rather a big deal that he would not do just that thing:

Now, however, the, “no doubt progressive” President is about to release his budget, which will reportedly contain cuts to programs that have always been the core of progressive policy:

President Obama’s budget proposal to be unveiled next week will include cuts to Social Security and Medicare, according to media reports Friday morning.

Politico reports:

The most controversial element of Obama’s proposal is the inclusion of “chained CPI,” the adjustment that would over time reduce cost-of-living increases to Social Security and other federal benefit programs – effectively, a cut to Social Security benefits by tying them to inflation.

So while many congressional “progressives” have chosen between their divided loyalties and come up as cowering yes men for the misguided juggernaut of the Obama administration, parts of the progressive media are spouting propaganda:

John Nichols tells only part of the truth in this piece and the failure to represent the whole truth makes it a specious bit of propaganda, that distracts and diverts attention away from those that are carrying out the agenda of the big money forces he decries.  

[Perhaps this is a problem created by editing as Nichols is generally a reasonable guy, who has written a number of articles calling for opposition to President Obama’s Chained CPI plan.  This was a publication of The Nation magazine, so perhaps they edited it and it represents their editorial position more than Nichols’ opinions and position.  Since Nichols is the face, name and voice of this piece, however, the criticism will be directed at him and presumably if he gives a damn about what some blogger says, he can assert that the blame lays elsewhere.]

Nichols explains that in, as he puts it a, “Dollarocracy,” the ideas that get put forward are the ideas that have big money behind them, like cutting Social Security.  He goes on to highlight the fact that austerity-loving-corporate-greedheads were able to get, “one of their own,” Paul Ryan on a ballot to run for Veep to push their plans.  What Nichols fails to mention is that those austerity-loving-corporate-greedheads were going to win no matter what this election.  They already have a Democratic president who is promoting their agenda on the other ticket.  Guess what, they won! And there was no chance that they wouldn’t!

How is it that Nichols could have failed to notice and call out the Obama administration and the many Democrats that are performing the bidding of the, “Dollarocracy” with such alacrity these days?  Nichols is an experienced pundit, he certainly has been around and allegedly paying attention long enough to know who has been pushing the 1%’s, “Dollarocracy” agenda.  

Let’s take a trip through some of the evidence that one would have to ignore to create that Dollarocracy video with such a glaring omission in it…

This week with all of the focus on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war, I’ve been reading a lot of analysis of the war and its legacy.  I think that most of the commentators that I’ve read thus far have either missed or failed to appropriately assess the gravity of at least one legacy of the war.

I think that the crucial legacy of the Iraq war is how inconsequential the dissent of the people is to those that make the decisions.  I was listening to Democracy Now the other day when they had Arundhati Roy on, and they said that 50 million people around the world had protested against the commencement of hostilities.  If I am remembering correctly, I and my family joined between a million and a million and a half Americans around the country who marched in protest on that day.

The voices of millions of people didn’t make a difference.

We pointed out that they were clearly lying. It didn’t matter.  They got their war on.

As time wore on and the war became increasingly unpopular, that didn’t seem to matter, either.  There was no stopping the powers that be.

They tortured people and disappeared people and later bragged about it on national teevee.

There have been no prosecutions, only a “forward looking” president who has expanded some of the worst policies of his war criminal predecessors.  In the pursuit of his inherited wars and his own new ones, he has committed what many see as war crimes of his own. Among them are his assassination programs, “signature” murders and the cruel and inhuman punishment of at least one whistleblower.

Nothing seems to stop these people and there is no force in our “democracy” that seems to be up to the task of making things right.

That, I think is the most momentous legacy of the Iraq war – our system seems to be a military juggernaut that is utterly unaccountable to anyone.

Strengthen – example 1.)  

As a seventh grader, Victor Alcantara towered over his peers. Already six feet tall and a substantial 190 pounds, Victor was well prepared by nature for what gave him the greatest pleasure – being a thug.  Victor was not driven by circumstances into his chosen career field. He had an unremarkable but perfectly serviceable intellect.  

His father was a University professor and his mother was a lawyer.  That Victor lacked their passion for academic acheivement was something of an irritant to them as were the frequent calls from school administrators and the irate parents of Victor’s victims.

Victor had wisely chosen to form a strategic partnership with the next largest boy in seventh grade, Mark Ballis, who had been held back a couple of times  making him the oldest seventh grader in the entire school system.  Mark was neither tremendously bright nor capable, but generally not a bad sort of kid and Victor had decided that he needed something of a life remake.  As part of Victor’s remake, he had renamed him, “Spike” and had had spent considerable effort on tutoring him as to how to comport himself with a certain thuggish silence and an attitude of cool equanimity.  Spike became a perfect henchman.

Victor and Spike, while often scheming greater exploits mostly engaged in classic bullying, shaking down kids in the halls and at recess for their lunch money.  Victor’s instincts led him to choose the social misfits, the nerds and the fat kids as his victims, steering clear of the popular kids.  

One day, Victor and Spike had cornered a recently arrived fat kid on the playground.  Victor got close up to the kid so that he had to look up at him at a sharp angle and pressed his demand.  “You kind of bother me looking like that, I think that you should give my associate here Spike your lunch money.”

Normally, the implied threat of violence and the innate desire to flee caused most kids to hurriedly comply with Victor’s demands, but this kid did not seem to be in any hurry to comply.  Victor leaned closer as the kid asked him, “What do you need it for?”

Nobody had ever asked Victor a question that went to the purpose of his enterprize before and he didn’t have a quick answer ready.  His brain raced as he stalled for time.  He fixed his portly interlocutor with an angry stare, the kind he had practiced in the mirror hundreds of times, but the kid just stood there, relaxed and expectant.

Then, from somewhere, Victor knew not where, the words came to him and he delivered them with a patient, but subtly insistent tone.  “This isn’t about our needs.  This is about you.  You need to lose some weight and toughen up a bit.  We will strengthen your ability to help yourself by removing one of the causes of your problem.  Now, are you going to hand over the money or do we have to work harder to strengthen you?”

Victor, now an old man sitting in his favorite chair, reflected that this was the turning point in his life where he transitioned from being a mere thug to becoming a politician.

Strengthen – example 2.)  

Victor sped into the Gas and Go on Bynum Road. He hopped out of his gaudy Hummer with enormous graphics that read, “Alcantara – County Executive” adorning all visible sides and the hood.  Heading straight for the office, he bellowed out to the man behind the counter, “Johnson, I need to talk to you now!”  

Walter “Butch” Johnson closed the cash register, signalled to the pimply faced kid dispensing a hot dog to a customer to take over and shuffled into his office.  Victor was seated behind the desk looking around at Butch’s family pictures on the left by the stapler and the calculator.  “Sit down Butch,” Victor said.

Victor Alcantara, now in his 30’s was the owner of a chain of gas station convenience stores and had recently been elected County Executive.  Victor now needed to scrape up some money to purchase a sand and gravel pit.  All of the pieces were in place.  He had installed Mark “Spike” Ballis as the County’s head of Public Works who would approve the contract with the County for sand and gravel and then the taxpayers could contribute directly to his success.  Now all he needed was a bit more capital to swing the deal.

“Butch,” he started, “I really appreciate the hard work you’ve been doing here, doing without an assistant manager, working double shifts and keeping down the costs of hiring kids to work the store in these tough times.”  Butch nodded and wondered when the pain would come.  “So I’ve been trying to find a way to reward your efforts.  I wanted to be able to tell you that we’d finally be able to give you and all of the managers a raise, but, the money’s just not there for that.”  Victor paused and gave Butch the compassionate look that he’d been working on in the mirror and had deployed repeatedly at events while campaigning for office.  Seeing the look, Butch thought to himself, oh damn, here it comes now.

Victor launched back in to his spiel, “So I thought, I don’t have the money,

because times are tough.  Let me tell you, though your store is a consistent performer, Butch, there have been a number of times I’ve thought that maybe I’d have to shut down a few stores.  So I thought,  what other sort of thing can I do for my people?  Then I got to thinking about you, Butch.  You’ve got a family and what you need is security.  The security that comes from knowing that the company you work for is strong and can continue to keep you employed.”

Victor suddenly got to the heart of his pitch. “So, I’ve decided to strengthen you by strengthening the company, Butch.  From today forward, everybody’s pay will be cut back to minimum wage.  Your paycheck won’t need to go down, you can keep on working all of the hours that you want, Butch, and the company can afford to keep paying you and everyone else.  So, that’s what I am working to give everybody here, a strengthened company and strengthened employees.  That security should really help you, Butch, now that your third child is on its way, right?”  Butch nodded his head while still in the process of making some mental calculations as to how the hell he was going to keep his family afloat while Victor sprang to his feet, slapped Butch on the back as he worked his way out the door and thought to himself, “one down, 27 to go.”

Strengthen – example 3.)

Victor sat in the den surrounded by mementoes of his long political career.  His eyes scanned over the walls covered with pictures of himself with presidents and other congressmen. There were assorted awards and trophies imparted by a mixture of lobbyists, corporations and organizations, pictures of himself on the podium at the Republican National Convention, CPAC, playing tennis at Kennebunkport.  His eyes fell on the picture given pride of place in the room that had hung in his congressional office for years.  It was a picture taken when he visited an industrial hog farm many years ago. It showed him and the farmer in the foreground, and as far as the eye could see were pigs, tightly penned in row after row of cages with mounds of food in front of them and a conveyor belt behind them to take away their poop.  The picture had become for Victor a visual metaphor for his constituents and the public in general.

Victor looked down and began to read aloud from an article on his laptop:

Congressional Democrats, led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), signaled greater willingness on Wednesday to cut Social Security benefits … Pelosi told reporters on Capitol Hill that a cut proposed by President Barack Obama in the fiscal cliff negotiations would in fact

“strengthen” the program, echoing the claims often made by Republicans about entitlement programs they want to slash. …

The cut involves swapping out the traditional method for calculating cost of living increases, based on the current standard for measuring inflation, for something called a chained CPI, or chained Consumer Price Index.

The cuts would start small, but wind up costing beneficiaries thousands of dollars over time … Pelosi wrapped both her arms around it Wednesday, insisting she does not regard it as a “cut.”

Victor stared at his laptop in disbelief for a moment and then erupted, “Goddamn, I can’t stand that Obama, but I have to admit, the man has cojones!  Strengthening Social Security my ass!  If I had proposed a scam like that in my day, they would have relegated my ass to the “crazy uncle” wing of the party!  That son-of-a-bitch is sending ’em off to the slaughterhouse and they still think he’s just the nice farmer that gives them all that damned food!”

Victor emitted a gutteral cackle startling his trophy wife’s cat who was yet again demonstrating his feelings for Victor by peeing on his rug for the umpteenth time.

Greetings fellow inhabitants of Earth.  We, the Committee to End the Future, a purposely shadowy global organization of extremely wealthy and powerful people wish to thank you for your cooperation in completing the final round of our “Great Game.”

For centuries we have played a series of rounds of the “Great Game,” accumulating resources by dominating governmental and economic structures, subjecting citizens of the various countries of Earth to a variety of schemes to divert the products and value of their labors to our use and to pauperize those not of our sort.

To cut to the chase, though, the reason for this communication is to warn our fellow inhabitants away from a very dangerous movement that could potentially disrupt our game and cause something of an annoying reset just as we are getting close to declaring a winner.  We have discovered to our dismay that a small but noisy group of citizen activists wish to rein in the emission of carbon and methane which are essential to both our economy and completion of the Game.

If these noisy, misguided activists are successful, we shall have to write off many Trillions of dollars worth of energy assets that are important as game pieces as well as means of game completion.

We hope that we can count on you, our fellow inhabitants to continue your demand for carbon and methane emitting energy sources which are essential, let us not forget, to your personal comfort and ease of living.  No matter what these activists say or do, please continue to ignore them.  Continue to listen to the politicians that we support and their long-term, incremental plans that will bring down carbon emissions so gradually that you will never notice it.

We are now very close to the end of the Game.  No game is complete without an end state.  In short, we need to know who the winners are.  At the end of this round of the Great Game we shall finally know, and in the tradition of the Egyptian Pharoahs that buried their fellow players alive at the end of their games, so shall we.  We believe that our fellow inhabitants will enjoy a final rest from the great toils required of all those who play the Game.

Thank you for your cooperation!

The New Deal, Social Security, The Great Society, Medicare, Medicaid – concern for the welfare of “the little guy.” These are the marquee items which have defined the modern Democratic Party to its constituency.  These sorts of programs have been the sweet nectar in the plant which has allowed liberals and lefties to excuse the Democrats flings with the Military Industrial Complex, foreign dictators and bankster thugs along with the usual graft, corruption and peccadilloes.

The Democrats have, in modern times, always looked after society’s island of misfit citizens and the oppressed, cast off from the society and economy.  This is what allowed lots of principled people to pull the levers for folks that were committing war crimes and conducting illegal wars of aggression for resources and business interests. It is what allowed principled anti-war legislators to coalesce in a party which did some pretty awful things. The Democrats were going to watch out for the interests of the little guy whether he was a hero in one of their wars or not.  

An article entitled, “Defining the modern Democrat,” lays out the basis of the identity of the Democratic Pary:

The modern Democratic Party was born, just over a century ago, when another young orator from the Midwest-William Jennings Bryan-rocked the national convention in Chicago in 1896.  Because of its stirring climax, Bryan’s address is widely known as the “Cross of Gold” speech and, in most histories, is accompanied by an arcane explanation about the gold standard and 19th-century monetary policy.

Unfortunately, the focus on gold obscures Bryan’s real import. His candidacy redefined the Democratic Party as the voice of the common man. It ultimately led to Woodrow Wilson’s election and the formation of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition, which dominated American politics for most of the 20th century. …

Bryan and his Democrats promoted a wide, rich menu of reforms – a graduated income tax, the Federal Reserve, women’s suffrage, direct election of U.S. senators – that became law in the Progressive Era.

The Great Commoner, as Bryan was known, was “the first leader of a major party to argue for permanently expanding the power of the federal government to serve the welfare of ordinary Americans.

The ambitions of William Jennings Bryan were carried out by other great Democrats and enacted with the enthusiastic support of Americans.  They are the bedrock of our social contract and a legacy of the 20th century that most Americans would like to keep vital and secure.

Cliffsmas is coming and I bet you, like most of us, have not figured out just what it is that you are going to wind up giving the 1% this time around.  Fortunately, they want to make it easy for you, they have made a list of their wants and checked it several times now.

Many on Wall Street with the help of nice people like Paul Ryan and a group of Democrats that call themselves “The Third Way,” working with President Obama would like to give your Social Security to the 1% to use as gambling chips on Wall Street.

Then there are the CEO’s from Peter Peterson’s “Fix the Debt Commission,” who want 134 Billion dollars in tax cuts exempting foreign earnings for corporations (along with their usual trillions in federal war contracts, subsidies, bailouts and tax loopholes) for Cliffsmas.

In fact, these Fix the Debt Commission CEO’s are so eager to get this cutting of costs for people other than themselves who want to retire, that less than 60% of their companies offer pensions for their employees and of the ones that do, the CEO’s have underfunded their employee pension funds by more than $100 billion.

There are a bunch of other 1%ers that would prefer the Bowles-Simpson approach of gutting your Social Security payouts over a period of years as President Obama was pushing on the campaign trail and in negotiations with Congressional Republicans over a long period.  In these same negotiations Mr. Obama put cuts to health care for veterans and cuts to Medicare on the table.

The cuts to your benefits that Mr. Obama and the Austerians are promoting for Cliffsmas are far from chump change.  The chained-cpi cut is small at first, but over a period of years is a 9% cut in benefits  over a period of years.  Raising the age of eligibility for retirement age to 70 would cut benefits for the average retiree by 19 percent or about $35,419.