Wifing Politicians: I don’t love these politicians (plutocrats)

I am writing to satisfy one issue, and that is why do folk take up for these political plutocrats regardless of political affiliation? It is as if folk cannot see they are all in the same gang of scratch my back crony-capitalist crooks. And for those unaware, crony capitalism refers to the intercourse between the state and corporate power. These cats have two sets of laws, one for us common folk and one for the elite folk. This manifested by two kinds of economic models of capitalism which breaks down to the over-regulated capitalism we have to abide by and the protected and unregulated variety for corporations, cartels and said participants.

Personally, as a libertarian, I unlike conservatives or liberals or progressives believe that part of the price of freedom is allowing others to have their freedom equally. Moreover, I believe whether I agree or like or dislike something, if it is peaceful and voluntary and harms no one, I can tolerate such. Unfortunately, this is not the game played by the ruling political elite regardless of party affiliation.

And even with all of the empirical evidence we observe, we allow these folk to play us like a fiddle, telling us things that do not even make sense yet many of us accept without question because we love our politicians. Love them so much we will let them lead us to poverty and a penal existence. So enthralled with them that we allow them, the federal government to give billions tax free in the form of TARP and even more via Quantitative Easing and all that so they can make loot in the markets at the cost of money that in theory should have gone to pay salaries of average employees. 

The real concern is that in order to do this, we have to be complicit in our own death. To accomplish this, they make up stuff; I mean artificially contrive stuff as well as the proof to support the stuff they made up in an effort to communicate impending doom. Take Global warming for example (ironically newspeaked into climate change) or any environmental cause. This the strategy used by plutocratic political elite and it is grounded in their sense of “moral absolutism” that makes them feel that since they have money, money shouldn’t be an issue to you thus your value as being regular folk, only exist to make them believe “WE” need them to tell us what to do.

We can also look at the civil rights and black power movements as examples. What did these folks do then? Well we were it before global warming and the environment. First, they focus on inequality amongst various societal sub groups like African Americans and encourage us to act against these certain political targets. It was just a few weeks ago the democratic held an all-nightclimathon talking about global warming.  This was 28 democratic senators all because some rich cat said he wanted to put $100 million behind politicians dealing with global warming. And we all know, including the money behind them, the politicians and the masses, that 60 percent in America think the economy is the most important issue to address and climate change next to the bottom, especially us black folk. Why, because climate change makes them wealthier.

In the early 1970s, Aaron Wildavsky, the former Dean of the Graduate School of Public Affairs at California Berkeley described their play book as being designed to “have middle class civil servants, hire upper class whites, to use lower class blacks” to stack the front line to complain against the political institution or policy (or lack of) at hand. And this minus-sum game as Wildavsky describes, often leaves African Americans worse off than we were before.

Take the recent election of Barack Obama. The change and hope mantra had folks wanting to tear the club up. But in 2014, what do we see? We see home sales going up for those with a price tag of $10 million plus, but not regular folk, especially if they are African Americans. Black Americans, Obama's most loyal supporters, are among the hardest hit by this uneven recovery.


The average price for a kilowatt-hour (KWH) of electricity hit a record of 13.5 cents in March based on data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: meaning it was up about 5.5 percent from 12.8 cents per KWH in March 2013. In March, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics also shows that shrimp prices jumped 61 percent from a year earlier. Cost for pork items, especially bacon are also dramatically on the increase.  Ironically the story line is due to a disease. The increases of cost in agricultural and beef products have been conveniently blamed on a drought (disease and drought equally environment). 

All to make you think there are more things (the environment) which are more important than feeding your family, earning a living and maintaining a roof over your head (humans). Think about it PETA will tell you not to eat meat and that slaughtering cows is inhuman but they get their lot from VISA, who owns Omaha Steaks and got big loot in the Kentucky Derby (can’t make this ish up). 

You might be a progressive, but you are not a progressive elite and you, if defined as such are not seeking the same goal as they are.  The recession officially ended in June 2009, but we still are down 6 million jobs from pre-recession levels and now these cats got us believing that Obamacare and the economy are separate issues. But fact is that the new trend is not giving part-time workers company health coverage like Target, who will no longer offer health insurance to part time workers. Meaning, class, African Americans will be the hardest hit by this.

The disparity between rich and poor has blossomed since 2009 and the job participation rate is way worse, not to mention the average person has less money to spend and is taxed much more - all when our nation's debt is our greatest concern because WE paying the debt. And you know how I know we paying the debt? Because, more than 23 million American households rely on food stamps. Households operationally defined let us say as being four per household which equals 92 million Americans. And although more whites on welfare than blacks, we rely on it disproportionately more than whites.

This one reason why neither democrats nor republicans will ever simplify the tax code because this is the plutocratic politician’ main source of revenue (taking huge contributions (bribes) in exchange for tax breaks for the super-wealthy. They want inflation because the math proves that inflation (when prices go up) raises GDP subsequently making federal debt cheaper to service every year. But where we live and everywhere else, median household income is down 7% since 2000. And don’t forget if we removed the top 1% households from this equation, the decline for the bottom 99% would be more than closer to 30% (my math). Thus via the tax code and quantitative easing, the purchasing power we have is slowly being siphoned and swindled and given on purpose by our government to super rich folk, who in turn get to borrow money from the Fed at an interest rate of zero.

American politics is completely, owned, run and operated by the most powerful economic elite that politics and corporate America can proffer, which leaves out the democracy this republic was created on for the rest of us.  Yawl, especially black progressives, needs to stop wifing these politicians.  I mean if black folk regardless of political orientation put as much into protect, defending and believing in self and our communities as much as we wife these politicians, we wouldn’t have am problems. But we don’t, and now a majority of us believe and trust the government. When did we start to believe in and trust the government I ask again? Of all folk, African and Native Americans should never trust the government, especially the federal government. But that is just me, and unlike most, I don’t love these politicians.

Neoliberalism and Foreign Policy in the Obama Adminisration

Undoubtedly the Obama Administration inherited a complete mess from the prior administration covering both the economy and foreign policy. And true to form, he in many respects has continued the aforesaid policies of the former president from the bail out of the Auto industry, TARP, extending the Bush tax cuts and even Bush’s neoconservative foreign policy undertakings. In the classic sense, a large assemblage would propose that Obama’s foreign policy strategy is diametrically opposite to the neoconservative hawks of the prior administration. Maybe, but in the verity of evidence suggest that the present administration has only morphed neoconservative dogma into neoliberal dogma.

This case can be made singularly by presenting the current Obama administration policies regarding Iran, Israel, Libya, and even tertiary nations like Nigeria, Somalia and the Congo, IT IS NOT FAR FETCHED TO draw the aforementioned parallel within a historical context. As a nation the foreign policy approach of the Obama administration to be fair, remains in the tradition of the fallacy of the first crusades which resulted in the capture of Jerusalem from the Seljuk Turks in 1099. This remains to be the premise of what we see between the west (US and Europe) and the East (Arabs, Persians and Asians).

What do I mean you may ask? Well today as then, the US is a representation of the crusader state – meaning that our goals through foreign policy are to promote a universal culture of values “that must be spread throughout the world in the righteous cause of peace.” This is the basic tenant of Wilsonian idealism the way I have understood political history and put in action by both Obama and Bush. Neoconservative appears to be conservative yet support and favor big government, interventionism, and hostility to religion in politics and government.

Neoconservatives played a small role in the Ronald Reagan Administration, but came out the closet during the George W. Bush Administration after 2001. In comparison, the same can be said of Obama whose primary foreign policy goal demonstrates zeal to expand world peace and preserve American exceptionalism at any cost.

As I recall, Obama campaigned against President Bush’s policies, yet he continues most of these policies today. Like Bush, he has increased funding for U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and has quadrupled overseas deployments. In Somalia for example, the Obama administration “has put in place policies to limit food aid to the region, using food as a weapon of war and killing hundreds of civilians weekly via its use of US drone strikes. Recently he has sent US troops to oil rich Uganda (Uganda has yet to produce a single barrel of oil) to intervene militarily to help Uganda fight the rebels of the LRA who are currently in the Central African Republic. Recently, more information has surfaced asserting that the U.S. Army has been making “preparations for possible direct military intervention in Nigeria.”

All I am saying is that the manner in which many pundits attacked neoconservative foreign policy was appropriate and the same amount of scrutiny needs to be directed at this new neoliberal foreign policy of Obama. The only difference between the two is not idealism but rather methodological. Bush proffered a less technological approach than Obama currently employs.

Although the present administration is providing the appearance of getting of Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama continues to stay the of Bush neoconservative policy in the Middle East pushing out longtime rulers, as was the case in Libya and as he is attempting to do in Syria. Albeit his first act as President was signing an executive order to close the facility holding terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay within a year, he still maintains the policy of the former administration as well as has continued a version of the Bush practice of renditions. I wonder how essential it was to hold and water boarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a secret prison in Eastern Europe to help get info to identify Osama bin Laden’s couriers?

Also, Obama in concert with Eric Holder continue the practice of indefinite detentions and continue to trample the civil liberties of US citizens just as Bush did with the Patriot Act and the FBI’s ability to obtain certain phone records without warrants. The Obama’s Justice Department has given legal authority for the continuation of these policies.

Now I did not get a chance to speak on the example of Ira and Israel, but I will and soon, just not here. The only point I wanted to try and make that the neoconservative philosophy many conservatives applaud today has not been removed from the current Whitehouse. In fact it has changed and mutated into a more vile policy perspective, that has taken us even further back to the times of the crusades, one which says to the world it is our way or the high way. My only concern is that other nations don’t forget the pangs of neocolonial practices they see make nations like the US richer, while they barely have food to eat and water to drink.

1000 Days: Brilliant But No Management Skills

Our current President, Barack Obama is a brilliant man. Personally I would rank him as one of the smartest Presidents we have had since Richard Nixon and in the same breath with Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson. But as history has shown us, to be a brilliant President does not necessarily translate into being and effective or efficient one. Yes Obama is brilliant, but just using the example of his efforts to gain traction with our current economic conundrum, it is obvious he lacks the management skills required to astutely address this nation’s economic woes.

Now I am no Obama cognoscenti nor is this to state that he cannot manage, sure he can however much remains to be said of management skills regarding economics. Sure he is a competent jurist and astute in constitutional law, but one can simply examine how he works with his economic team to objectively examine his skill set in terms of management ergo concluding something is lacking. For the record before I proceed, I want to say I stated before and now that Tim Geithner was the wrong man for the job of Treasury secretary and I still stand by this. First I still maintain distrust for former Republicans that turn democrat in particular if they once worked for Kissinger and Associates. Second he is and foremost a banker and will always be as opposed to those of us on main street. I also had a problem when Geithner was living with Daniel Zelikow, as a top JP Morgan Chase executive, while he was overseeing the bailout of several huge Wall Street banks, including JPMorgan, which received $25 billion in federal rescue funds from the TARP program.

I can use the dysfunction of Obama's retinue of economic advisors to demonstrate why I have this opinion and come to the aforementioned conclusion. To start off with, Larry Summers (former Director of National Economic Council), Paul Volcker (former Federal Reserve Chairman), Christina Romer (former Economic Advisor), Elizabeth Warren (former Special Advisor to the Treasury Secretary), Peter Orszag (former Budget Director), and Tim Geithner (Secretary of the Treasury) alone provide me with more than enough substance to make this argument. Just looking at documented occurrences covering the Volcker rule, issues regarding Citibank, the bailout and the first stimulus, gives one an additional layer for discussion.

With respect to Larry Summers, it could be implied that the reason he resigned as director of the National Economic Council was his incessant economic blunders and what some could assert criminal actions. As an economist at Harvard and at the World Bank, Summers argued for privatization and deregulation in several areas, including finance. Prior to this under Clinton, he Summers oversaw passage of both the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed Glass-Steagall and Commodity Futures Modernization Act (which banned all regulation of derivatives, including exempting them from state antigambling laws) as well as permitted the previously illegal merger that created Citigroup. Not to mention, Summers, in concert with Greenspan, and Rubin and dismissed all warnings regarding the impending economic turmoil that we currently experience.

It was a major mistake to place Summers in an advisory role as a man who one did not perceive America’s economic crisis as a serious threat and two, as a man that developed many of the rules in which began this crisis.But this was more the fault of Obama obviously not having studied his past thoroughly and accepting on face value recommendations from his fat cat Wall Street donors.

In concert with Geithner, Summers cost us regular taxpaying citizens up to a trillion dollars or more. How because Obama puts on a front in front of the regular citizen hammering out loud at the banking industry and its faults, yet employs the very same men who rigged this game on behalf of the banking industry. Thus it is hard to say you are hard on banks and want them to get their acts together when behind closed doors you give them everything they ask for and more. Even with respect to Elizabeth Warren, the woman Obama wanted to head his Consumer Protection Agency, Geithner worked against the President wishes, for he insured the Banking industry and Wall Street she would not be approved for nomination, against the wishes of the President.

For example, the Obama administration’s $500 billion plus proposal was only beneficial to the banks and big dollar investors at the expense of the US tax payer. Why? Because we gave money to bailout make believe a false alarm problem contrived by bankers singularly. If one consider a toxic asset held by Citibank with a face value of $1 million, but with zero probability of any payout and therefore with a zero market value, most investors would not purchase such an asset. However, if Citibank itself sets up a Citibank Public-Private Investment Fund (under the Geithner-Summers plan), this allowed the bank to bid the full face value of $1 million for the worthless asset because it can borrow $850K from the FDIC, and get $75K from the Treasury (BAILOUT) to make the purchase - meaning the bank will only have to come $75K out of pocket. This means the bank (Citibank in this instance) would get $1 million for the worthless asset, while the fund in its name ends up with a pile of worthless assets against $850K in debt to the FDIC – allowing the fund to declare bankruptcy and make an easy $1 million. This is the best hustle since buying Newports in the South and selling up North.

I know I said I would present a discussion on the Volcker rule, but I do not want to bore you any further. In summary, regardless of being a President, Mayor, or Governor, Obama does not seem to have or display the management skills required to understand the creative use or utility of power at his hands. Unlike Maynard Jackson, Coleman Young, Richard Nixon, Willie Brown or even a Hank Parker, Obama appears to lack in terms of economic prowess and maybe even social acumen, the apperception that he is in a distinctive place in which the suitable exercising of influence can gather immense efficacy. Unlike the other African Americans mentioned above, although not serving as the President, Obama, has not shown he knows how to use power creatively and find the balance to take chances to correct existing inequities regardless of the political risk.

Like I said Obama is smart, but his management skills lack something: what I cannot say. The turnaround of the members of his economic top advisors suggest this alone. It is one thing to have high turnover, but if any other business or organization showed similar levels of turnover, they would go out of business or become inoperable. Moreover, it is clear that no other parts of his top advisors in other areas (state department, or Justice for example) have displayed similar high rates of attrition. No wonder the economy is in shambles.

I agree the prior presidents from Reagan to Bush 43 got us in this mess, but I also acknowledge that trying to suppurate consensus is not the same as making a decision. Selecting the wrong people (smart folks who do not get along or see eye to eye) is not helpful either and doesn’t equals being able to make a decision. Obama may be too smart for his own good, thinking that coming to a consensus is more important than making a decision. Sometimes a president or a governor or mayor must manage situations accordingly and decide on one policy over another. Can Obama do this has yet to be determined pertaining to his economic policy.

Obama dont like black folk: Mortgage Relief Program Just a Ploy to Pump Money Into Wall Street

When the Obama administration took office, they also inherited the economic troubles worsened by the Bush years and the prior presidents from Bill Clinton to Ronald Regan. Obama's approach was twofold. First was to continue the TARP program that Bush started at the end of his tenure and to try to curtail the massive number of foreclosures across the country. However, it has now been revealed that his only goal was to prop up banks through the use of both.

New reports have documented that the Obama administration's mortgage relief program isn't working. This is to say it is not helping assist homeowners facing foreclosure. Instead it is taking money from struggling homeowners and channeling it to banks. The program, which many purport is poorly designed and executed, has only aided a small proportion of individuals actually seeking and needing assistance.

In theory, the program was supposed to lower monthly payments for borrowers. However, it doesn't even reduce the overall debt burden that many homeowners facing foreclosure experience. Now it has been discovered that top treasury officials admit that the mortgage plan was actually designed to pump money into banks in an effort to protect them from future losses and bad debt — in essence another program implemented in the interest of Wall Street over Main Street.

Timothy Geithner, who wanted banks to make money in an effort to stabilize the economy, has used the mortgage relief program to enrich bankers riding on the backs of troubled homeowners when the focus should be to assist struggling individuals who are trying to keep their homes.

The Home Affordability Modification Program (HAMP) allows homeowners to ask their loan holders for relief on monthly mortgage payments via reduced monthly payments or lowered interest rates, for example. This is a win-win for banks because it keeps monthly payments coming. However, it actually gives homeowners the shaft because the banks do not lower how much individuals pay, thus individuals end up paying more for their homes than they are actually worth on the market.

Although Obama's economic team continues to repeat the mantra "the economy is continuing to recover," the fact remains that in terms of the aforementioned and economic indicators I read, that is not the case. If Obama is genuine about helping troubled homeowners, then his efforts should target having an individuals debt burden from their mortgages reduced. Banks will take a loss, but massive foreclosures will be averted. This is not a recovery and if the advice of folks like Geithner and Larry Summers is what Obama is using, then we will be up the creek for a long time to come. In all simplicity, we need around 2.5 percent growth just to keep unemployment from rising and until we are honest and admit this is not a recovery, things will only get worse before they improve.

Black folks need to wise up and increase their understanding of economics and look at policy as policy, regardless of who it comes from, even if it is a black president. If we don't, then Kanye West may be saying, "Barack Obama don't like black people."