U.S. rulers prepare deeper social cuts
Workers face more economic uncertainty
BY SETH GALINSKY
January 27—As President Barack Obama readies his State of the Union speech, marking the first year of his presidency, neither capitalist party, the Democrats or Republicans, has any solutions to the grinding economic and social crisis. Workers face growing uncertainty.
The day before Obama’s speech, USA Today reported that the number of people on welfare rose for the first time in 15 years, when then-president William Clinton vowed to “end welfare as we know it.” Welfare programs that at one time aided more than 14 million people were slashed by Clinton. In fiscal 2008 3.8 million people received welfare payments. In 2009 this rose to 4 million.
More than 37 million people received food stamps last year, an 18 percent increase, while the number of people collecting unemployment benefits more than doubled, to about 9.1 million. On January 25 Wal Mart-owned Sam’s Club announced layoffs of 11,000 workers, mostly part-time employees. The next day Verizon said it was cutting 10,000 jobs.
In Obama’s speech, according to initial press reports, is a three-year spending freeze on education, nutrition, national parks, air traffic control, and farm subsidies. Exempt from the freeze are the Pentagon and Homeland Security budgets.
While White House officials say that Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security could also be exempt, the New York Times notes that the freeze is meant to signal that Obama “is willing to make tough decisions.”
On January 19, the White House tentatively agreed to issue an executive order to create a bipartisan commission to propose changes—a code word for cuts—in federal entitlement programs including Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The commission would deliver its recommendations after this fall’s congressional elections.
While laying the ground for deeper attacks on the rights, entitlements, and living standard of workers and farmers, Obama claimed that he will “fight for the middle class” and the “American Dream.” Initial reports on his proposal do not include any serious plan to create jobs. Instead, he is proposing a variety of tax credits that would allegedly ease the pressure of the economic crisis.
Massachusetts election
Obama and the Democratic Party suffered a defeat January 19 when Republican Scott Brown beat Democrat Martha Coakley in a special election for the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts held by liberal icon Edward Kennedy until his death.
A big part of Brown’s victory was his opposition to the so-called health-care reform, which found an echo among many workers who sense that the “reform” would be used to restrict medical care. Brown had no concrete proposals for his own “reform” except to proclaim that “we can do better.”
Brown also campaigned against civilian trials for alleged terrorists and for “an across the board” tax cut to create jobs.
Obama rallied behind Coakley to no avail. During a January 17 day of campaigning for the Democratic candidate, Obama didn’t mention the health-care bill once.
In his victory speech, Brown did not mention the Republican Party except to say he will work with both parties.
After the election Brown told the Wall Street Journal that he thought that Obama is “doing a great job with North Korea, a nice job with Afghanistan.”
But prominent liberal columnist Paul Krugman criticized Obama January 26. In a column titled “Obama Liquidates Himself,” Krugman wrote, “A spending freeze? That’s the brilliant response of the Obama team to their first serious political setback?”
“It’s appalling on every level,” Krugman charged. “It’s bad economics, depressing demand when the economy is still suffering from mass unemployment.”
Spirit of bipartisanship?
Some conservatives, however, are pleased with Obama’s proposals.
“Republicans, in a spirit of bipartisanship, should praise the president for beginning to come to his senses about too much government spending (and for acknowledging at the same time that national security spending can’t be frozen),” wrote Weekly Standard editor William Kristol.
Other conservatives are worried that if the Republicans make gains in November, they won’t do any better than Obama in dealing with the crisis.
Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan noted that Brown’s election victory is not as significant as it may seem. Brown’s “constituents,” Noonan said, “couldn’t care less about the fortunes” of the Republican Party.
Twelve days before the election, Noonan wrote a column titled, “The Risk of Catastrophic Victory: Obama is in the midst of one. Can the GOP avert one of their own?”
Noonan warns that the Republicans could win a majority in Congress in November, and still “be left unable to lead when their time comes.”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/pers-j30.shtml
The real state of the union in 2010
30 January 2010
In his State of the Union speech Wednesday night, President Barack Obama avoided any direct and concrete presentation of the actual state of US society. Given the enormity of the economic crisis and its destructive impact on tens of millions of Americans, Obama’s recourse to evasions and platitudes was all the more extraordinary.
Obama spoke in vague generalities about the crisis, but he cited virtually no facts. He deployed a variety of rhetorical devices to make a show of sympathy for the plight of ordinary Americans, but his speech only revealed the chasm of insularity and indifference that separates not only himself, but the entire political establishment, from the broad masses of people.
He began by defending the “aggressive” measures he took to rescue the financial system, asserting that “one year later, the worst of the storm has passed.” Really? Precisely for whom has the storm passed?
The answer is obvious—for the financial parasites whose speculation precipitated the economic disaster. The situation for the working class has only worsened. Home foreclosures and hunger are at record levels and poverty is rapidly rising. When Obama took office one year ago, the official unemployment rate stood at 7.6 percent. It is now 10 percent—a jump of 31 percent.
Obama followed this astounding assertion with a perfunctory reference to the crisis facing working people. “One in ten Americans cannot find work,” he said, “Many businesses have shuttered. Home values have declined. Small towns and rural communities have been hit especially hard.”
This was virtually all he had to say in describing the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
He spoke of the indications of rising discontent as though they were the result of popular misconceptions, not an entirely rational reaction to real facts and real conditions. “They don’t understand,” he said, “why it seems like bad behavior on Wall Street is rewarded but hard work on Main Street isn’t; or why Washington has been unable or unwilling to solve any of our problems.”
It only “seems” that the Obama administration has focused its policies on protecting the wealth of the financial elite, and that the political system ignores the desires and interests of the population.
At another point, Obama boasted that he had “saved” 2 million jobs and that “the economy is growing again.” Things are not as bad as they seem to the unenlightened mob.
Similarly, he attributed popular opposition to his health care scheme to misperceptions. “I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people,” he said. Not that growing numbers of people have seen through the government propaganda and recognized what the plan is really about—slashing benefits and rationing health care for millions of workers and retirees.
Invoking one of many insincere paeans to the “American people,” Obama declared that because of their “great decency and great strength…our union is strong.”
On Monday, the World Socialist Web Site will publish the report on the US and international political situation given earlier this month to a national aggregate of the Socialist Equality Party. This report, co-authored by SEP National Chairman David North and SEP National Secretary Joe Kishore, places the current crisis of US and world capitalism within its historical context and examines the major driving forces that are leading to a new period of revolutionary class struggle.
The report presents an objective analysis of the state of American society and politics. As a preview of our evaluation of the “state of the union,” we present here excerpts from the report.
On the priorities of the Obama administration, the report states:
The first priority of the Obama administration was to reassure the financial elite that their wealth would be protected, and that there would be no re-imposition of “New Deal”-style restraints on Wall Street gambling. In fact, the opposite has taken place. The massive infusion of cash into the world financial system has led, predictably, to a new round of reckless speculation on Wall Street. Share values have soared, enriching rich speculators while doing nothing to address the deep distress of the overwhelming majority of the working population.
On social conditions at the beginning of the second decade of the 21st Century and the second year of the Obama administration, the report notes:
Conditions for the broad mass of the population in the US continue to deteriorate. Some 40 million people now live in poverty, while 6 million people (or 2 percent of the population) have no income, subsisting on food stamps alone. By the end of the decade, official unemployment in the US had reached 10 percent, as some 4.2 million jobs were wiped out in 2009…. The official labor force—those the government considers to be looking for work—actually contracted by 661,000 in the month [of January], contributing to a rise in the broader measure of unemployment to 17.3 percent, which also includes millions of people who are involuntarily working part-time.
In some states and cities, the crisis has already reached Depression-like conditions. In Michigan, unemployment is 14.7 percent. In the state’s largest city, Detroit, real unemployment is about 50 percent. California, the country’s most populous state, has an official unemployment rate of 12.3 percent. Long-term unemployment is becoming a common aspect of American life, with nearly 40 percent of the unemployed having been out of work for 27 weeks or longer. The collapse of housing prices beginning in 2007 has led to a surge of home foreclosures, reaching a record one million in the fourth quarter of 2009. Another 3 million Americans are expected to lose their homes this year.”
The decade was one of the worst for jobs in US history. The Washington Post recently noted, “There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Economic output rose at its slowest rate of any decade since the 1930s as well.”
Incomes for American workers have declined, as has the net worth of American households. In real terms, average weekly wages fell by 1 percent in 2009, even as productivity soared. An article in the Los Angeles Times comments, “All the triumphalist rhetoric emanating from Wall Street and the White House notwithstanding, this was—materially speaking—a disastrous decade for US families. For the first time since World War II, according to the Departments of Commerce and Labor, an average American’s net worth actually fell—by a whopping 13 percent.”
Such is the real state of the US in 2010.
Barry Grey
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1247049/Nobel-Peace-Pr...
'Nobel Peace Prize-Winner Barack Obama Ups Spending on Nuclear Weapons to Even More Than George Bush' 歐巴馬有錢搞核武(沒錢做社福)
by Carol Driver
President Obama is planning to increase spending on America's nuclear weapons stockpile just days after pledging to try to rid the world of them.
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In his budget to be announced on Monday, Mr Obama has allocated £4.3billion to maintain the U.S. arsenal - £370million more than George Bush spent on nuclear weapons in his final year.
The Obama administration also plans to spend a further £3.1billion over the next five years on nuclear security.
The announcement comes despite the American President declaring nuclear weapons were the ‘greatest danger' to U.S. people during in his State of the Union address on Wednesday.
And it flies in the face of Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to him in October for ‘his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples'.
The Nobel committee was attacked at the time for bestowing the accolade on a new president whose initiatives are yet to bear fruit - which included reducing the world stock of nuclear arms.The budget is higher than that allocated by George Bush - who was seen by many as a warmongering president in the wake of the Iraq invasion in 2003 - during his premiership.
During his 70-minute State of the Union speech on Wednesday, which marked his first year in office, Obama said: 'I have embraced the vision of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan through a strategy that reverses the spread of these weapons, and seeks a world without them.'
However, Vice President Joe Biden today supported the increase on nuclear weapons maintenance, saying: ‘Even in a time of tough budget decisions, these are investments we must make for our security.
‘We are committed to working with Congress to ensure these budget increases are approved.'
Biden said the Obama administration had inherited a ‘steady decline' in support for U.S. nuclear stockpiles and infrastructure.
‘For almost a decade, our laboratories and facilities have been underfunded and undervalued,' he said.
‘The consequences of this neglect - like the growing shortage of skilled nuclear scientists and engineers and the ageing of critical facilities - have largely escaped public notice.
‘The budget we will submit to Congress on Monday both reverses this decline and enables us to implement the president's nuclear-security agenda.'
He added: 'This investment is long overdue. It will strengthen our ability to recruit, train and retain the skilled people we need to maintain our nuclear capabilities.
'It will support the work of our nuclear labs, a national treasure that we must and will sustain.'
The Obama administration will publish its budget for fiscal year 2011 on Monday.
The proposal will include a budget increase for nuclear issues while paring back other areas in an effort to control record deficits.
Biden said those steps along with others to advance non-proliferation were essential to ‘holding nations like North Korea and Iran accountable when they break the rules, and deterring others from trying to do so'.
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