Why Obama's the Least Socialistic President in Modern History (And That's a Shame)

[Octafish]

I'll side with the Pink Lady over Tricky Dick, any time.

Why Obama's the Least Socialistic President in Modern History (And That's a Shame)

By Richard (RJ) Eskow
AlterNet, February 18, 2012

The Republican presidential candidates keep calling Barack Obama a socialist. If they're trying to invoke the Red Menace like Republicans of past campaigns, they're a generation too late. Americans between the ages of 19 and 29 have no memory of the Cold War. Today they have a more positive impression of socialism than they do of capitalism.

SNIP...

The Republicans who call Obama a socialist are using a GOP tactic that reached its zenith in Richard Nixon's 1950 Senate victory against Helen Gahagan Douglas. Nixon supporters handed out thousands of “Pink Sheet” flyers that year comparing his opponent's voting record to that of socialist-leaning New York City Representative Vito Marcantonio. Marcantonio ran on the American Labor Party ticket and belonged to several groups that were regarded as “red.”

Douglas considered Nixon's actions thuggery, as did a number of other Americans in both parties. She called him as “a young man in a dark shirt,” which was an indirect allusion to the fascists the US had been fighting five years before. (Upon hearing her remark, Nixon displayed an odd unfamiliarity with human anatomy. “Why, I'll castrate her!” the future president said. He also described Douglas as “pink right down to her underwear.”)

SNIP...

In fact, one of the reasons Republicans really won in 2010 was because they ran a series of very effective ads around a so-called “Seniors' Bill of Rights” whose key proviso was a direct attack on “socialist” Obama's repeated attempts to negotiate entitlement cuts: “No cuts to Medicare to pay for another program,” the Republicans declared. “Zero.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/election2012/154175/why_obama%27s_the_least_socialistic_president_in_modern_history_%28and_that%27s_a_shame%29/?page=entire

My take, regarding Socialism: I prefer we move from the capitalist-winner-take-all-the-gold-and-all-the-losers-get-the-shaft model to a form of democratic socialism in which all people can enjoy private property, including ownership of corporations and businesses, homes and land. However, the ownership class -- the one-percent of one-percent -- would share in their take through taxes that fund social programs and cultural progress. Thus, it would behoove the United States to nationalize the banking, energy, health care and defense industries. Under President Obama, I doubt that will happen, which is too bad for the country and the People.

[libinnyandia]

1. The Republicans seem to have won the argument on taxation of the rich. Few Americans now how

high tax rates were under Eisenhower. They believe the lie that higher taxes on the rich kill jobs.

[Octafish]

3. A concerted, organized effort was made to keep America from following Social Democracies of Europe.

From an American commie intellectual and patriot:

Capitalism s Self-inflicted Apocalypse

Michael Parenti

EXCERPT...

The present economic crisis, however, has convinced even some prominent free-marketeers that something is gravely amiss. Truth be told, capitalism has yet to come to terms with several historical forces that cause it endless trouble: democracy, prosperity, and capitalism itself, the very entities that capitalist rulers claim to be fostering.

Plutocracy vs. Democracy

Let us consider democracy first. In the United States we hear that capitalism is wedded to democracy, hence the phrase, “capitalist democracies.” In fact, throughout our history there has been a largely antagonistic relationship between democracy and capital concentration. Some eighty years ago Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis commented, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Moneyed interests have been opponents not proponents of democracy.

SNIP...

It is only in countries where capitalism has been reined in to some degree by social democracy that the populace has been able to secure a measure of prosperity; northern European nations such as Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark come to mind. But even in these social democracies popular gains are always at risk of being rolled back.

It is ironic to credit capitalism with the genius of economic prosperity when most attempts at material betterment have been vehemently and sometimes violently resisted by the capitalist class. The history of labor struggle provides endless illustration of this.

To the extent that life is bearable under the present U.S. economic order, it is because millions of people have waged bitter class struggles to advance their living standards and their rights as citizens, bringing some measure of humanity to an otherwise heartless politico-economic order.

CONTINUED...

http://www.michaelparenti.org/capitalism%20apocalypse.html

Taxes were as high as 92-percent on the top of the heap during Ike's tenure. He had it cut to 91-percent.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=213

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said it well: "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society."

[xchrom]

2. Du rec. Nt

[Octafish]

5. Why the rich can't save anybody - not even themselves

Michael Parenti:

CAPITALISM'S APOCALYPSE
Why the rich can't save anybody - not even themselves

Parenti predicted the financial crisis and said that giant corporate capitalism - by it's very nature - is an apocalyptic system. When unregulated the built in elements of ever increased growth may well bring the whole system down. And he described the growing national debt not as a tragic mistake but as a means to shift ever more money from the tax payers to the financial institutions in the form of interest payments. This speech is an analysis of the many structural flaws of a capitalist system that puts it on a permanent collision course with democracy. Recorded on August 23, 2008 at the closing reception for Maria Gilardin's art show.

SOURCE w/links to audio:

http://www.tucradio.org/parenti.html

Thank you, xchrom, for being in the good fight.

[loyalsister]

4. I wish this part were true

"In fact, one of the reasons Republicans really won in 2010 was because they ran a series of very effective ads around a so-called “Seniors' Bill of Rights” whose key proviso was a direct attack on “socialist” Obama's repeated attempts to negotiate entitlement cuts: “No cuts to Medicare to pay for another program,” the Republicans declared. “Zero.”"


because that would mean more people agree with me. Sadly it's not. There were a lot of people who supported HCR but were worried that it might rock their boat. The republicans successfully convinced middle class people that it would. The real discussion of Medicare reforms did not take place until 2011 during the debt ceiling controversy.

The attack ads that ran in my state were clips of Obama saying that he would have had a more effective HCR bill sooner if he had had Robin Carnahan in congress.

[Octafish]

6. More people do agree with you. It's Corporate McPravda what say otherwise.

Their well-emunerated lying liars spin things their way, despite the evidence. (Now I'm chums with people who are good friends with Mr. Florida...)

Why Right-Wingers (and Media Hacks) Are Totally Wrong About What Americans Believe -- We're Becoming Less, Not More, Conservative

Americans' views on the most pressing issues of the day are actually solidly progressive, so why do the media keep getting the story wrong?

Sarah Jaffe
Alternet.org
February 17, 2012

Despite some misguided triumphalism on the Right, America is not getting more conservative. In fact, if you look at lots of public opinion polls, you'll find that just the opposite is true—Americans' views on the most pressing issues of the day are actually solidly progressive, with strong support for the social safety net and growing support for once-controversial social issues like marriage equality.

Nevertheless right-wing and center-contrarian media outlets love to jump on polls that identify Americans as conservative, without ever asking what the difference is between what your average Ohioan means by that word and what Marco Rubio means when he announces at CPAC that “the majority of Americans are conservatives.”

SNIP...

An article by the Atlantic's Richard Florida titled, “Why America Keeps Getting More Conservative,” is an excellent example of the problem of relying on nebulously defined, self-identified “conservatism” as a measure of ideology. Florida cites new Gallup poll numbers (the same ones Rubio and Politifact cited) that the polling outlet itself said provided little evidence that America is “track[ing] right.” Gallup offered the far more innocuous headline, “Mississippi Most Conservative State, D.C. Most Liberal,” with the subhead: “State patterns in ideology largely stable compared with previous years.”

But “nothing has changed” doesn't make a good headline, and so Florida hooked an entire story on a false premise that belies the conclusions drawn by the pollsters he cites. Gallup goes on to point out, “Unlike political party identification, which has shifted significantly over the last four years, the state-by-state patterns in ideology have remained remarkably stable this year compared with previous years.”

And Ed Kilgore at the Washington Monthly noted:

If you look at the Gallup data on which Florida’s entire “analysis” (mainly just a charting of ideological self-identification by state) rests, it certainly doesn’t show any dramatic recent rightward trend. The percentage of Americans self-identifying as “conservative” since 1992 has varied from a low of 36% to a high of 40% (a high it reached in 2004, before dropping to 37% in 2008). As it happens, the percentage of Americans (again, according to Gallup) self-identifying as “liberal” has also gone up 4% since 1992 (from 17% to 21%). The percentage self-identifying as “moderates” has, accordingly, drifted down from 43% in 1992 to 35% in 2011, though the number was only two points higher in 2007 and 2008.

CONTINUED with some very good links...

http://www.alternet.org/election2012/154182/why_right-wingers_%28and_media_hacks%29_are_totally_wrong_about_what_americans_believe_--_we%27re_becoming_less%2C_not_more%2C_conservative_/

The effectiveness of our Democratic Party's messaging would be greatly enhanced by a clear explanation of what we stand for and aim to accomplish. Instead, things get...complicated. And in that process, progress for the many devolves into welfare for the well-off and much lowered expectations for the rest of us. One thing we do get more of, calls for increased sacrifice on the part of the middle class. Which, hey, is a losing electoral proposition.

[loyalsister]

8. That polling sample

missed my friends, neighbors and family. It seems that many people think it's cool to be conservative and mold their views to get themselves closer to the upper crust. These people vote consistently against their interests.

[Octafish]

9. Absolutely. My UMC pals all 'know' their ship will come in if they keep carrying water for the 1%.

It never does. In Detroit, their number has grown large over the decades. And they have all conveyed the same look of shock and horror upon losing their jobs in the various right-sizings, recessions, corporate take-overs of the companies to which they sacrificed their integrity.

An example many have forgotten: Remember how the ENRON team was so surprised to find out that Kenny Boy Lay was telling them everything was going to be all right and to keep buying stock? What a surprise it must have been to learn that they -- the ones trained to create "value" by jacking up the price wherever they could act as energy's middlemen -- had been, in turn, used.

[unkachuck]

7. K&R....excellent piece, Octafish....n/t

[Octafish]

10. Thanks, unkachuck! Hey, you know TUC Radio?

Time of Useful Consciousness -- an aviation term that describes the short period of time a pilot has to do work to save the aircraft after his brain gets cut off from oxygen -- also is apt for our present situation.

TUC Radio has an excellent archive of talks by progressive and radical democrats, including Michael Parenti. If you get a moment, you might enjoy an MP3 of the guy giving the 1%'s 1% a well-deserved kick in the pants in Conspiracy and Class Power.

[Quantess]

11. What a great thread!

Time for a kick.

[Octafish]

15. Thank you, Quantess. We need that FDR New Deal for the 21st century approach...

There are things to do, people to save, a nation to rebuild...

http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/

Then they can hate us for our freedom fries...

[limpyhobbler]

12. Lots of good stuff in this thread.

Thanks!

[Octafish]

16. You are most welcome, limpyhobbler. Hey! Didya hear about the 99% Plan?

http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/99-plan-progressive-vision-america-needs

Our opponents can call us 'liberal' like it's a dirty word or smear me as 'pink' or 'commie,' I don't care which. We know there is lots of Progress to be made before we even begin to look at the potential for Greatness in the United States.

[Honeycombe8]

13. Well, it's not that Obama can't be the one to change our entire system to a form of socialism...

no one can. Our economic system is established, and it's worked very well for the most part. But besides that, can you think of any democracy that has had a big change in the country's economic system without a revolution? It really can't happen.

Just the logistics of it boggles the mind. If you sit down and think about it in detail (I don't know if you work in an office with computers or do detail work or what, but if you do, you know what this process is), it would be a massive undertaking, and hugely expensive, to change just ONE of the subsystems you named to universal. Take the healthcare system...it can't really change from what it is to single payer in, say, a year or two. It would take many years and have to be done in small stages.

Imagine all the claims being filed every day with ins. cos. Those ins. cos. need to fulfill their obligations on those claims, which do not stop while you are instituting this change. Drs and hospitals are turning in invoices to the state for Medicaid treatment, so there are lots of those invoices coming in daily, and will cont. to come in daily while this change is being done. Then there's a whole Medicare system that is enormous, which would have to change. All these invoices and payments and denials coming and going every day, in the middle of a process trying to change the system. It would take probably a couple of decades, is my guess. And that's just the healthcare system.

In order to change quickly, it takes a revolution (which I do not advise!), which stops everything in the country, like a war on its soil would, which would result in millions of people suffering and dying from failure to get healthcare, or broke from failure to get ins. reimbursements. The country's economic system would collapse or almost collapse, like in other revolutions, before it can be rebuilt.

It's nice to dream about big changes, but those systems needed to be set up a certain way to begin with, in order for that to happen. The healthcare bill is an example, I think, of one way it can be done, IF that's what will be done. A first stage. Even so, that first stage is taking five or so years to implement. And that's just one stage of one program!

I like the idea of capitalism with safety net social programs for the most needy and the most vulnerable, which is what we had before it started being degraded. Get the special interests out of the way, term limits for Congress, weed out corruption to extent possible, beef up Social Security, and we're on our way to being a pretty good system, I htink.

[Octafish]

14. Thank you for the excellent reminder. One person can't do it alone.

That's where taxes and a sound fiscal policy come in...

Poverty in the United States

The official poverty measure is published by the United States Census Bureau  and shows that:

In 2010, 46.9 million people were in poverty, up from 37.3 million in 2007 -- the fourth consecutive annual increase in the number of people in poverty .  This is the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty rates have been published (DeNavas-Walt 2011, p. 14).

The 2010 poverty rate was 15.1 percent, up from 12.5 percent in 1997.  This is the highest poverty rate since 1993, but 7.3 percentage points lower than the poverty rate in 1959, the first year for poverty estimates.  (DeNavas-Walt 2011, p. 14).

The 2010 poverty rate for Hispanics was 26.6 percent, for Blacks 27.4 percent. 

In 2010, the poverty rate increased for children under age 18 from 20.7 percent to 22.0 percent. (DeNavas-Walt 2010 p. 14).

20.5 million Americans live in extreme poverty. This means their family’s cash income is less than half of the poverty line, or about $10,000 a year for a family of four (DeNavas-Walt 2011, p. 19).
49.9 million people or 16.3 percent of the American people, do not have medical insurance (DeNavas-Walt 2011, p. 23).

CONTINUED ...

http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/us_hunger_facts.htm

This is the 21st Century we're talking about here in the richest freest greatest nation on earth. Gotta dream big, and we gotta dream of finding ways to share what we earn. Otherwise, all that wealth that's been created since the dawn of Trickle-Down -- according to David Stockman, eight times the wealth that had been created in all of history before then -- will be wasted on the few parasites dodging taxes on their offshored loot.

http://seekingalpha.com/#article/187077-david-stockman-on-the-single-most-drastic-error-in-policy-in-modern-history

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