The real reason Obama is not making much progress - corporations
Johnny Asia
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-real-reason-obama-is-not-making-much-progress-1823863.html
Johann Hari: The real reason Obama is not making much progress
Before you can appeal to America's voters you have to appeal to the
corporations
Friday, 20 November 2009
Almost a year after Barack Obama ascended to the White House, many of
his supporters are bemused. His healthcare bill is a hefty improvement
but it still won't provide coverage for all Americans, and may not
provide a public alternative to the over-charging insurance companies
- if it passes at all. His environmental team is vandalising the vital
Copenhagen conference by saying the US � the single biggest emitter of
warming gases � will not sign up to any legally binding restrictions
there. He has placed the deregulation-fanatics who caused the New
Depression, like Lawrence Summers, in charge of the recovery. Despite
the real improvements on Bush � such as the end of torture, the
resumption of stem-cell research, and opposition to the coup in
Honduras � many people are asking: why he is delivering so little, so
slowly?
A pair of seemingly small stories about the forces warping American
politics can help us to answer this question. At first glance, they
will seem like preposterous caricatures, but the facts are plain. The
institutions that are blocking progress on all these issues �
Republicans in the Senate, and the mighty corporate lobbying machine
that bankrolls both parties � have rallied over the past few months to
defend two causes with very little popular support in the United
States: rape and slavery. No, really. If we begin to explain how this
came to pass, then we might see why the American political system is
malfunctioning so badly, even after a landslide victory for change.
Let's start with rape. This story begins in Iraq in 2003. The private
military contractors sent by the Bush administration to guard the oil
pipelines didn't want to get bogged down in expensive legal cases if
anything went wrong. When it came to Iraqis, the Bush team simply
exempted them from all Iraqi law, in a move so sweeping one Senator
called it "a license to kill". But what about if their employees
attacked each other, or other Americans? The private companies
insisted all their employees sign contracts saying that, whatever
happens to them, they will settle it in in-house, through
"arbitration". Why? While representing the company at a real legal
trial costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, an arbitration panel
costs a few thousand. It saves cash.
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This policy came, however, with a different price tag. According to
her later sworn testimony, Jamie Leigh Jones � a 20-year-old working
for the contractor Halliburton/KBR � was hanging out with co-workers
one night in Iraq when her drink was spiked. When she woke up, she was
haemorraging blood from her vagina and her anus. Her breast implants
were ripped. The damage was so severe she later needed reconstructive
surgery on her genitalia. She surmised she had been gang-raped by the
seven men she had been drinking with. When she approached
Halliburton/KBR, she says they locked her in a metal container with no
food or water for 24 hours. A doctor came to see her wounds and took
DNA evidence, although it was later "lost." A guard took pity on her
and loaned her his cell phone. She called her father, who called the
American embassy � and only then was she released.
In an Iraq that was collapsing all around her, there was no chance of
the Iraqi police investigating. Halliburton/KBR insisted that her
contract required the alleged gang-rape to be addressed by the
company's private arbitration process, forbidding any claim in the
American courts. (If this was how they treated blonde English-speaking
American girls, what did they do if Iraqis said they had been abused?)
After Leigh Jones went public, many other American women came forward
to say they had similar experiences working in Iraq. Her legal team
argues the refusal to allow rape to be pursued through the courts
created a climate where it was more likely to happen.
The Democratic Senator Al Franken, when he heard about this, was
horrified, and tabled a simple amendment to the law. It demanded that
no company that prevents rape victims from having their day in court
should receive taxpayers' money any more. Rape is rape. A majority of
Republicans in the Senate � including John McCain � voted against the
amendment. Why? The private contractors are major donors to the
Republican Party, but the Senators claim this didn't affect their
judgement. No � they said that Franken's proposal was a "vendetta"
against Halliburton/KBR with "political motives". Franken pointed out
any company trying to stop rape victims getting justice would be
treated exactly the same by this law. The Republicans ignored him.
They voted to maintain a system where some rape is not pursuable in a
court of law.
At the same time, a group of Democratic senators have tried to amend
the latest customs bill to ensure that nothing produced by slaves
should be sold in the United States. It sounds uncontroversial � as
uncontroversial as punishing rapists, in fact. Yet corporate lobbyists
are militating behind the scenes to oppose it. As the private
subscription-only newsletter "Inside US Trade" reported: "Business
groups are worried by the potential effects", and a source tells them
there will be, "a push from lobbyists closer to the Finance Committee
mark-up of the bill... US industry groups and foreign governments [ie
those that use slave labour] could form ad hoc coalitions to help send
a united message." They will fight for their right to use slave
labour.
These examples are extreme, but they reveal a powerful undertow that
is at work on all political issues (and both main parties) in the
United States. To see how, you have to understand two processes. The
first is the nature of corporate power. Corporations are structured to
do one thing, and one thing only: to maximise profit for their
shareholders. No matter how personally nice or nasty their CEOs are,
if they put anything ahead of profit, they will be sacked, and
replaced by somebody who doesn't. As part of a tightly regulated
market, this can be a useful engine for growth. But if it is not
strictly reigned in by the law and by trade unions, this pressure for
profit will extend anywhere � from trashing the environment to rape
and slavery, as these cases remind us. The second factor is the nature
of the American political process today. If you want to run for
elected office in the US, you have to raise a fortune from
corporations or the super-rich to pay for TV advertising. So before
you can appeal to the voters, you have to appeal to the corporations.
You do this by assuring them you will serve their interests. Once you
are in office, you have to keep pleasing them at every step, or they
won't pay for your re-election campaign. This two-step overwhelms the
positive instincts the individual politicians may have to do good �
and drags the US government further and further from the will of the
people.
Obama had to climb through this system, and he is currently imprisoned
by it. It explains his relative failure so far. Healthcare is proving
so hard because the insurance companies are paying both Republicans
and right-wing Democrats in Senate to thwart any attempt to provide
universal healthcare coverage. Yes, it would save the 17,000 Americans
who die every year because they lack insurance but it would depress
their profits. Reducing carbon emissions is proving so hard because
the oil, coal and gas companies are paying Senators across the
spectrum to crush any moves to reduce oil, coal and gas use. And on,
and on.
So far, Obama has tried to co-opt the corporations into his agenda by
ensuring they will profit from any changes, but this inevitably waters
down the proposals, often to the point of uselessness. The Cap and
Trade legislation before Congress, for example, will barely limit
carbon emissions at all because it has been gutted to please the
polluters.
He will only achieve significant progressive change if he reforms the
political system itself � to make it accountable to the American
people, not the corporations. He needs to change the rules of the
game. Ban big business from making political donations, and replace it
with state funding. Shut down the lobbying industry. Make a big
populist speech announcing you are driving the money-lenders out of
the temple of democracy: it'd be surprisingly popular in a country
where people can see they're being ripped off every day. The
alternative is to become rapidly complicit in a system where defending
rape and slavery is seen as just another day's work in Washington DC.
Eddie Haskell
"Johnny Asia" <bayin...@mypacks.net> wrote in message
news:6fqqg5t132gsb5fmq...@4ax.com...
>
> http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-real-reason-obama-is-not-making-much-progress-1823863.html
>
> Johann Hari: The real reason Obama is not making much progress
>
> Before you can appeal to America's voters you have to appeal to the
> corporations
>
> Friday, 20 November 2009
>
> Almost a year after Barack Obama ascended to the White House, many of
> his supporters are bemused. His healthcare bill is a hefty improvement
> but it still won't provide coverage for all Americans, and may not
> provide a public alternative to the over-charging insurance companies
Buh-but but corporations.
Buh-but but Bush.
Pathetic.
> - if it passes at all. His environmental team is vandalising the vital
> Copenhagen conference by saying the US - the single biggest emitter of
> warming gases - will not sign up to any legally binding restrictions
> there. He has placed the deregulation-fanatics who caused the New
> Depression
Fucking idiot. An article written by a fucking lying idiot for the
consumption of lying fucking idiots.
"In 1992, Congress mandated that Fannie and Freddie increase their purchases
of mortgages for low-income and medium-income borrowers. Operating under
that requirement, Fannie Mae, in particular, has been aggressive and
creative in stimulating minority gains."
"The two companies are now required to devote 42% of their portfolios to
loans for low- and moderate-income borrowers"
"Although Fannie Mae actually has exceeded its target since 1994, it is
resisting any hike. It argues that a higher target would only produce more
loan defaults by pressuring banks to accept unsafe borrowers."
http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/31/news/mn-42807
"The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory
overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a
decade ago."
"Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency
would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the
two largest players in the mortgage lending industry."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr1M1T2Y314
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs
-Eddie Haskell
Rightard Dumbwads
"Ellie Mae Haskell" <fg...@eeaeae.com> wrote in message
news:4b0d6ed7$0$1591$9a6e...@news.newshosting.com...
> Pathetic.
We know you are and retarded.
Perfesser Palin
<s...@above.com> wrote in message
news:145sg5lo677kmiolm...@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:52:22 -0600, "Eddie Haskell"
> <fg...@eeaeae.com> wrote:
>
>>Buh-but but corporations.
>>
>>Buh-but but Bush.
>>
>>Pathetic.
>
>
> ass.
>
> Just make one of your long bullshit posts where you
> actually, truthfully acknowledge the litany of failed
> polcies in national security, Tax policy, economic
> policy, domestic policy, foriegn policy, and accept
> that Bush was the WORST president since Ronnie Raygun
> and Richard Nixon in this century
>
> THEN we can stop referring to bush, bush, bush because
> you'll no longer try and defend him
That's all the loons have. Bu... bu... Clinton ... bu... Obama....
Never a solution, just excuses for cocksucking losers like Bush.