Principled Progressive

By Margaret Kimberley

Self-styled “progressives” tend to think of themselves as another tribe entirely, untainted by American chauvinism. It ain’t so. “Progressives also succumb to the belief in American divine right, and consequently can often be as dangerous as those on the political right.” This is especially evident in the Age of Obama, who “has continued some of the worst Bush administration policies, but still receives nearly universal support from progressives.”

Most Americans believe their country is a benevolent and beloved force in the world. That belief is so deeply ingrained that even political progressives are rarely different in upholding this awful dogma. They are as likely as self-identified conservatives to support the government when it asserts a right to interfere with foreign governments, to occupy their nations, or to kill human beings on any pretext deemed necessary by the United States.

The term “Manifest Destiny” was coined in the 1800s, but its power lives on into the 21st century. Manifest Destiny was the stated belief that white Americans had the right to expand their power across the North American continent. Manifest Destiny resulted in the near annihilation of the native population and the spread of enslavement from sea to shining sea.

Manifest Destiny has been the cause of numerous wars spanning the globe from Mexico to the Philippines. Lies that justified military action against Vietnam, and the occupation of Iraq, were all fed by the Manifest Destiny myth.

Both Democrats and Republicans are hard core believers in this awful creed. Presidents from both parties have asserted the right to interfere in the affairs of foreign nations, and they have almost always done so with the support of the vast majority of their citizens.

The result of this mindless acceptance of an awful propaganda is a country that is always ready to assert the prerogatives of state power. Too few Americans will oppose their government when it incarcerates more people than any other government on earth, or when it chooses to engage in plans for endless warfare.

Progressives also succumb to the belief in American divine right, and consequently can often be as dangerous as those on the political right. The shallowness of their principles first became obvious during the 2008 presidential campaign. Barack Obama quickly made it clear that his mantra of change was little more than a marketing ploy.No matter. The lackadaisical progressive response to Bushesque Obama policies proved once and for all that true opposition to the United States government would emerge from a very small group and that labels such as left and progressive were becoming more and more meaningless.

Barack Obama has continued some of the worst Bush administration policies, but still receives nearly universal support from progressives. In his first 48 hours in office he authorized a drone attack in Pakistan that resulted in civilian casualties. He has agreed to withhold photos of detainee torture, and proposed a policy of indefinite detention without trial. The war that began in Iraq has expanded in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has turned over more that $12 trillion dollars in public funds to the financial services industry without repairing the damage that industry wrought on millions of people. Most progressives have chosen to either be silent or to actively defended him.

They have done so because they are not at all interested in changing the political system. Why change a system if you think it is just fine the way it is? They may prefer David Axelrod to Karl Rove, but they agree that powerful white men like them should decide what is right for this country and for the world. Their differences with Rove are less important than their absolute faith that people like him know best just because they are close to the ruling elites in this the best of all possible nations.

Progressives and liberals are as ready as conservatives to support government interventions in our lives and on the world stage. The country in question may be Sudan, or perhaps Iran. The clarion call is the same. “We must do something” because “we” are superior, all knowing, and chosen by a divine force to make the world in whatever image we choose.

No one asks how “we” is defined, or if the presence of the United States is needed or wanted. No one asks about the history of past interventions and their usually negative outcomes. It is assumed that Americans are good and know what is best for the world, despite a long history of numerous brutalities carried out across the globe.

As long as white Americans believe in their inherent superiority, they will be a very dangerous people indeed. Some of those dangerous people are Democrats and some are Republicans. In the end, they usually want the same thing. They want their ruling class to dominate other human beings. They may differ on which individuals should do the dominating, and where and when the domination is warranted. They may even decide that a black man can act on behalf of the ruling classes, but belief in the power of that class is still accepted without question. As long as that is the case, Democratic politicians and liberal bloggers will pose as a great a peril to the world as do the stars of Fox news. In the end, they all want the very same thing.

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Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgandaReport.Com.

This article originally appeared on Black Agenda Report on Wednesday, July 1 and is reposted here with permission from the author and BAR.

By Jerry D. Rose

In matters of public policy there is always, I think, a disconnect between the dimensions of problems that need to be solved and the capacity of political entities to deliver those solutions.  When the engine of our public goes so radically out of whack, as it has done today in so many areas, we need radical overhauls when what the system delivers is only tweaks that do little to restore smooth running or, even worse, make the problems we are trying to solve even worse. Let me mention some examples and let’s see if there isn’t a pattern here.

1. Health care. By any measure of cost (high) and services (low), the American system of medical is a roaring disaster.  Paul Dean has written an article that provides the overall theme for this entry, his view that a single-payer pooling of all medical needs provided  by a single administrating entity is the overhaul our system needs.  Instead it is about to get a tweaking in the form of the “public insurance option” and a “compulsory insurance” requirement (to be sure everybody gets in the pool)—and these are only the most “liberal” of the tweakings being promoted by the Democrats while Republicans are digging in their heels for “free market” defense of the system.  Now comes a story of the “Baucus plan” for dealing with the seldom-considered problem of dealing with the problem of how to pay for the “expensive” new medical coverage.  He is in negotiation with pharmaceutical companies to get them to rebate $10 billion to purchasers of prescription drugs…as if consumers were not savvy enough to know how retailers typically jack up prices (price controls? Heavens, no!, free market you know) so they can give purchasers a “discount.”

2. Immigration reform.  Whether you decry the exploitation of undocumented immigrants and the brutality of their harassment and deportation—or whether you see the “flood” of immigrant as over-taxing public services and depriving American workers of jobs—there is no disagreement that our immigration system is a sputtering system in drastic need of an overhaul.  But you would hardly know that from the “priorities” of Congress and the White House, which finally gets around to taking up immigration policy with little sense of urgency or expectation that anything like “comprehensive reform” is going to occur.  Even the “path to citizenship” (a rocky path as usually conceived) for the undocumented is itself a tweaking when, as I and others have long noted, nothing is going to work with the problem short of the simplest of solutions which would involve: (a) rolling back the neo-liberal trade agreements that impoverish people in countries whose people have to emigrate elsewhere to find employment; and (b) removing legal barriers to immigration, letting the vaunted “market” take care of where people move as the demand for labor will attract an appropriate supply—no more and no less than what is needed.

3. Humanitarian aid. There is nothing more maddening to me in the “tweaking” efforts to deal with public policy issues than the response of people to the “suffering” of people elsewhere.  As with other tweakings, our efforts here seem to avoid the obvious solutions in favor of those that are more complicated and less effective.  For example, the suffering of people today in Gaza, a humanitarian crisis of the first order.  In as tepid a response on the part of the U.S. government as one could possibly imagine, the President of the United States urges Israel to relent in its blockade of humanitarian supplies to Gaza, a blockade maintained partly by our other “staunch ally” in the Middle East, Gaza’s neighbor Egypt…as if U.S. appeals to Israel without any sanction of threatened withdrawal of military assistance (actually downright sponsorship) have received the slightest response, except the middle finger Netanyahu has given to Obama in his “appeals” about Israeli settlements.

In this context, I want to note material I have received from Cynthia McKinney regarding the plans of herself and about 30 other people to go personally to Gaza to deliver humanitarian supplies.  I think it is worth quoting here the letter she wrote to the President:

I understand that you sent a message to Israel about its blockade of Gaza.  Thank you.  It is reported that you specifically mentioned food, medical supplies, cement and building supplies in your note.  This note is to inform you that I embark today on a trip to Gaza and we will have for the people of Gaza, exactly the materials that you mentioned, and school supplies for the children.  Thank you for the note to Israel and I hope that also means that you will not sign any appropriation bill that has weapons for Israel.  President Carter noted that seven schools were completely demolished with F-16s from this country.  We all are responsible and I know you know that.  But all of us are not in a position to stop the carnage.  You are.  Please, not one more dime not one more weapon for Israel’s war machine.

The ultimate remedy that McKinney suggests to the President—that he back his request with the threat of diplomatic and military withdrawal from Israel—is the kind of “overhauling” operation without which all the negotiations and appeals are going to be feeble tweaks that allow the situation to fester and worsen until the ultimate explosion in the Arab world against the United States. (I could mention as well the maddening “investigation” just released by the Pentagon with it’s almost-causal admission that an air strike that killed many civilians in Afghanistan resulted from violating rules of engagement “regulations,” as if the U.S. wants credit for its good intentions through those regulations.) In these and so many other ways, I have the feeling that we are tweaking our way to oblivion.

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Jerry D. Rose - Editor, The Sun State Activist

By Jerry D. Rose

Some subjects for blog entry percolate in my consciousness over several days and I start to look for more information on those subjects. In the last 24 hours this percolation process has been short-lived as a result of the debate and voting on the supplemental funding bill for U.S. military operations with a spirited finish to the debate, a narrow vote in favor of the bill at 6:27 P.M. and then…a deafening silence on the matter in the mainstream media. Having heard much of the informative debate on C-span, I had to miss the vote itself and turned on the ABC’s 6:30 news hoping to hear the result. There was nothing on that newscast, as other observers of CBS and NBC reported, and as verified from logs of those broadcasts. Well, I thought, vagaries of the news cycle, vote is taken 3 minutes before these broadcasts air, it’s understandable, etc.

When I went this morning to online versions of the New York Times and BBC, I found that these titans of world news, with plenty of time to have produced stories on the vote, still had none, save an obscure entry in the Times blog called Caucus. Then was when I opened my local daily newspaper, the Gainesville Sun, and found that this paper as well had not a single word about the vote, the debate that led up to it or what might be its consequences not only for future U.S. military activities; but for those of the bill’s “attached” provisions dealing with the IMF and with swine flu epidemic funding. Knowing that the Sun is owned by the New York Times and often reprints news articles from the Times, this did not surprise me too much. But the Sun also relies heavily on stories distributed by the Associated Press, and I was left wondering why an article had not come from that source and been printed in the Sun.

This wonderment took me to the website of the AP and I finally found that an obscure corner of that website contained a posting at 6:12 A.M., time enough for printing by papers that did not have an early morning deadline before that time (or a “breaking news” feature that allows for late-arriving stories to be posted.) I then surveyed 9 of the largest circulation papers in Florida and found that only one of them, the Palm Beach Post, carried the AP story, though all of them did carry many other AP stories, many of them about matters concerning activities and personalities in Congress (like the Senator who “admitted” an affair).

Finally, reflecting on all of these anomalies, I cannot help harboring a tinge of suspicion that the timing of the vote as well as the posting of the AP’s story were in fact designed to minimize immediate news coverage. I’m sure the vote could have been timed more “conveniently” for evening news converge than 6:27 P.M.; and the Associated Press had nearly 12 hours between the vote and the posting of its lone story on the event: at a time that would not discourage local newspaper posting, especially in the eastern time zone.
As a bottom line to this, I have just watched this evening’s ABC News broadcast and found that, with now nearly 24 hours to round up some kind of report and discussion of the event, they could still not manage a single word about anything related to the war funding bill. Of course, they had many other big stories to report; after yesterday’s blockbuster coverage of Obama catching a fly with his hand, they had to gush over the story of Phil Michelson’s perennial search for an Open Golf title and the distraction in his life of a beloved wife with breast cancer. Only so much you can do in a half-hour, you know.

Jerry D. Rose - Editor, The Sun State Activist

By Jerry D. Rose

Oh my, the “symbolism” of Obama’s trip abroad! I have suggested in internet postings that, if President Obama were serious about an actual solution to the crisis of the Middle East, he could do a couple of “symbolic” things: (1) He could make his way to a site on the West Bank separation wall (maybe at Bethlehem where the Pope earlier went) and could say to Israeli PM: “Mr. Netanyahu, tear down this wall!’ or (2) He could make his way to the Egypt/Gaza border which is helping maintain the murderous siege of Gaza and say to his Egyptian host: “Mr. Mubarak, take down this border crossing barrier!” As we now know, the President (for some reason) did not follow my advice but found some other “symbolism” more to his liking.

After making nice to Muslims (sort of) in his Cairo speech, Obama takes himself to Buchenwald to make the obligatory cleansing stop for any U.S. leader who has just associated in any friendly way with Palestinian ones. At Buchenwald, Eli Wiesel by his side, Obama said…

“To this day, there are those who perpetrate every form of intolerance — racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism and more — hatred that degrades its victims and diminishes us all. This place teaches us that we must be ever vigilant about the spread of evil in our own time, that we must reject the false comfort that others’ suffering is not our problem, and commit ourselves to resisting those who would subjugate others to serve our own interests. To this day, there are those who insist that the Holocaust never happened, a denial of fact and truth that is baseless and ignorant and hateful.”

To this slam against “ignorant and hateful” Muslim Holocaust-deniers to whom he had recently “reached out”, Time Magazine added the following, without the slightest indication that America itself may not have learned the “lesson” through its own or Israeli-supporting infliction of “suffering” in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gaza, the West Bank or Somalia.:

“Yet even as he spoke, it’s clear the world has not learned the lesson. Genocidal killings continue in the Darfur region of Sudan, and a long-running civil war in Sri Lanka recently concluded with the extended shelling of civilian refugee camps. ‘The world hasn’t learned,’ said Wiesel in a public address before the gates of Buchenwald.”

And for what may become the iconic image of Obama’s own sympathies with Israel, a “rose-laying” moment on the grounds of Buchenwald (perhaps destined to wind up framed in Rahm  Emanuel’s office), see the illustration accompanying the Buchenwald story in today’s New York Times.

Strong symbolism, especially in the hands of a U.S. government propaganda apparatus that knows how to use symbolism to help get our way in the world of international relations: think what we did with those “mushroom clouds” and those “mobile biological laboratories.”

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Jerry D. Rose - Editor, The Sun State Activist

By Margaret Kimberley

“Muslims should probably not mention hating America or Israel to a new friend. That friend may need to create a terrorist to keep himself out of jail.”

“The defendants were duped into carrying what they thought were actual bombs and missiles.”

Those are the words of this columnist, first appearing in the June 13, 2007 issue of Black Agenda Report. Sadly, the words of warning are just as apt in 2009 as they were in 2007. On May 21, 2009 Onta Williams, James Cromitie, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen were arrested in New York. The men, all with prior criminal records, were charged in a plot to obtain anti-aircraft missiles and to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx, New York.

The arrests came on the heels of the federal government’s successful conviction of the Liberty City Six in Miami. The defendants in this case were accused of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and were tried for a third time after two previous mistrials. The jury in this last trial was deadlocked until one juror was removed by the judge. If this jury had also been unable to reach a verdict, the defendants would have gone free. Prosecutors had already declared they would not try the defendants a third time.

In these and other cases, Muslims and persons of African ancestry were targeted by FBI informants for the purpose of creating previously non-existent terror plots. Individuals were induced into swearing loyalty oaths to groups designated as terrorists, as in the Liberty Six case, or into planning crimes they had no ability or intention of committing until informants prompted them to. The effect of government officials and their media scribes loudly proclaiming that terror has been averted is very useful to the state. Citizens are kept in a state of fear, and will therefore accept endless war abroad and attacks on their liberties at home.

The federal government has learned a thing or two since the Liberty Six case. Two of those defendants were acquitted outright, and the double mistrial must have given them pause. No longer would mere loyalty oaths to al Qaeda suffice to announce a terrorist take down. The defendants in this latest case were duped into carrying what they thought were actual bombs and missiles, making arrest and prosecution much easier.

The government conspiracy is so blatant that the media immediately identified the well known informant. Newspapers such as the New York Daily News, Albany Times Union, New York Post and New York Times, to name but a few, have all identified him and reported on his prior history of entrapments. In 2002 Shahed Husain, a Pakistani national, was just days away from being nationalized when he was arrested for conducting a fake driver license scheme. He was convicted and in danger of being deported back to Pakistan when he began his journey as a paid FBI agent provocateur.

Husain targeted “mostly young black members” of the Masjid al-Iklsa in Newburgh, New York and was so obvious in his methods that he was quickly labeled as an informant. Most congregants had the wisdom to avoid him. As one mosque member told the New York Times, “It is easy to influence someone with the dollar. Especially these guys just out of prison.” Another made a clear and personal connection between the informant and one of the defendants. “James [Cromitie] for some reason didn’t stay away from him. James had no money. The longer James stayed and spoke to him, the more money James had.” The four defendants have criminal records, but no indication of politically motivated crimes until their encounter with Husain.

All of the previous terror entrapment plots were initiated during the Bush administration. If Barack Obama’s policies and pronouncements to date are any indication, there is little reason to believe that he will put an end to this insidious practice. Obama has just announced that he will bring Guantanamo prisoners to American soil, something that the Bush clique never dared consider. He will also maintain the hated military tribunals and hold terror suspects without charge in “indefinite detention.” He is obviously devoted to the discredited war on terror at home and abroad, and it is extremely unlikely that the terrorism for dollars campaign will cease under his watch.

Black Agenda Report condemns even the threat of terror, whether committed by the state or by hapless individuals. We also condemn the misuse of state power, which always falls disproportionately on black people. Both the FBI and Pakistani immigrants know that there is rarely a downside to targeting black people for prosecution and imprisonment. The new president proudly announced that he is just as bad as his predecessor, which can only mean there are more Liberty City and Newburgh cases to come.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in Black Agenda Report, where this article was originally posted on May 27, 2009. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgendaReport.Com.

By Jerry D. Rose

An article by Tom Hayden appeared today expressing Hayden’s extreme displeasure with MoveOn.org for its alleged betrayal of its promise to its constituency to push President Obama toward ending U.S. military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. This complaint is part of the broader observation by many that a man elected on an “anti-war” agenda has in fact neutralized whatever of vitality remains in the anti-war movement.

At the opening of his article Hayden describes a meeting between Obama and MoveOn leader Josh Ruben in which Ruben told Obama that it’s “the moment to go big,” meaning presumably a moment to move decisively toward a fully progressive political agenda. Well, we know how that has gone as Obama has paid far more attention to Robert Rubin and his minions of Chicago school economists and other regressives from the Clinton and Bush administrations than he has paid to the likes of Josh Ruben, as he has bitten the hand of the MoveOn organization that has been so instrumental in getting him into the presidency.

In reflecting on the political impotence of MoveOn and the broader progressive and anti-war movements in influencing the direction of the Obama administration, I was reminded of my own run-ins with e-mails received from MoveOn shortly before and after last November’s election. These communications reveal a fawning lap-dog attitude of MoveOn toward Obama, as it appealed for funds to “support” Obama in unspecified ways by peddling child-like “victory” icons like postage-sized stamps and posters. Accordingly, I posted today the following “comment” on the Hayden article on Common Dreams.
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As articles like this one on the continuing irrelevance of MoveOn appear, I am happy if not smugly self-congratulatory that I had the good fortune to have captured the atmosphere of what MoveOn was up to shortly before and shortly after last November’s election. As one who (somehow) had his name on MoveOn’s vast mailing list, I got the same frantic appeals to vote for Obama before the election and to “celebrate” his victory afterwards that millions of others received. I don’t know how many of these millions “captured” some of these e-mail transmissions and wrote commentaries on them while they were “hot” but the following may be of interest to others who must have some memories of “the way we were” in the heady days of October and November 2008—as recorded on my newly-minted weblog.

1. Oct 22: I get a mocked-up video commentary on a supposed post-election TV news report that John McCain had just been elected by one vote and that I (using my own name multiple times) was the criminal miscreant being sought in places as far away as the hills of Afghanistan because in my laziness and indifference I had failed to vote.

2. Nov 8: I am offered a “free” commemorative “Yes We Did” stamp and the opportunity to contribute funds so that MoveOn could help Obama enact his “agenda.”

3. Nov 10: I receive a follow-up to the above with an escalated offer of a poster size version of the stamp previously offered, with now a “contribution” of $25 being expected in order to receive this celebratory item.

MoveOn’s fund-raising scam revealed in the November 8 and 10 mailings has not stopped. Jason Rubin, as Hayden shows, has met with Obama to announce it’s the moment to “go big” while having forces at his disposal (e.g., staff for lobbying) with little more than pop-gun firepower. Enjoy your victory poster, folks, that’s about all you got for your 25 bucks.

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Jerry D. Rose - Editor, The Sun State Activist

By Glen Ford

President Obama’s grand scheme to create the appearance of a public-private consensus around his business-friendly health care proposals, has flopped – for the moment. The White House-orchestrated public relations ploy fell apart when industry leaders refused to corroborate Obama’s claim that they had agreed to reduce health care spending by $2 trillion dollars over ten years.

The charade began on Mothers’ Day with lavish presidential praise for what was called an “historic” pledge from hospital owners, insurers, organized doctors, and the drug profiteers. “Senior administration officials” were described in the press as “hyperbolic, if not hyperventilated” over the “game-changer” industry concession.

The problem was: the story was mostly a White House invention. By Thursday, May 14, industry spokespersons were disassociating themselves from Obama’s fictitious “breakthrough.” No concrete, numerical promises had been made. A spokesman for medical device manufacturers denied his industry had committed to any specific numbers. “There was no specific understanding” on slowing growth in health care costs, said David Nexon, only a “target over a ten-year period.”

Richard Pollack, a VP for the American Hospital Association, put it categorically. “The A.H.A. did not commit to support the ‘Obama health plan’ or budget.” He added, correctly, “No such reform plan exists at this time.”

Obama’s team had no choice but to retreat, at least initially. “The president misspoke” in describing the health care industry’s commitments, said White House Office of Health Reform director Nancy-Ann Parle, on Thursday. But an hour later, according to the New York Times, Ms. Parle insisted: “I don’t think the president misspoke. His remarks correctly and accurately described the industry’s commitment.” Clearly, somebody was misspeaking.

Obama has discovered that health care industry fat cats are even harder to herd than the household variety – even when its for their own good. The president turned up the speakers on his bully-pulpit full-blast on Mothers’ Day to announce that he had talked the health care industry into voluntarily trimming enough from spending growth to theoretically pay for his yet to be defined insurance plan. The fat cats would have lost nothing by going along with the non-binding fairy tale. After all, the numbers are just wishful projections into a faraway time. If the health pirates had kept their mouths shut, Obama could then have asserted that “the private sector has agreed to do its part” and “now it’s time for the rest of us to come to grips with harsh realities” through “reform” (draconian cuts) in skyrocketing “entitlements” (Social Security, Medicare, etc).

That was the plan: to demonstrate that Obama’s corporate accommodationism is far preferable to fighting the powers-that-be – that his unseemly wooing of the Lords of Capital actually produces results for the rest of us. Solid majorities of Americans favor a single-payer, Medicare-for-all-type system, but everyone realizes that Big Hospitals, Big Pharma, and Big Insurance are prepared to lay waste to the national landscape in defense of their system of obscene enrichment. If Obama can come through with a bloodless “historic” “breakthrough,” a “game-changer,” then maybe his health care plans are on the right track. Right?

Unfortunately for Obama, his allies in the health care profiteering sector fell out of synch with the presidential program. Their reflexive rejection of even the most meaningless, ill-defined and unenforceable concessions to captive consumers caused them to embarrass their political patron, Barack Obama. To put it bluntly, they made him look like a liar, never pausing to consider that he was lying in order to benefit

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By Jerry D. rose

A spectre is haunting our public discourse, the spectre of subjunctivitis. True, this disease has not been defined in medical manuals; nor has the epidemiology of its distribution been tracked by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. So far the term has been used only for a cutesy title of a blog, and by an least one forlorn member of a fraternity of people called grammarians who are trying to teach students to write in something resembling the English language. One of this number, Roy Clark, calls the subjunctive “mood” the linguistic disease that occurs when “your verbs get blurry.” Rather than employing verbs indicatively as in “I am going to town,” interrogatively as in “Are you going to town?” or imperatively as in “you must go to town,” there are expressions like “I really should go to town” or “If I go to town I’ll miss Jeopardy.” As an example of subjunctive language, he uses this line from Romeo and Juliet:

See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek

Shakespeare’s use of the subjunctive mood aside, I am interested in subjunctivitis as a disease of our political life today. Barack Obama has been elected President with the overwhelming support of progressive Americans who, by definition, are eager for change and with the expectation or hope that his election would bring about that change. Yes we can! (can like hope is a subjunctive) and the question is what happens when hope is frustrated by reality, when change doesn’t come, when the declarative or factual realities are inconsistent with the subjunctive hopes. We hoped for a speedy withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and no further commitment of military forces for other conflicts; the declarative reality is that we have a factually open-ended commitment to keep our forces in Iraq “as needed,” and we are seeing an escalation of U.S. troop forces in Afghanistan and “pressure” being put by our government on Pakistan to carry on the “war on terror” because to do so is in the “interest” of America. We were promised a solution to a poor and expensive health care system and are seeing an indicative reality today of single-payer insurance being taken “off the table,” a table whose seating involves almost exclusively the titans of the medical services and insurance industries.

From a sociological perspective, it becomes very interesting to see what happens when people’s hopes or expectations for the future get slapped in the face by the realities of their actual experience. Some social psychologists refer to a condition of cognitive dissonance, when people experience a discrepancy between their ideals or expectations and the realities of their actual existence. The obvious way to “resolve” dissonance is for people to recognize the fallacy of those expectations and move on to perhaps other expectations and goals for themselves. An interesting case study in cognitive dissonance by Leon Festinger and his associates suggested that people may resolve dissonance in quite another way. He studied a group of Chicago residents who believed that the end of the world would come on a certain day and a group of them gathered at the place at which their prophecy had promised that they would be picked up and carried to safety. When that time arrived and the world didn’t end and their ride to safety didn’t materialize, “When Prophecy Fails,” the name of Festinger’s book, they simply readjusted the timetable for the end of the world and believed in their prophecy with renewed faith.

Barack Obama’s book title “The Audacity of Hope,” indicates a similar tough-mindedness in the face of discrediting realities that Festinger reported for the folks in Chicago. Again, what has happened to his supporters when their audacious prophecy of a “transformative” presidency fails, by virtually every indicative measure of failure, only a few of which were cited above? To a remarkable degree, I have found, Obama supporters have, like the people studied by Festinger, readjusted their timetables within which the prophesied changes will come into being. One of the most “audacious” of those failed prophecy re-adjustments appeared in a recent article by Robert Kuttner in Huffington Post in which Kuttner provides a scathing indictment of Obama’s apparent “capture” by the very Wall Street forces which he proclaimed as the opponents of his “populist” New Deal-type agenda; only to revert to a very subjunctive mood at the end of his essay that Obama might yet pull another FDR agenda of becoming more liberal in his policies as time goes by and he experiences “pressure” from the likes of labor unions, after which he may begin to “reform” Wall Street itself. He admits that there may be no more likely of this happening than that his beloved Red Sox would win the World Series; but hey, hope springs eternal does it not; and Obama critics will be urged again and again to “give the guy a chance;” the prophecy has not failed, it will only take more time (and in a popular variant on this theme, after a great deal of “grassroots pressure” to hold Obama’s “feet to the fire” of his campaign promises).

In my frequent comments on the Common Dreams website, I have encountered and tried to confront a large number of these these “prophecy fails” thinkers like Kuttner. These include: James Ridgeway, William Greider, Norman Solomon, Robert Naiman, Sara van Gulder, Katerina van den Heuvel, David Lindorff, Danny Schechter, John Nichols and a few others. It’s same tune, different verse, as these “Progressives for Obama” express severe reservations about Obama’s policies but seemingly are unable to cut themselves loose from the subjunctive mood expressed by Romeo about Juliet’s glove. If wishes were horses, then beggars could ride. The wishes of Obama’s supporters are far from being the horses that can be ridden into a progressive future, but that doesn’t stop these wishers from entertaining the fantasy that, at about the same time that the Red Sox (or better still, the Chicago Cubs) win the World Series, we not only can but will fulfill those audacious hopes that have so far eluded us.

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Jerry D. Rose - Editor, The Sun State Activist

By Jerry D. Rose

Chris Hedges recently posted in Truth Dig and re-posted in Common Dreams an article that seems to go to the heart of a rational diagnosis of the political problem of our times.  He describes a political “culture” in which we allow our choices for political leaders, including that of President, to be dictated by electoral techniques that make the winning of elections of a piece with campaigns to sell commercial products, as Madison Avenue PR techniques come to dominate access to Pennsylvania Avenue and every other venue of political power. While great on diagnosis, the article is a bit short on prescription for recovery from the political malaise of today.  On the Common Dreams comment site, the pit bulls of progressivism who tend to post comments there weighed in with their contentious exchanges about what, if anything, ordinary citizens can do to counter the selling of the presidency and other political offices in which the public gets the same “junk politics” as it does in the commercially attractive packaging and extravagant claims of the tastiness of junk foods.  As a (retired) professional educator I entered the arena of this exchange with an appeal for public education as (one) avenue of exit strategy from the quagmire of compromised elections and politics…with a side acknowledgment of my “retirement” career, that of critical journalism.  I’m reproducing here my original comment and my exchange with a couple of those who responded to my post. …………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Jerry D Rose May 4th, 2009 3:58 pm:

I totally concur with those many posters here who see this essay as one of the finest ever pieces of Obama analysis: it locates the problem just where it belongs which is the “culture” in which we live and which, difficult as it may be, will have to be addressed at the level of civic re-education of our population: a No Citizen Left Behind kind of education. From this perspective, I disagree with those who thought the 2nd to last paragraph “sucked”: in fact it brings out a perspective on a cultural shift in our time from character to personality, a distinction captured long ago in David Riesmen’s The Lonely Crowd description of the emergence in our culture of an “other-directed” mentality.

If anyone mentioned this in this string I didn’t see it: There’s a very nice companion-piece of Obama 100 day analysis offered by John Pilger: he as well notes the “branding” nature of Obama’s popularity and, while he doesn’t quite cover the “buyer’s remorse” aspect of the “purchase” of that brand as well as does Hedges, he goes into some detail and “names names” of the mass media entities that have provided the “market” in which that brand has been promoted.

ooo

yachtie May 4th, 2009 6:25 pm:

Here is a piece of civic re-education that will leave you stunned: The ‘culture’ at work is the culture of sedition and terrorism. America is hijacked by a handful of ‘Good Men’. The US dollar is ransacked, Democracy is perverted, treason and subversion are committed. Read the links below and you will see who’s behind the curtain. The two documents (Part 1, Part 2) are NOT just another conspiracy theory. They are lengthy, in parts hard to follow but very well referenced. They will change the way you look at history, politics, finance, war and terrorism. You will find out about real terrorism. Many persons in these documents are well known; many are right now in pivotal positions of politics and finance. These people do shape YOUR life and that of our children right now. The details are researched and referenced. The consequences are beyond belief.

ooo

Jerry D Rose May 4th, 2009 8:14 pm:

Yachtie, thanks for these proposed additions to a syllabus for Civic Re-education 101. Your links provide me with my first exposure to the seemingly valuable works of E.P. Heidner, though I’ve scarcely been able to do anything so far but skim them quickly. My reading list has mostly been from writings of Peter Dale Scott and, more recently, Lost History by Robert Perry, Overthrow by Stephen Kinzer and the current works of William Blum especially Freeing the World to Death. And speaking of lost history, we’re not only “losing” it but never “making it” because the alternative media like CD are marginalized and any really critical “journalism” is practically gone from any main stream media for reporting the news of the day, busy as they are in promoting “brands” of Obama and others.

There is a lot of angst and anger in these CD postings in which people propose lines of action for the malaise of our times and others throw at them “sure, like that’s going to work” when someone proposes calling or writing letters to Obama or Congress, joining in street demonstrations or boycotts, “pressuring” Obama to make him more progressive, developing 3rd parties to counter the corporate duopoly, whatever. And in a way the critics of critics are right, and none of these actions is going to be “the” solution, but any one may be “a” solution that, cumulatively with other approaches, may move us in a progressive direction. Me, I’ve cast my public career on the pillars of public education and journalistic advocacy; and my little bit is a way-little-bit given my age (75), my health (average) and my desire to maintain a “life” with my family and my other extra-curricular interest, play acting and directing. Within those limitations I seek to publish my daily “progressive headline news” for my website, to blog my views for the like-minded, and post on these CD articles, with an occasional Letter to the Editor or Op-Ed column. The “education” thing finds me searching for an outlet; there’s no Civic Re-Education 101 in any college, high school or middle school that I know of but I have to believe there are still-active educators in “social studies” or still-active political clubs of students. Having spent my active career as a college sociology professor, I know that universities at least have (or did have) some holes in the cracks of orthodox curricula into which serious academic efforts to deal with unofficial and critical history and current events discussion could be crammed; if only we could find where those holes are. Any suggestions?

ooo

yachtie May 4th, 2009 9:42 pm:

You are right, there’s no civic re-education 101 in any college, high school or middle school and it’s ‘unhealthy’ to be too political at universities or even student clubs.

Obama will not be a savior. Obama, after all, was faculty at the University of Chicago Law School. They don’t hire liberals; at best they hire go-along to get-along corporate tools (see the two links) or people so immersed in their subjects they are apolitical and leave the structures of power alone. A liberal might sneak into a totally non-threatening field like art history, but not in the key areas of law, economics and business. The Board of Trustees of the University consists mostly of financiers and business executives, including the president of Goldman, Sachs & Co. They don’t want anyone using the prestige of their position at U of C to advocate ‘dangerous’ ideas. These are the people whom the chairs of departments have to please. Professors may have tenure, but otherwise the power of the trustees to set university policy has changed little since Upton Sinclair wrote The Goose-step circa 1921’.

It is great to see that people like you gain dynamic and momentum. And THIS is our only chance. Shout out loud. The country needs re-education and that can happen only through the freedom and the power of the Net. History has to be re-written, democracy has to be enabled with thinking citizens, and the monetary system has to be designed for the people and not the elite.

Suggestions how to get there?
Don’t ask me, ‘cause I don’t have a happy picture. I see lots of pitchforks.

ooo

rtdrury May 5th, 2009 3:17 am:

Sure. Community centers provide space you can reserve to present civics courses. Promotion via hand flyers and street mags and internet. Let the air out of the elites’ tires via such grass roots projects, heh heh. Soon enough, O’Bamba will be left stranded with his makeup artist.

ooo

Jerry D Rose May 5th, 2009 7:53 am:

rtdrury: Great ideas, thanks! Maybe we’ll actually get around (as they did for Viet Nam war “teach-ins”) to think again of educational efforts as “actions”. (We did one at Gainesville FL as a re-enactment of the Downing Street Memos, it went pretty well.)

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Jerry D. Rose - Editor, The Sun State Activist

By Bruce A. Dixon

Why a Report Card At All?

The hundred day report card is an enduring tradition in American journalism for a very good reason. It’s journalism’s job to help citizens make sense of the world, to seek the truth and tell it without fear or favor no matter where it leads. Three months and a week into a new administration, everybody knows where the mens and ladies rooms are, most of the key hires are in place, and the bus has definitely cleared the station. There’s plenty of evidence by now to assess where it’s going, and whether it’s anyplace we really ought to be headed.

Should We Grade President Obama on What He Promised, or on What People Need?
The answer to this should be easy. It all depends on whether we imagine government derives its authority from the blessedness of anointed men and women in office, or whether legitimacy comes from the informed consent of the governed. Most of us who were not home schooled learned it the latter way: governments are legit only insofar as they serve the people. Limiting the scope of a report card to what politicians promise confers upon them the power to lock down our collective imagination and deny our hunger and thirst for justice before we can even express it.

Why These Categories?
Because these are the issues that matter to our people. As the journal of African American political thought and action, they are what our authors write about every week.

1. Health Care Reform (9 points)
2. Creating New Jobs and Preserving Old Ones (5 points)
3. Fully Funding and Preserving Public Education (6 points)
4. War & Peace (9 points)
5. Transportation (5 points)
6. Caribbean and Latin America (4 points)
7. Obama’s Africa Policy; Our Brotherman and the Motherland (5 points)
8. Wall Street Bailout (6 points)
9. Debt and Foreclosure Crises (6 points)
10. Investigating Bush-era Crimes (5 points)
11. Criminalizing Immigration, Militarizing the Border (5 points)
12. Broadband For Everyone and a Just and Fair Media (5 points)
13. Environment (5 points)
14. Agricultural Policy, and Policy Toward Black Farmers (5 points)
15. Mass imprisonment (5 points)
16. Employee Free Choice Act (5 points)
17. Urban Policy (5 points)
18. Privatization of Government Agencies and Services (5 points)
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1. Health Care Reform
President Obama himself declared that we should judge his first term on whether we get a national health care plan. While the exact specs of the Obama campaign have not been formally introduced, it’s been no secret for a couple years now that Barack Obama and his advisors abhor any form of Medicare-For-All or single payer health care. When the president’s people ordered their activists to convene a wave of health care house meetings in December, the demand most often voiced was for single payer, everybody-in and nobody out. Despite this, and despite polling data that shows a majority of physicians and a majority of the American people favor single payer health care, the Obama administration buried the results of those house meetings. Obama’s series of regional health care “summits,” although billed as the chance to get input from all the relevant have pointedly excluded any voices for single payer health care.

Currently, private insurance companies consume a third of every health care dollar for advertising, lawyering, salaries and bonuses, bad investments and the vast bureaucratic machinery they have created to deny coverage to the sick. We are the only nation where half the bankruptcies are caused by illness. The Obama health care plan, modeled on the failed “individual mandate” health insurance experiments of Massachusetts, Tennessee and other states will make health insurance like car insurance.

Everyone will have to buy a policy from a private company or face tax and other penalties, with no guarantee the policy will be either affordable or comprehensive. The myriad shortcomings of this plan are detailed in a report from Physicians for a National Health Care Plan, and in several previous BAR articles. When asked during the campaign whether he thought health care was a human right, Barack Obama said he thought it was. His health care plan does preserve the profits of insurance companies.

Five points for admitting health care is a human right, minus one for suppressing discussion of single payer. Four out of nine.

2. Creating New Jobs and Preserving Old Ones
When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933, the nation had been in the Depression almost four years. The new president created some 800,000 jobs in the space of a few months. To be fair, this Depression hasn’t been in effect nearly as long, and there are no insistent mass movements waging extralegal campaigns of strikes and civil disobedience going into the spring of 2009. So it’s more complicated than measuring the hundreds of thousands of new jobs Roosevelt created against the hundreds of thousands Obama hasn’t.

What we see is a failure of imagination on the part of the Obama administration. Not only does the First Black President declare it’s the job of the private sector, never government, to create jobs, a stand closer to Herbert Hoover than to Franklin Roosevelt — his “stimulus packages” have refused to fully fund the operations of local and state governments. Full funding for local governments would preserve the jobs of teachers, water department workers, librarians, coaches and park district workers, public safety employees and others who are being sent home in the tens of thousands. It’s a piece of low hanging job and vital service preserving fruit the Obama administration refuses to harvest.
One point out of five for the Obama rhetoric on green jobs, and the $10 billion directed toward high speed rail..

3. Fully Funding and Preserving Public Education
There is no good news here. While Obama’s Secretary of Education has not called teachers unions “terrorists” as his Bush-era counterpart did, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is as committed to de-funding and privatizing public education as his predecessors. Obama’s pick for Secretary of Education is an underqualified stooge whose longest lasting job was as a pro basketball player, and who has not a single hour of classroom teaching experience. Duncan’s innovations as Chicago Public Schools CEO, detailed in a December BAR interview with longtime Chicago teachers union activist George Schmidt, include the closing and privatizations of dozens of schools in African American communities and the summary firing of their mostly black teachers and principals, and the handing over of several inner-city Chicago middle and high schools to the Army, Navy and Marine Corps.

No Child Left Behind, the bipartisan corporate Bush era “education reform,” which allows schools and entire districts to be threatened with closure and privatization, seems destined to remain intact for the foreseeable future under an Obama administration.

Zero points here of a possible six.

4. War and Peace
From 2003 onward, Barack Obama staked his political career on conveying to voters the impression that he opposed the war in Iraq, while vigorously signaling to the bipartisan foreign policy establishment that he was really one of them. By early 2008 Obama closed the circle, openly endorsing the Bush “surge” and war aims in Iraq, confirming that thirty or fifty or seventy thousand troops, depending, could remain in Iraq throughout his first term. Unlike John McCain, who said the US should increase troop levels in Afghanistan because “we” are “winning,” Obama wanted to boost the number of American boots on the ground there because “we” are losing. Halfway though his first week in office, Obama was launching missiles from drones at Pakistani mountain villages.

While the US spends more on things military than the rest of the world combined, the Obama military budget is higher than Bush’s. Though the laughable “war on terror” is gone from our government propaganda, all or most of its machinery remains in motion under the new administration. Barack Obama has kept Robert Gates, a bloodstained Reagan-era war criminal as chief of the Pentagon, and designated the bloodthirsty Susan Rice as National Security Advisor. Susan Rice is an enthusiastic advocate of genocidal military intervention practically everywhere on the African continent under the monstrously hypocritical cover of “stopping genocide.”
The president says he will talk to Iran, which is worth a point, but continues the Bush policy of threatening Russia with NATO expansion right up to its borders, which takes away the single point.
Zero out of nine points.

5. Transportation
After more than a half century of disinvestment, the US passenger rail network is the laughing stock of the developed world. Passenger railcars have not been manufactured in the US for decades, and no high speed rail exists at all outside a single line in the northeast. Investment in high speed intercity rail was one of the first promises broken by the Clinton administration.

The initial investment of $10 billion, apparently pushed at the president’s personal initiative, is a modest start, with the potential to create tens of thousands of new jobs, though not right away. Obama probably knows that $100 billion over his first term would be a minimally reasonable down payment on a world class passenger rail network, which will be cheaper and more sustainable than America’s dependence on highways and air travel. Assuming he does have the vision, the questions are whether he has the political will, and whether, after allowing Wall Street to pillage and loot the US Treasury under the guise of a “bailout,” we have the money, and how much of it can be executed before the price of fuel makes air and highway travel prohibitive.

Also, existing urban mass transit is in tatters, thanks to management that believes transit is a profit center rather than an economic right. Those awaiting an Obama commitment to the future of urban mass transit on the scale of his pledges to intercity rail may have a long wait. After all, urban mass transit is identified, in the minds of many, with African Americans, a political identification the First Black President determined to avoid wherever possible.
Four points out of five.

6. Caribbean and Latin America
Given that one black person in ten in the US has a spouse, sibling or parent born abroad, most often from Africa or the Caribbean, administration policies toward these regions have a special resonance in the African American community. Obama deserves a half point for shaking hands with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, and another half point for not striking the usual full frontal crudity pose toward Cuba at the inter-American summit earlier this month. But massive taxpayer subsidies of US agribusiness to dump millions of tons of genetically modified corn, soybeans and other products on Jamaica, Haiti, Mexico, Central and South America continue to crush local agriculture, deepening food dependency in and driving immigration from these countries. There is no sign that an Obama administration is reconsidering any of these policies.
The brutal occupation of Haiti by a US financed proxy force of so-called peacekeepers, also continues unmentioned by the US press, and unremarked upon by the Obama administration.
Lots of room for improvement here. One and a half points out of four.

7. Obama’s Africa Policy: Our Brotherman and the Motherland
In recent years the US has provided arms transfers, military training and military assistance to more than 50 out of Africa’s 54 nations. Hence Africa is the most war-torn region on earth, containing millions of square miles in which hospitals, schools, agriculture, industry and civil society have collapsed into vast law-free zones, such as the eastern Congo, where 5 million souls have perished since the mid 1990s. These law-free zones have proven an ideal business-friendly environment for the extraction of Congo’s timber and mineral wealth, including 90% of the world’s coltan, an essential strategic mineral found in every cell phone, computer, aircraft and modern electronic device. Resources extracted from law free zones in the Congo and elsewhere in Africa invariably find their way into “legitimate” markets of Western Europe and the US.
While the death toll in neighboring Darfur is a twentieth or a hundredth that of the Congo, according to Mahmood Mandani and others who are in a position to know, the Obama Administration, just like the Bush Administration before it, calls Darfur a “genocide,” and not the Congo. The difference, say many, is that the Sudanese oil is being pumped out by the Chinese, while the profits from 5 million Congolese dead end up here. The “genocide” label is about as truthful as Saddam’s WMD, another excuse for military intervention.

Barack Obama has been to Somalia, but his administration continues the twenty year low-intensity war against that unhappy country. Somalia hasn’t had a central government in two decades not because its people don’t want one, but because successive US Republican and Democratic administrations brand as “terrorist Al Qaeda sympathizers” any Somali government that won’t grant the US the exclusive rights to the untapped lake of oil beneath the country.

The Bush administration established AFRICOM, the US imperial command on the continent, a move so unpopular that only one African government in 54 will dare openly accept it, fearing the wrath of their own constituents. Although it is a military command headed a black US general. AFRICOM is seconded by a civilian from the State Department, and liberally sprinkled with representatives of every US civilian governmental, and some ostensible non-governmental entity which does business in Africa. Thus AFRICOM deliberately blurs the line between US civilian and military involvement on the African continent, and even more thoroughly militarizes US policy toward Africa.

Nobody who thinks half a minute about it imagines that the militarization of Africa, and of US policy toward Africa is a good thing. It has been US policy for more than two decades. Among the bipartisan designers of this policy are Obama’s top foreign policy advisors including Madeline Albright and Susan Rice. You can look awfully hard for some good news in Obama’s policy toward Africa so far, and find no reason for optimism.
We’ll give him one point out of five anyway, for no good reason. Call it hope.

8. Bailing Out Wall Street
The extent to which Wall Street and the Obama administration are in bed with each other is deeply disappointing to most Americans, according to a recent NBC News Gallup poll.

Not a single economist, regulator, or financial analyst who predicted the bursting of the bubble economy, and there were many, has been hired by Obama’s financial gurus, and every financial policy seems aimed at rescuing speculators rather than the American people. Rather than recognize the systemic crisis of capital for what it is, the end of business as usual, all the Obama ’stimulus” packages are offered in the forlorn hope that that lending can be re-started, another bubble re-inflated, and business can be resumed as usual.
Zero points out of six.

9. Debt and Foreclosure Crises
For ordinary people, the financial crisis has become a debt crisis. Mortgage, consumer and credit card debt have mounted to unpayable levels, as the parasitic masters of capital attempt to extract an interest payment out of every transaction. Acquiring a college education, for example, has become virtually impossible for most Americans without incurring a five figure debt at usurious interest rates. The Obamas, despite their much higher than average income, were unable to pay off their college loans till a couple years ago, when they received royalties from his best-selling book. Until there is a commitment on the part of the Obama administration to lower interest rates on current and new consumer, mortgage, and student loans, to restricting interest rates in future lending, and a restoration of bankruptcy laws that enable individuals to liquidate their debt and start anew, we cannot give Barack Obama any more than a single hopeful point out of six.

10. Investigating the Bush Era Crimes
Unlike the nation’s political elite, a substantial majority of the American people want the Bush crimes against humanity and the Constitution at least investigated, But the Obama administration on every front seems to affirm a bipartisan elite consensus that government officials are above the law. The Obama vision of reconciliation without truth incentivizes further violations of law on the part of government, If there were negative points, we would award them here.
Zero out of five.

11. Criminalizing Immigration and Militarizing the Border
Despite some promising campaign rhetoric in which Obama declined to adopt the racist and scapegoating language of Republican and many Democratic politicians toward immigrants, the Obama administration designated Janet Napalitano, the evil twin sister of Phoenix sheriff Joe Arpaio, to head the Department of Homeland Security. In our opinion, this is an executive agency which should never have been formed, and ought to now be dissolved. Under the Obama administration, construction of the border wall continues.
Obama gets one point for rhetoric, and another point for not deploying troops to the border. Two out of five.

12. Broadband For Everyone, Low Power Radio, and a Just and Fair Media
One of the administration’s professed goals is the extension of broadband availability to underserved rural and urban areas. The designation of $7 billion for this purpose, and the nomination of former FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein to supervise its dispensation, is a promising start. But the failure thus far to neutralize corporate forces who want to keep any broadband mapping data concealed from the public is a loathsome concession to cable companies and telcos. Obama’s new FCC chief has not yet been confirmed, and so cannot be judged. The administration says it is for network neutrality, and has not opposed low power FM radio as far as we know. Its position on media consolidation and the future of music remain unknown.
Two points awarded here for substance, and one for hope. Three out of five.

13. Environment
The so-called “Cap And Trade” scheme favored by the Obama administration enacts the reprehensible suggestion of Obama advisor Larry Summers’ that African and other less developed countries are “underpolluted” by establishing a corporate “right” to pollute, along with a financial market to buy, sell, trade and speculate on the value of these imaginary pollution “rights.” It doesn’t appear to have reduced carbon emissions in Europe, according to Dartmouth’s Dr. Michael Dorsey, but it has made a lot of traders and speculators rich. , and is a product of the same market-as-solution-to-everything exhibited during the Bush years. A tax on carbon emissions would be more straightforward. No points there, and none for “clean coal” either.
The Obama administration gets a single point for talking up fuel economy standards and green jobs, with another thrown in for hope. One point out of five.

14. Agricultural Policy, and Policy Toward Black Farmers
The broad Obama policy toward agribusiness is unlikely to be good news. Obama is committed, for instance, to ethanol, which often takes more energy to produce than it does when burned. On the other hand, one of the first acts of Obama’s new Secretary of Agriculture was to meet with black farmers of the Southern Federation of Rural Cooperatives. After decades of malign neglect toward African American farmers, a single meeting isn’t much, but it’s hopeful, worth two points of a possible five.

15. Mass Black Imprisonment
Some things are too hot for a First Black President with no real allegiance to African Americans as a community to touch, but too important to the lives of millions in that community to ignore. Not long ago, Obama declared that despite an incarceration rate seven to nine times that of white America, blacks were “90% of the way to equality.” If the First Black President cannot grow a pair on this issue, and come out for restorative justice, elimination of disparate penalties, banning of incarceration of juveniles with adults or an end to indeterminate sentencing, he deserves no points. It’s tough, it’s a high standard, but a fair one.
Zero out of five.

16. The Employee Free Choice Act
The EFCA would better enable workers to form unions across the country. It would give them some of the same vital tools for raising their own living standards that workers in other countries like Canada have — the ability to exercise democracy on the job and assert their economic rights to security and survival. On the campaign trail President Obama endorsed the EFCA, but generally, only when asked or when appearing at union halls and labor functions. Since assuming office he has rarely mentioned it. The Chamber of Commerce and other employers including Wal-Mart and Home Depot are spending tens or hundreds of millions on deceitful PR campaigns to misrepresent and distort the issue. They are not being countered by the Obama administration. Some Democrats have declared against EFCA, and others appear ready to trade off pieces of it for goodness knows what. This is a time when presidential leadership can enable tens of millions to lift up their own living standards.
We are waiting for President Obama to show this leadership. Still waiting…. Two points of a possible five, and slipping.

17. Urban Policy
Despite the elevation of tens of thousands of African Americans to public office in cities and states and counties across the land, the creation of thousands of black millionaires, along with an educated and empowered black middle class, the only model of urban economic development any of us have seen, consists of moving poorer people out of urban neighborhoods and richer ones in. The black misleadership class seems not to know how to create jobs or low income housing, or how to develop, to value, to stabilize communities where they are. They just know how to get paid, and they do that by playing the development game as their white counterparts have handed it to them. Sadly, Barack Obama’s administration brings little to the table on this score. We award the Obama administration two points for establishing an office of Urban Policy, and take away one of those for appointing a New York pol with ties to real estate developers to the post.
One out of five.

18. Privatization of Government Agencies and Services Including the Military
A hallmark of the Bush, and before that, the Clinton administration has been the conversion of public wealth, public property, even public services and the military, to centers of private profit. In principle, most Americans know that privatization of public resources is a bad idea. Publicly transparent processes become proprietary information. Public services are cut back to wring profits from every transaction, and needed services that don’t turn big enough profits are cut back. Vast portions of the nation’s intelligence, prisons and military establishments, for example, have been privatized. This is an issue never mentioned by candidate Obama or President Obama, but one vital to the future of any sort of democracy.
Zero points out of five.

A hundred days is far too early for anyone to score a hundred points on a list of concerns like these. 55 would have been passing, and 45 a sign of hopes being actually redeemed on some fronts. But at under 25 out of a possible 100 our First Black President is at best a chronic underachiever, as far as the real needs of African Americans go.

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Bruce Dixon is Managing Editor of Black Agenda Report, on which this article was posted on April 29, 2009.