Obama's ties to big business [Archive]

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sonicbluetm

30th May 2008, 08:20

You may laugh but I'm generally a Democratic party supporter, lesser of two evils I used to say. But now I'm not so sure about that anymore.
I read an article on The World Socialist Website by one Bill Van Auken that totally trashed him and revealed some very worrying long-standing ties he has to Wall Street, not to mention all the money that Wall Street is funneling into him today. What do you guys think of Obama's ties to big business, and their general support and adulation for him? Is it possible that he is the preferred candidate of big business? If so, I'd do anything to keep him out of office in order to ruin whatever plans they may have for him and the presidency. I realize of course that McCain won't be much better but the nefarious hidden plans they seem to be drawing in relation to Obama really trouble me. What say you to that?

Plagueround

30th May 2008, 08:38

The Democrats have always had ties to big business, it's nothing new and if you supported them before you should realize nothing has changed. I think Obama is a rather gifted orator and an intelligent man who has been corrupted by the American political machine. He'll probably get elected because whether you like him or not he has inspired a movement amongst people that usually don't vote, not to mention Governor Bush left the Republican party in shambles and people are abandoning them like the titanic. When the typical American talks about the presidents they thought were great, most of the time they're just naming the ones that were good speakers or made them rich. Obama is a great speaker and even with the changes he's proposing he'll make sure the bourgeoisie stays nice and rich.

His past leads me to believe he probably has or had views that were a bit more left than mainstream American politics would allow, but whether he believes in what he is doing or not he's a capitalist now.

With all that being said...I cannot bring myself to sit and watch the Nixon Crime Syndicate put their next puppet in charge, especially one that's so trigger happy and out of touch...so I begrudgingly endorse Barack Obama, the lesser of two ever expanding evils.

Kami

30th May 2008, 08:51

I'm not up to date on the whole US election thing (I've got it blacklisted from all my news sources ^^), but as I recall, wasn't Obama for removing the tax shelters from big business and the rich?

sonicbluetm

30th May 2008, 08:56

Yeah, I guess I do realize that the Democrats have been no good since Roosevelt. (From what I understand the monied interests of this country have tried to put him out in a coup d'etat, so I'm pretty sure he really was one of the good ones.)
And yet in spite of this I can't help but have warm feelings for them because of names like Roosevelt and Jackson. And let's not forget it's the party of Thomas Jefferson, one of the few men who genuinely believed that democracy could triumph in the new world. I'm glad he's not around to see what's become of his brainchild.

Plagueround

30th May 2008, 09:02

I'm not up to date on the whole US election thing (I've got it blacklisted from all my news sources ^^), but as I recall, wasn't Obama for removing the tax shelters from big business and the rich?

He has stated he will reverse the Bush tax cuts, I'm not sure if he intends to go any further after that. To be quite honest he has pledged some decent education and healthcare ideas (if he actually manages to pull any of it off). He also wants to pull out of Iraq.
The main problem I have with him is the attempt to try and hide big business ties and use loopholes to make it appear no big money is helping his campaign, as well as the fact he has no problem with continuing the war on Afghanistan and possibly even invading the parts of Pakistan they think Bin Laden is in. In short, he won't do much to change the underlying problems of capitalism and imperialism. Lots of other details I could bring up, but I'm so tired of hearing about the U.S. election I'll leave it to others, especially since I've probably set myself up for some flames. ;) /go-go-gadget-asbestos-underoos!

Plagueround

30th May 2008, 09:09

sonicbluetm

30th May 2008, 09:23

Yeah I realize he became pretty authoritarian around the war, but I guess I sort of let that slide. It's the one war I think it was good that our leader forced us into.
And even though I'm more of an anarcho-socialist, I do think that he did believe in democracy in the sense that he did not try to control the people by any means he could think of, the way every government since has been striving to do, but was genuinely interested in and wanted to hear their voices and allow them to thus have real input into their government.
Though I admit the camps are a pretty big stain on his legacy.

bobroberts

30th May 2008, 09:51

Anyone who is against big business completely would never be allowed to get anywhere near the white house.

sonicbluetm

30th May 2008, 10:56

I found this article maybe it'll add to this discussion (these are excerpts from it, emphasis mine):

Is it possible that Senator Obama does not know that corporate law firms are also frequently registered lobbyists? Or is he making a distinction that because these funds are coming from the employees of these firms, he’s not really taking money directly from registered lobbyists? That thesis seems disingenuous when many of these individual donors own these law firms as equity partners or shareholders and share in the profits generated from lobbying.

Far from keeping his distance from lobbyists, Senator Obama and his campaign seems to be brainstorming with them.

...

What might account for this persistent (but non-reality based) theme of distancing the Obama campaign from lobbyists? Odds are it traces back to one of the largest corporate lobbyist spending sprees in the history of Washington whose details would cast an unwholesome pall on the Obama campaign, unless our cognitive abilities are regularly bombarded with abstract vacuities of hope and change and sentimental homages to Dr. King and President Kennedy.

On February 10, 2005, Senator Obama voted in favor of the passage of the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005. Senators Biden, Boxer, Byrd, Clinton, Corzine, Durbin, Feingold, Kerry, Leahy, Reid and 16 other Democrats voted against it. It passed the Senate 72-26 and was signed into law on February 18, 2005.

...

Three days before Senator Obama expressed that fateful yea vote, 14 state attorneys general, including Lisa Madigan of Senator Obama’s home state of Illinois, filed a letter with the Senate and House, pleading to stop the passage of this corporate giveaway: The AGs wrote: “State attorneys general frequently investigate and bring actions against defendants who have caused harm to our citizens... In some instances, such actions have been brought with the attorney general acting as the class representative for the consumers of the state. We are concerned that certain provisions of S.5 might be misinterpreted to impede the ability of the attorneys general to bring such actions..”.
The Senate also received a desperate plea from more than 40 civil rights and labor organizations, including the NAACP, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Human Rights Campaign, American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Justice and Democracy, Legal Momentum (formerly NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund), and Alliance for Justice. They wrote as follows:
“Under the [Class Action Fairness Act of 2005], citizens are denied the right to use their own state courts to bring class actions against corporations that violate these state wage and hour and state civil rights laws, even where that corporation has hundreds of employees in that state. Moving these state law cases into federal court will delay and likely deny justice for working men and women and victims of discrimination. The federal courts are already overburdened. Additionally, federal courts are less likely to certify classes or provide relief for violations of state law”.
This legislation, which dramatically impaired labor rights, consumer rights and civil rights, involved five years of pressure from 100 corporations, 475 lobbyists, tens of millions of corporate dollars buying influence in our government, and the active participation of the Wall Street firms now funding the Obama campaign. “The Civil Justice Reform Group, a business alliance comprising general counsels from Fortune 100 firms, was instrumental in drafting the class-action bill”, says Public Citizen.

...

“The 2008 Obama presidential run may be the most slickly orchestrated marketing machine in memory. That’s not a good thing. Marketing is not even distantly related to democracy or civic empowerment. Marketing is about creating emotional, even irrational bonds between your product and your target audience.”
And slick it is. According to the Obama campaign’s financial filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and aggregated at the Center for Responsive Politics, the Obama campaign has spent over $52 million on media, strategy consultants, image building, marketing research and telemarketing.
The money has gone to firms like GMMB, whose website says its “goal is to change minds and change hearts, win in the court of public opinion and win votes” using “the power of branding – with principles rooted in commercial marketing,” and Elevation Ltd., which targets the Hispanic population and has “a combined experience of well over 50 years in developing and implementing advertising and marketing solutions for Fortune 500 companies, political candidates, government agencies.”
Their client list includes the Department of Homeland Security. There’s also the Birmingham, Alabama, based The Parker Group which promises: “Valid research results are assured given our extensive experience with testing, scripting, skip logic, question rotation and quota control ... In-house list management and maintenance services encompass sophisticated geo-coding, mapping and scrubbing applications.” Is it any wonder America’s brains are scrambled?

...

Why do Wall Street and the corporate law firms think they will find a President Obama to be accommodating? As the Black Agenda Report notes, “Evidently, the giant insurance companies, the airlines, oil companies, Wall Street, military contractors and others had closely examined and vetted Barack Obama and found him pleasing.”
That vetting included his remarkable “yes” vote on the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, a five-year effort by 475 lobbyists, despite appeals from the NAACP and every other major civil rights group. Thanks to the passage of that legislation, when defrauded homeowners of the housing bubble and defrauded investors of the bundled mortgages try to fight back through the class-action vehicle, they will find a new layer of corporate-friendly hurdles.

www[dot]counterpunch[dot]org[slash]martens05052008[dot]html
www[dot]counterpunch[dot]org[slash]martens05062008[dot]html

sonicbluetm

30th May 2008, 14:11

And here's what Noam Chomsky has to say about him:

I think he's basically presenting himself as a blank slate, on which you can write your wishes. Hard to find much to be hopeful about. He is energizing a lot of young people, but I don't see much reason to expect that for that reason his presidency would be more responsive to public pressure. Overwhelmingly, the public believes that the government should be responsive to public opinion. But that's such an unpopular elite view that the press won't even report the polls showing this. A more realistic possibility, perhaps, is that those who are energized by the candidacy will devote the energy to something constructive after the likely disillusionment.

NC

darktidus

30th May 2008, 14:20

A more realistic possibility, perhaps, is that those who are energized by the candidacy will devote the energy to something constructive after the likely disillusionment.

That's one possibility, I fear the more likely possibility is that these people will simply become completely demoralised by the failure of their efforts. It ought to be the job of the left to direct these people to more realistic aims, they're ideal recruits, people who see a problem with the system as it is and are willing to do something about it.

sonicbluetm

30th May 2008, 15:55

^ I couldn't agree more.

Dominicana_1965

30th May 2008, 17:52

In almost all bourgeois "democracies" there exist the "changing" hope which is filled with favorable rhetoric. The hope, is more than usually, a candidate from the capitalist class. Obama's rhetoric as history and his own statements show that he is no friend of the working-class. Voting for the "lesser evil" has been a excuse utilized for decades which has actually prolonged the capitalist system because there is always an excuse for each election. There is always a "lesser evil" which will follow similar policies as the other capitalist candidate.

Obama receives money from the same capitalists that fund Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Some of the ruling class members who fund Obama are top Exelon (which gave him more than $70,000) officials like Frank Clark & John W. Rogers Jr., Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Kirkland & Ellis & Rich Tarplin from Chevron. He has also received more than $200,000 from the oil and gas industry (most from the executives). I also remember reading somewhere that he received money from Warren Buffett.

On healthcare he rejects universal healthcare because he claims the employees of the health care industry will lose their jobs, such as BlueCross. And why wouldn't he oppose it? Why simply because in reality he'll lose his health care profits! Obama bought more than $50,000 in stocks in a pharmaceutical company.

When it comes to foreign policy, Obama has demonstrated that he supports the Free-Trade agreement. Heck, he said he won't give the Colombian peon, Uribe the agreement due to the murderous history that follows the Colombian capitalist state, the point is he rejects to free trade as if it was a positive gift. He has called Hugo Chavez a "dictator" despite Chavez being elected various times democratically through the institutions of the capitalist state and calls Cuban "dissidents" who are usually paid by the U.S., "heroes". One of the most revealing aspects of Obama's true intentions is his foreign policy adviser. Who exactly is his adviser? The ultra-reactionary Zbigniew Brzezinski who played a role in funding the counter-revolutionary Mujahidden who were trying to overthrow the Saur Revolution. Brzezinski also constructed the "Afghan Trap" which was a plan to draw the Soviets into the war by making the Soviets feel pressured.

Obviously there are many more reasons why Obama is not different from Clinton or McCain but this is the general gist. Also the whole ideological division of capitalist parties is a mere hoax, more than 25% of U.S. senators and congressmen have invested in companies contracted by the Department of Defense. This percentage includes Democrats (Hillary sold her defense industry stocks in May 2007) and Republicans who are making more than $700 million a day.

Like all capitalist candidates, they talk and talk but then continue to do what they're supposed to do and that is to maintain the ruling class in power.

Mindtoaster

30th May 2008, 18:12

I was disgusted by his support of the judge's ruling in the Sean Bell murder case. Hillary and Obama are so concerned with collecting votes that, like most politicians, they have completley abandoned their ethics in favor of appeasing demographics.

As said above, this election is a prime example of bougeois capitalism in action: collecting votes instead of money at the cost of one's ideals and morality. None of these three canidates will do anything to help the working class.

Atleast McCain is blunt, and you can know what to expect from him (exploitation and death). Theres no telling what we will be getting from the two Democratic canidates. The most we can do with our vote is put it towards the canidate that will be least hostile to our movements in general, and I suppsoe Obama would unfortunently be that canidate =/

sonicbluetm

30th May 2008, 18:30

hekmatista

30th May 2008, 18:43

I'm afraid the capitalists have lured us into the trap that is Obama. I have a sneaking suspicion that we, meaning those of us on the left in particular, will rue the day we put this man in the White House.
It won't be us who put him there, unless one means our incapacity to create a mass alternative for channeling the energies his campaign has tapped among the people who should be OUR people, workers and the dispossessed generally.

sonicbluetm

30th May 2008, 19:05

It won't be us who put him there, unless one means our incapacity to create a mass alternative for channeling the energies his campaign has tapped among the people who should be OUR people, workers and the dispossessed generally.
Something is seriously wrong in the society when that happens, indeed.
To be perfectly honest it's times like these that I wish that Ralph Nader was a real alternative to the establishment candidates. But time and again he, or rather we, the voters, have proved that he is not, and there's no reason to believe that this time will be any different.
But like you, someone before you and Noam Chomsky have said, once the disillusionment sets in I think that may be our window.

Killer Enigma

30th May 2008, 19:51

On healthcare he rejects universal healthcare because he claims the employees of the health care industry will lose their jobs, such as BlueCross. And why wouldn't he oppose it? Why simply because in reality he'll lose his health care profits! Obama bought more than $50,000 in stocks in a pharmaceutical company.
This is the kind of paranoia on the left that costs it credibility. You honestly believe that $50,000 in stocks represents enough of a financial interest to Barack Obama for him to oppose any reform of the health care industry? The closest number I found to your so-called "$50,000 in stocks" was $5,000 worth of investment to a company currently developing drugs to treat avian flu (1 (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/obama/chi-0703070066mar07,0,3466462.story)). Even so, it is irrelevant. Your premise that $50,000 in stocks is worth more than reforming the health care industry is flawed because the salary of the President already exceeds this number eight times ($400,000). Grow up and start reading.

Ultra-Violence

30th May 2008, 22:38

Obama sole purpose is to demobalize people from getting actively involved in the struggle!

Svante

31st May 2008, 16:03

I'm afraid the capitalists have lured us into the trap that is Obama. I have a sneaking suspicion that we, meaning those of us on the left in particular, will rue the day we put this man in the White House.

je ne consens pas. i think Obama he i s begining o f socialisme i n USA.his politique like the health, économiques, social show that he is socialist. donc, i think h e lead socialiste movement becuase the people i n his campagne are socialistes.

Obama website;
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/

Nothing Human Is Alien

31st May 2008, 16:37

Ralph Nader is a bourgeois politician. He is anti-union and anti-immigrant. He hides representation of the capitalist rulers under the guise of "pro-consumer" populism.

Obama is another bourgeois politician. He belongs to the "other" party of U.S.-imperialism. He threatens war against imperialist-oppressed countries and says he will maintain the criminal blockade against socialist Cuba. If there was any doubt, take Left Business Observer's word for it: "... big capital would have no problem with an Obama presidency... [Hedge fund managers support Obama because "they're socially liberal, up to a point, and probably eager for a little less war, and think he's the man to do their work. They're also confident he wouldn't undertake any renovations to the distribution of wealth."

The Democrats are pushing for "universal healthcare" to appease the masses. But their "universal healthcare" will not be that in actuality. Instead they're going to increase the business of private insurance companies by forcing millions of people onto their rolls. Insurance in a gigantic industry in the United States. Real state-run, absolutely free universal healthcare can only be brought about in the U.S. through socialist revolution.

None of the candidates have anything to offer workers, and they certainly have nothing to do with socialism!

Communists don't evaluate parties and politicians by what they claim they will do in office. Instead we look at what class they represent. When that class is the capitalist class, we expose this fact to our working class brothers and sisters and call on them to break away and organize independently.

sonicbluetm

1st June 2008, 01:19

Ralph Nader is a bourgeois politician. He is anti-union and anti-immigrant. He hides representation of the capitalist rulers under the guise of "pro-consumer" populism.

Oh wow. I almost wasted my vote on him LOL. Thanks for that.

Svante

1st June 2008, 02:13

None of the candidates have anything to offer workers, and they certainly have nothing to do with socialism!

Communists don't evaluate parties and politicians by what they claim they will do in office. Instead we look at what class they represent. When that class is the capitalist class, we expose this fact to our working class brothers and sisters and call on them to break away and organize independently.

Obama politique will have many socialiste programms.the other candidate he i s to much like Bush. h e are dangerous person and stupide like Bush.

sonicbluetm

1st June 2008, 02:26

I agree that McCain is simply unacceptable. I'm afraid I will be forced to vote Obama.

Justin CF

1st June 2008, 17:56

Sigh... I wish I could post URLs...
If you do a search on YouTube for "black liberation theology marx", "black liberation theology socialism", or even just "black liberation theology", you'll find a bunch of stuff claiming that Obama's church is closely tied to socialist ideologies. Honestly, I don't know how true it all is. Most of the stuff I found on YouTube about it is taken directly from some big news source (usually CNN, sometimes Fox), but that doesn't mean it's trustworthy.

Now, you can say that Obama doesn't necessarily support everything his church does, and it's probably true, but I would think that there should be some kind of overlap there.

Cheung Mo

1st June 2008, 18:14

je ne consens pas. i think Obama he i s begining o f socialisme i n USA.his politique like the health, économiques, social show that he is socialist. donc, i think h e lead socialiste movement becuase the people i n his campagne are socialistes.

Obama website;
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/

Les Quebecois ont accepté Lucien Bouchard comme gars de la gauche, alors n'importe qui marche pour le Quebec. :-(

Killer Enigma

1st June 2008, 18:37

Oh wow. I almost wasted my vote on him LOL. Thanks for that.
Really? You're going to accept an unwarranted, unsubstantiated claim on revleft (of all places) and have that dictate who you vote (or in this case don't) vote for? Look into Ralph Nader. Find out where he stands on issues. Read some of his works. It isn't my place to tell you to vote for him or to say that you will find common ground with him but at the same time, I would vehemently urge you to not take anything you read on here, in terms of candidates and policies, as anything greater than a grain of salt. Maybe NothingHumanIsAlien is right, but you ought not take his word for it.

Svante

1st June 2008, 19:18

Les Quebecois ont accepté Lucien Bouchard comme gars de la gauche, alors n'importe qui marche pour le Quebec. :-(

M. Bouchard,bien sûr.M.Bouchard, i l est beaucoup comme l a politique René Leveque avant, rapelez-vous cela? votre message d e M.Leveque est avec M.Mulroney.je ne sais pas beaucoup de lui,maiis mon père, il n'aime pas lui. mon père lui appel Boloney Mulroney.

Svante

1st June 2008, 19:19

Boloney Mulroney Boloney Mulroney Boloney Mulroney Boloney Mulroney Boloney Mulroney Boloney Mulroney Boloney Mulroney Boloney Mulroney:)

Comrade B

1st June 2008, 19:34

In the United States, it is impossible to run unless you are rich. The reason why Dennis Kusinich and Ralph Nader are never big in politics, is because they dislike large companies. Because of this, they receive no money for campaigning from the rich people. The upper class are the most important voters in the United States, and therefore only those who favor rich people will stand any chance at all. McCain is an idiot. I would never vote for him. Hillary is barely different from the majority of republicans. Obama will change little economically, but is the only one that would like reopen diplomatic relations with Cuba, Iran, and North Korea. He is my preferred candidate.

Nothing Human Is Alien

2nd June 2008, 01:52

Again: communists don't judge candidates and political parties by what they say, but by which class they represent. Which class does Obama represent? If you think it's the working class, I have some beach-front property to sell you in Arizona.

Nader and Kucinich (and those like them) exist to bring disillusioned working people back into the fold of "acceptable" capitalist politics. Nader does it by running as a "third party candidate" (under the banner of small-capitalist parties) thus bringing workers who have figured back into the swamp of U.S. elections. He is anti-immigrant and anti-union, and that's a fact. As one of his former workers puts it ""Ralph Nader may look like a democrat, smell like a populist, and sound like a socialist - but deep down he's a frightened, petit bourgeois moralizer without a political compass, more concerned with his image than the movement he claims to lead: in short, an opportunist, a liberal hack. And a scab."Source (http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/01/story-goes-that-ralph-naders-unemployed.html)
Kucinich does it by running in the primaries with semi-radical sounding politics that attract workers who would otherwise probably not be interested in the elections. These workers come to support him and even campaign for him. He then losses the primaries (of course!), but goes on to endorse the winner and convince his supporters to support that Democratic candidate. Both tie workers to the bosses. Communists fight for the working class to organize independently of, and against the bosses.

Lesser-evilism is one of the oldest excuses in the book for reformism. The Communist Party USA has been calling every election of the last few decades "the most important election in history." They call for votes to the Democrats (who supposedly represent a 'less extreme' section of the capitalist ruling class) to defeat "the ultra-right"... They serve as a fringe left flank of the capitalist Democratic Party -- the party of slavery which brought us imperialist interventions in Cuba, Korea, Viet Nam, Sudan, the Balkans, etc., and gutted welfare, etc., etc.

If someone was punching you in the face with their left hand and their right hand.. but softer with their left hand.. and they said "you have to pick one".. would you pick the left one because it was the lesser-evil of "the only choices"? Or would you fight back with your own hands?

We workers need our own party that fights for our own state. Bourgeois "democracy" has nothing to offer us.

Comrade B

2nd June 2008, 02:11

Until we get a party that stands a chance, or a revolution, I am sorry to say I am voting for Obama. I would rather not give McCain, a man who hates communism with every bone in his body, a chance to throw me into Guantanamo bay.

Plagueround

2nd June 2008, 05:10

sonicbluetm

2nd June 2008, 06:26

Really? You're going to accept an unwarranted, unsubstantiated claim on revleft (of all places) and have that dictate who you vote (or in this case don't) vote for? Look into Ralph Nader. Find out where he stands on issues. Read some of his works. It isn't my place to tell you to vote for him or to say that you will find common ground with him but at the same time, I would vehemently urge you to not take anything you read on here, in terms of candidates and policies, as anything greater than a grain of salt. Maybe NothingHumanIsAlien is right, but you ought not take his word for it.

No it's just that I read on politicalcompass.org that he and every other US presidential candidate (yes, even Kucinich) would be considered right-wing in such RADICAL political environments as continental Europe, and this just seemed to confirm it. But you're right I'm going to read up more on him.

Although I think I was only toying with the idea of throwing my vote away out of spite for these Obama/Wall Street revelations. I think it made me bitter and irrational. I really don't think voting for Nader is going to make a bit of difference at this stage, no matter how much better his positions are.

sonicbluetm

2nd June 2008, 06:35

I'm gonna post that article I read on the World Socialist Web Site:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/feb2008/obam-f14.shtml

The two faces of Barack Obama

By Bill Van Auken
14 February 2008

Appearing before a packed auditorium at the University of Wisconsin Tuesday on the night of his victories in the “Potomac primaries,” held in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., Illinois senator and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama delivered a speech that was notable for its populist demagogy, not only on the war in Iraq but also social conditions in America.
The Wisconsin rally is the latest in a series of campaign events that have drawn large and predominantly younger crowds—20,000 at the University of Maryland and 17,000 in Virginia Beach on the eve of Tuesday’s primaries—and which have seen Obama adopt a more “left” public face.
The Illinois senator has the instincts of an agitator and seeks to give the crowds what he senses they want. In Wisconsin, he linked “record profits” for Exxon to the rising “price at the pump,” provoking enthusiastic applause. He spoke of trade agreements that “ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers for minimum wage at Wal-Mart.” And he pledged to be a “president who will listen to Main Street—not just Wall Street; a president who will stand with workers not just when it’s easy, but when it’s hard.”
Turning to the question of Iraq, he declared that “our troops are sent to fight tour after tour of duty in a war that should’ve never been authorized and should’ve never been waged,” and derided those who “use 9/11 to scare up votes.”
He continued by citing deteriorating social conditions facing average Americans: “the father who goes to work before dawn and then lies awake at night wondering how he’s going to pay the bills;” “the woman who told me she works the night shift after a full day at college and still can’t afford health care for a sister who’s ill;” the retiree “who lost his pension when the company he gave his life to went bankrupt;” and “the teacher who works at Dunkin Donuts after school just to make ends meet.”
He responded with promises of tax cuts for working people, health care reform, better pay and a government that would “protect pensions, not CEO bonuses.”
Echoing the rhetoric of Martin Luther King, he concluded his speech with the vow that “our dream will not be deferred, our future will not be denied, and our time for change has come.”
There is an element in these speeches that would seem to give pause to the Democratic Party establishment and the big business interests it represents. Obama’s rhetorical excursions could be seen as leading into dangerous territory. After all, the Democratic Party has served as an indispensable partner in the Bush administration’s policies of war abroad and social reaction at home.
But this populist primary rhetoric is only one face of Obama. There is another, and it is turned firmly towards the very corporate interests he publicly criticizes, which have poured tens of millions of dollars into his campaign.
On the day after the Potomac primaries, BusinessWeek ran a special report entitled, “Is Obama Good for Business?” While the piece provided no direct answer to this question, the attitude taken by the business magazine appeared to be a qualified “yes,” based in large part on the private discussions that the Illinois senator is holding with top Wall Street and corporate insiders even as he is delivering his public appeals for “change.”
Thus, BusinessWeek noted, last Sunday, after learning of his victory in the Maine Democratic caucuses, Obama sat down at his computer to exchange emails with Robert Wolf, CEO of UBS America, one of his major Wall Street “bundlers,” responsible for bringing in millions in donations from fellow multi-millionaires to finance what Obama refers to as his “movement.” According to estimates made by the Center for Responsive Politics, 80 percent of the money raised by the Obama campaign last year came from donors affiliated with business, with Wall Street leading the pack. More than half of the money came in the form of donations totaling $2,300 or more.
In addition to Wolf, Obama stays in regular touch with Warren Buffett, the second-wealthiest individual in America, with a net worth of some $52 billion. Among his leading economic advisors is Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago professor and prominent advocate of free market policies.
The Volcker endorsement Perhaps most significant was last month’s little reported endorsement of Obama by Paul Volcker, who was appointed Federal Reserve Board chairman by Democratic President Jimmy Carter in 1979 and remained in charge of the US central bank for nearly seven years under the right-wing Republican administration of Ronald Reagan.
Volcker was responsible for inaugurating a high-interest-rate regime demanded by the dominant sections of finance capital in the name of the battle against inflation. His monetary policy was inextricably linked to the offensive against the working class begun with the firing of the air traffic controllers and the breaking of the PATCO strike and continued with the shutdown of large sections of basic industry and the unleashing of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The ultimate effect of these policies was a vast transfer of wealth from the mass of working people to a narrow financial elite, a process that has continued to this day.
In a statement announcing his backing for Obama, Volcker noted that he had previously avoided involvement in partisan politics. He said that he was moved to intervene now not “by the current turmoil in markets,” but because of “the breadth and depth of challenges that face our nation at home and abroad.” He added, “Those challenges demand a new leadership and a fresh approach.” Obama’s leadership, he concluded, would be able to “restore needed confidence in our vision, our strength and our purposes right around the world.”
Larry Kudlow, the right-wing pundit and former Reagan administration economic advisor, commented on the endorsement earlier this month, noting that he had once worked as a speechwriter for Volcker and describing him as “a great American... a classic conservative... a man of fiscal and monetary rectitude.”
Volcker, Kudlow wrote, “would not have made this endorsement on a whim. Believe me. He never gets involved in these kinds of political decisions.” He concluded by asking: “Is Volcker the new Robert Rubin [the Wall Street insider who directed the Clinton administration’s economic policy]? Is it possible that Mr. Volcker is somehow tutoring Obama? Is it possible that Obama is more financially conservative than originally believed?”
These are the real relations that are being forged behind the scenes as Obama delivers left phrases from the podium. Those like Volcker see the Illinois senator as a useful vehicle for effecting major changes aimed not at ameliorating the conditions of life for masses of working people, but rather at securing the global interests of American finance capital.
No doubt, they believe Obama, who would be America’s first African-American president, is best suited to confront the dangers posed by continuing economic crisis and rising social tensions. Who better to demand even greater sacrifices from the working class, all in the name of national unity and “change?” At the same time, he would present a fresh face to the world, which they hope would help extricate US imperialism from the foreign policy debacles and growing global isolation that are the legacy of the Bush administration.
Given these big business ties, Obama’s campaign rhetoric about confronting poverty and social inequality involve a level of cynicism and demagogy that is truly staggering. His incessant promises of change are not tied to any radical economic program that fundamentally challenges the profit interests of the giant corporations and Wall Street.
On the contrary, Obama has advanced a conservative fiscal policy, pledging himself to a “pay as you go” approach and stressing the need to reduce debt and deficits. Given that he would take office with a near-record $400 billion deficit inherited from the Bush administration, this already determines an agenda of austerity measures.
On Wednesday, the candidate toured a General Motors plant in Janesville, Wisconsin and put forward a so-called jobs program involving investments in infrastructure and alternative energy that would total $210 billion over 10 years. In the face of the deep-going crisis confronting American capitalism, this is less than a drop in the bucket—and even this drop would quickly evaporate in the face of demands for deficit reduction.
Those who don’t want to talk about capitalism should by rights keep their mouths shut when it comes to poverty and unemployment. One cannot deal with either seriously without confronting the private ownership of society’s productive forces and the immense social inequality that it has created. The defense of jobs and living standards, the right to decent housing, health care and education for hundreds of millions of Americans can be advanced only through a far-reaching redistribution of wealth from the super rich to the broad mass of working people.
Clearly, the likes of Wolf, Buffett and Volcker are backing Obama because they know that he has no intention of going anywhere near such a policy.
As for the question of war, those looking to the Obama campaign as a means of ending American militarism will be sorely disappointed. The Illinois Senator has vowed not to reduce the ballooning US military budget—which consumes an estimated $700 billion annually—but rather to increase it. He has called for the recruitment of another 65,000 soldiers for the Army as well as 27,000 more Marines. He has vowed to put “more boots on the ground” in the “war on terror,” the pretext invented by the Bush administration to justify “preemptive war,” i.e., military aggression aimed at asserting US hegemony over the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia.
As for Iraq itself, his promises to end the war are belied by his pledge to keep American forces in Iraq to defend “US interests” and conduct “counterterrorism operations,” a formula that would see tens of thousands of US soldiers and Marines continuing to occupy Iraq and repress its population for many years to come.
To the extent that Obama’s rhetoric arouses popular expectations—and there are indications that it does—these will inevitably be dashed. In all probability, this will happen once the primary season is over and Obama is confronted by the Republican right as well as elements within the Democratic Party itself with the demand that he clarify his program. Should he capture the White House in November, he will head an administration committed to defending the interests of the American oligarchy both at home and abroad.
Those turning towards the Obama campaign as a means of effecting progressive social change in the US and bringing an end to US militarism abroad will find that the Democratic Party and the corporate and financial interests it represents will allow neither.
These necessary goals can be achieved only through a decisive break with the Democrats and the entire two-party system and the independent mobilization of the working class through the building of a mass socialist movement.

sonicbluetm

2nd June 2008, 06:56

If someone was punching you in the face with their left hand and their right hand.. but softer with their left hand.. and they said "you have to pick one".. would you pick the left one because it was the lesser-evil of "the only choices"? Or would you fight back with your own hands?

I agree wholeheartedly but I don't think this will be possible until we get more mobilized. I think this may happen when people realize Obama is not all he was cracked up to be, as per Noam Chomsky's suggestion (this would warrant a vote for Obama) or if things get SO tough that we're physically forced out of our capitalist monies-induced trance (which might warrant a vote for the worst option possible, i.e. McCain).

The latter of these strategies is something the conservatives wanted to do with Hillary. They wanted to make it a cakewalk to the White House for her, with their full support, so that once she gets there the Republicans' conservative base will get so incensed by her REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST POLICIES (what a joke, right?) that it would galvanize said base and help get someone REALLY conservative, like that loon Mike Huckabee, into the office after she's pushed out by a popular revolt.

I dunno whether or not this might work for us. But certainly we should have a much better shot at it, what with McCain already being the Republican nominee. Then again, a lot of "independents" like him. So if he were to turn back into OLD McCain after the election, I don't know that enough people would be angry enough with him to do anything to kick the ball in our direction.

Anyway,

I guess that means I'm undecided.

Edit: I just wanted to add that I'm really starting to think that the ruling class WANTS us to vote for Obama (their puppet, whom they fully support, as everything seems to indicate) so as to appease us and thus head off any widespread movement inspired by the Iraq war debacle. This is why, I think, anti-war rhetoric is so central to his campaign.
I believe he could potentially be very dangerous to our cause.

Nothing Human Is Alien

2nd June 2008, 18:53

That sounds like playing in bourgeois politics.. Of course that's exactly the kind of thing reformists like Chomsky go all in for (he was one of the "celebrity anarchists for Kerry" crowd).

McBama, O'Cain. What's the difference? They both will represent the capitalist rulers, just in slightly different ways. In the final analysis, it doesn't matter who you vote for. Your vote changes nothing. Voting in the U.S. in an exercise in futility.

The point is that for any real change to come, we workers need to organize as a class, independently of the bosses. If you're a communist, you're job is to help that process along. Using the excuse that we're not already organized independently (!!) is simply a way of postponing struggle for revolution indefinitely, and amounts to falling into the bottomless pit of capitalist politics. We have to start somewhere. Better to start now than to start in 4 years (or never.. which is usually the case with people that keep telling us to wait until after the election, until the next election, until this candidate "proves" he is no friend of the workers, etc., etc.).

Like Lenin pointed out, "It is not difficult to be a revolutionary when revolution has already broken out and is in spate, when all people are joining the revolution just because they are carried away, because it is the vogue, and sometimes even from careerist motives.... It is far more difficult—and far more precious—to be a revolutionary when the conditions for direct, open, really mass and really revolutionary struggle do not yet exist, to be able to champion the interests of the revolution (by propaganda, agitation and organization) in non-revolutionary bodies, and quite often in downright reactionary bodies, in a non-revolutionary situation, among the masses who are incapable of immediately appreciating the need for revolutionary methods of action."

YKTMX

2nd June 2008, 19:40

I think the title of this thread is a bit "dog bites man". Of course Obama is going to have "ties" to big business. He is a reformist bourgeois politician to the core and, as such, will be supported by sections of the capitalist class.

It's also true, however, that his campaign has raised the vast majority of its money from small donations made by ordinary, working class Americans. It's also true that his campaign has politically engaged previously disenfranchised and disenchanted sections of the population - blacks, the young most obviously.

The view that it "doesn't matter" because both candidates seek to defend capitalism is reflexive and, as such, can't possibly see any of the complexity or real choices. Comrades argue for a "class" analysis and then don't follow it through. They declare both candidates "capitalists" and move on. But this is not a class analysis - at least it's not a full one. After all, if both candidates simply represent "capitalists" and capitalists make up one percent of the American population, how do either of these gentlemen presume to win a general election?

The answer clearly is that, as well as representing capitalists, they also represent other social forces. These other social forces (poor blacks, working class "whites", liberal professionals, evangelicals etc.) should also be considered when we devise strategies.

Let's state two premises we know to be true

1) the capitalist class is not monolithic
2) the capitalist system, in the developed nations is based on consent, for the most part

The choice between McCain and Obama is indeed between two people who represent different sections of the bourgeois class, but is this ALL they represent? Clearly not.

I would urge U.S comrades to vote for Barack Obama for three reasons:

1) The election of a black man would be a symbolic blow against racism, and symbols matter

2) A victory for McCain would almost certainly lead to a devastating new war in the Middle East with Iran. Such an event would be a disaster for Iranians and Americans alike.

3) McCain represents not just American imperialism but the particularly virulent, hubristic, ideological and venval wing of American imperialism called "neo-conservatism". Obama, for whatever else he is, cannot be described as a neo-con. Indeed, to his credit, he was against the war in Iraq before it begun. A defeat for McCain would mark a setback for American imperialism.

I don't think comrades should campaign for him but I absolutely think they need to vote for him.

Nothing Human Is Alien

2nd June 2008, 20:45

That sounds about right... first State Department Socialism, now outright pro-capitalist.

Both the Democratic and Republic parties are capitalist parties, period. No one with even the slightest understanding of these parties says otherwise.. not even the ultra-reformist Communist Party USA (that campaigns for them and serves as their left-flank) has the audacity to claim otherwise. But whereas "comrades" who at least pretend to be red call for "strategic" votes to the Democrats to defeat the more "extreme" of the two capitalist parties, YKHSOW claims Obama can't represent the capitalist class because they only make up 1% of the population (!!!), and so he must represent other "social forces" (in which he includes "workers!").. add in some identity politics (he's Black, so it will somehow help Black folks if he's elected), and you have a desirable candidate. Of course, he does hark back to the traditional CPUSA position that the Democrats are better because they're "less extreme" towards the end. You can ask the millions of people kicked off the welfare rolls and the remaining folks in Viet Nam and Korea that haven't been bombed how much "better" the Democrats are.

YKHSOW is basically repeating the worst arguments of liberals. None of it has anything to do with communism, and instead just serves to muddy the waters even more than they already are. We should be fighting to destroy the illusion held by so many Black workers in the U.S. that the election of Obama will mean anything of substance for them.

Only a thoroughgoing revolution that rips up the foundations of this utterly despicable system can even begin to address the oppression of Black people in the U.S. The same can be said of women and the working class as a whole. To argue otherwise is to argue for the continued rule of the capitalist parasites. Period.

Cossack

2nd June 2008, 21:01

I agree that McCain is simply unacceptable. I'm afraid I will be forced to vote Obama.

Vote for the worst candidate possible, the one who will trash this country the most. Let's Fuck up the U.S.A!

YKTMX

2nd June 2008, 21:27

YKHSOW claims Obama can't represent the capitalist class because they only make up 1% of the population (!!!), and so he must represent other "social forces" (in which he includes "workers!").. add in some identity politics (he's Black, so it will somehow help Black folks if he's elected), and you have a desirable candidate.

Haha - you're such a bad liar. Did I say Obama doesn't represent the capitalist class? Umm, no! Here's what I said:

The answer clearly is that, as well as representing capitalists, they also represent other social forces.

So you see, CDL, YOU'RE A FUCKING LYING SCUMBAG.

The rest of the liar's post is tankie nonsense.

sonicbluetm

2nd June 2008, 21:28

After all, if both candidates simply represent "capitalists" and capitalists make up one percent of the American population, how do either of these gentlemen presume to win a general election?

Easy. They pander to whomever they expect are most likely to vote for them and potentially put them in office, and then go back to serving their masters once elected.

This is how it has worked for over a century, with a few exceptions.

YKTMX

2nd June 2008, 21:32

They pander to whomever they expect are most likely to vote for them

This doesn't make any sense. How is that people are "likely" to vote for you in the first place?

and then go back to serving their masters once elected.

They serve the capitalist system, not "capitalists". Most capitalists, at the time, opposed the New Deal but it was certainly to the benefit of the American capitalist system in the long-run.

sonicbluetm

2nd June 2008, 21:51

The choice between McCain and Obama is indeed between two people who represent different sections of the bourgeois class, but is this ALL they represent? Clearly not.

I agree that they represent different sections of the bourgeois class, the liberal and the conservative. But these distinctions don't have to do with fiscal policy, only social policy. And while the candidate who holds more socially libertarian views is obviously the better choice, we are trying to distinguish between them when it comes to the very thing which the bourgeois class uses to hold as much power as they do today, the one thing that matters to us most as socialists, the left-right spectrum. And we are UNABLE to place any significant distinction. Because there is NO distinguishing between presidential candidates on the left-right scale, as the fiscal agenda is set in stone in this country. There is no national debate, and the consensus, as pre-determined by the elites, is only conferred to the rest of us.
This is what bothers me most about certain spheres on the left: their touting Obama to be a leftist when he clearly is not one. Far from it, as I've stated above, I believe he could prove to be quite detrimental to leftist movements.

sonicbluetm

2nd June 2008, 21:53

This doesn't make any sense. How is that people are "likely" to vote for you in the first place?

They find out through these genius capitalist inventions called the "focus groups". Trust me it works quite wonderfully.

If it weren't for the focus group global consumerism as you know and love it today would have never been possible.

YKTMX

2nd June 2008, 22:16

these distinctions don't have to do with fiscal policy, only social policy.

No, I'm afraid this is incorrect. There are differences on a few issues - tax (Obama opposes Bush tax cuts for rich, McCain favours), trade (Obama opposes NAFTA as it stands, McCain supports). Obama's reflationary policies express the interests of that section of the American capitalist class that depends on internal demand - car makers, retailers, service sectors etc. McCain's tax cutting ultra free-trade policies represent the interests of other sections of the capitalist class.

And we are UNABLE to place any significant distinction.

Correct. I don't judge these "distinctions" to be significant (in terms of an absolute metric) either.

their touting Obama to be a leftist when he clearly is not one.

He's not a socialist, no. He's a soft-left reformist.

PRC-UTE

2nd June 2008, 23:18

He's not a socialist, no. He's a soft-left reformist.

He's really not at all. He's come out with some rhetoric like that recently, but that's about it. He's an admirer of Emporer Raygun and defends aiding the Taleban in the name of anti-communism. He's pretty far right, actually, and up till now the civil rights movement and most african americns were ambivelant about him.

If he were a genuine reformist, you could construct an argument for him, as reforms in things like the social safety net and reforming anti-union laws could really aid the US working class at a time its under a deep offensive from the Raygun-Clinton-Bush rule. But the more important point to understand is that it's less who is in power and more what working class people are doing to get organsied that effects politics. The liberal hero Kennedy committed ground troops, the rightist villain nixon had to withdraw them- and neither choice had to do with their politics or integrity as individuals, but with what pressure they faced from protests and armed resistance in Vietnam.

Comrade B

2nd June 2008, 23:38

Fucking up the USA also fucks up the people of the USA. We communists care to protect those who the worst would harm the most. Though when we think "American" we think fat, petty, racist, bourgeoisie white man in McDonalds, we forget about those who are not the typical neo-con. There are hard working members of the proletariat out there that McCain would hurt far more than Obama. Neither will fix anything. One will make things worse than the other though.

YKTMX

3rd June 2008, 00:18

He's really not at all.

The problem with your post there is that you claim he's not a reformist and then, as evidence, you cite a couple of examples (inc. obscure historical foreign policy decision) on which the Left would disagree with him (well, sections of it).

All reformist politicians make horrendous compromises - that is the nature of the thing. But on this basis, there would be no reformism at all, since we can all point to a half-dozen things reformist governments have done ('45 Labour government's Nuclear policy, for example) that were/are disgraceful

But can there be any doubt that a candidate who proposes raising capital gains tax, removing tax cuts for the rich, creating universal health care, restoring diplomatic multilateralism and proposes "taking back the Department of Labor from management" is a reformist?

I think we must concede that, if nothing else.

Also, I should say, I agree completely with PRC's analysis regarding about the centrality of working class politics to forcing the government, whoever it is, into action.

Killer Enigma

3rd June 2008, 05:02

Nader and Kucinich (and those like them) exist to bring disillusioned working people back into the fold of "acceptable" capitalist politics. Nader does it by running as a "third party candidate" (under the banner of small-capitalist parties) thus bringing workers who have figured back into the swamp of U.S. elections. He is anti-immigrant and anti-union, and that's a fact. As one of his former workers puts it ""Ralph Nader may look like a democrat, smell like a populist, and sound like a socialist - but deep down he's a frightened, petit bourgeois moralizer without a political compass, more concerned with his image than the movement he claims to lead: in short, an opportunist, a liberal hack. And a scab."Source (http://www.anonym.to/?http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/01/story-goes-that-ralph-naders-unemployed.html)
Really? Your source is a blog? Do you know what an argument is? Have you ever made a legitimate one in your life? To do so requires you to warrant your claims with substantive evidence. This is the poorest attempt at an argument yet on revleft. You actually quoted a blog (without providing information as to who wrote the article, the name of the blog, qualifications, etc.) and expect people to take what you said seriously.

The bigger travesty, though, is that there are many people on these forums who would see that as an acceptable warrant.

Killer Enigma

3rd June 2008, 05:10

That sounds like playing in bourgeois politics.. Of course that's exactly the kind of thing reformists like Chomsky go all in for (he was one of the "celebrity anarchists for Kerry" crowd).
You have a solid understanding of the issues and have clearly made a concerted attempt to analyze Chomsky's decision. Though I am sure someone as scholarly as yourself already knew Chomsky's reasons for doing so, I thought it might be beneficial to quote Phil Gasper, the professor of philosophy at Notre Dame de Namur University in California: "An article in Saturday's Guardian reports that left-wing icon Noam Chomsky has given his "reluctant endorsement to the Democratic party's presidential contender, John Kerry". Chomsky's support for Kerry is far from enthusiastic. He describes the choice between Bush and Kerry as one "between two factions of the business party" and Kerry as "Bush-lite", only a "fraction" better than his Republican opponent. But Chomsky argues that the current administration is exceptionally "cruel and savage" and "deeply committed to dismantling the achievements of popular struggle through the past century no matter what the cost to the general population." He concludes that "despite the limited differences [between Bush and Kerry] both domestically and internationally, there are differences. In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."" (1 (http://www.counterpunch.org/gasper03202004.html))

Killer Enigma

3rd June 2008, 05:12

So you see, CDL, YOU'RE A FUCKING LYING SCUMBAG.

The rest of the liar's post is tankie nonsense.
You don't need to resort to name-calling; anyone who can put an argument together sees the enormous fallacies, gaps in logic, and erroneous understanding that permeates his posts.

sonicbluetm

3rd June 2008, 11:37

He's ... soft-left

I'd say he's pretend-left LOL.

sonicbluetm

3rd June 2008, 11:46

'45 Labour government's

But that's just it. Look where the 1945 Labour party was then, and where the Democratic party was in FDR's day, and look where they are now. They have ventured DEEP into hard-right territory and there's no turning back. That alone should be evidence enough that they are NOTHING RESEMBLING reformism or revisionism or whatever you want to call it.

I won't believe in a million years that Obama is just an undercover reformist, because there's just no evidence to support it, quite to the contrary there's in fact A DELUGE of evidence against it, unless of course you want to use his vacuous pseudo-populist platitudes as evidence...

sonicbluetm

3rd June 2008, 14:00

Here's another article:

Obama's Money Cartel: How Barack Obama Fronted for the Most Vicious Predators on Wall Street

By PAM MARTENS

Wall Street, known variously as a barren wasteland for diversity or the last plantation in America, has defied courts and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for decades in its failure to hire blacks as stockbrokers. Now it’s marshalling its money machine to elect a black man to the highest office in the land. Why isn’t the press curious about this?
Walk into any of the largest Wall Street brokerage firms today and you’ll see a self-portrait of upper management racism and sexism: women sitting at secretarial desks outside fancy offices occupied by predominantly white males. According to the EEOC as well as the recent racial discrimination class actions filed against UBS and Merrill Lynch, blacks make up between 1 per cent to 3.5 per cent of stockbrokers -- this after 30 years of litigation, settlements and empty promises to do better by the largest Wall Street firms.

The first clue to an entrenched white male bastion seeking a black male occupant in the oval office (having placed only five blacks in the U.S. Senate in the last two centuries) appeared in February on a chart at the Center for Responsive Politics website. It was a list of the 20 top contributors to the Barack Obama campaign, and it looked like one of those comprehension tests where you match up things that go together and eliminate those that don’t. Of the 20 top contributors, I eliminated six that didn’t compute. I was now looking at a sight only slightly less frightening to democracy than a Diebold voting machine. It was a Wall Street cartel of financial firms, their registered lobbyists, and go-to law firms that have a death grip on our federal government.

Why is the “yes, we can” candidate in bed with this cartel? How can “we”, the people, make change if Obama’s money backers block our ability to be heard?

Seven of the Obama campaign’s top 14 donors consisted of officers and employees of the same Wall Street firms charged time and again with looting the public and newly implicated in originating and/or bundling fraudulently made mortgages. These latest frauds have left thousands of children in some of our largest minority communities coming home from school to see eviction notices and foreclosure signs nailed to their front doors. Those scars will last a lifetime.

These seven Wall Street firms are (in order of money given): Goldman Sachs, UBS AG, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. There is also a large hedge fund, Citadel Investment Group, which is a major source of fee income to Wall Street. There are five large corporate law firms that are also registered lobbyists; and one is a corporate law firm that is no longer a registered lobbyist but does legal work for Wall Street. The cumulative total of these 14 contributors through February 1, 2008, was $2,872,128, and we’re still in the primary season.

But hasn’t Senator Obama repeatedly told us in ads and speeches and debates that he wasn’t taking money from registered lobbyists? Hasn’t the press given him a free pass on this statement?

Barack Obama, speaking in Greenville, South Carolina on January 22, 2008:
“Washington lobbyists haven’t funded my campaign, they won’t run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of working Americans when I am president”.
Barack Obama, in an email to supporters on June 25, 2007, as reported by the Boston Globe:
“Candidates typically spend a week like this – right before the critical June 30th financial reporting deadline – on the phone, day and night, begging Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs to write huge checks. Not me. Our campaign has rejected the money-for-influence game and refused to accept funds from registered federal lobbyists and political action committees”.
The Center for Responsive Politics website allows one to pull up the filings made by lobbyists, registering under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 with the clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and secretary of the U.S. Senate. These top five contributors to the Obama campaign have filed as registered lobbyists: Sidley Austin LLP; Skadden, Arps, et al; Jenner & Block; Kirkland & Ellis; Wilmerhale, aka Wilmer Cutler Pickering.

Is it possible that Senator Obama does not know that corporate law firms are also frequently registered lobbyists? Or is he making a distinction that because these funds are coming from the employees of these firms, he’s not really taking money directly from registered lobbyists? That thesis seems disingenuous when many of these individual donors own these law firms as equity partners or shareholders and share in the profits generated from lobbying.

Far from keeping his distance from lobbyists, Senator Obama and his campaign seems to be brainstorming with them.

The political publication, The Hill, reported on December 20, 2007, that three salaried aides on the Obama campaign were registered lobbyists for dozens of corporations. (The Obama campaign said they had stopped lobbying since joining the campaign.) Bob Bauer, counsel to the Obama campaign, is an attorney with Perkins Coie. That law firm is also a registered lobbyist.

What might account for this persistent (but non-reality based) theme of distancing the Obama campaign from lobbyists? Odds are it traces back to one of the largest corporate lobbyist spending sprees in the history of Washington whose details would cast an unwholesome pall on the Obama campaign, unless our cognitive abilities are regularly bombarded with abstract vacuities of hope and change and sentimental homages to Dr. King and President Kennedy .

On February 10, 2005, Senator Obama voted in favor of the passage of the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005. Senators Biden, Boxer, Byrd, Clinton, Corzine, Durbin, Feingold, Kerry, Leahy, Reid and 16 other Democrats voted against it. It passed the Senate 72-26 and was signed into law on February 18, 2005.

Here is an excerpt of remarks Senator Obama made on the Senate floor on February 14, 2005, concerning the passage of this legislation:
“Every American deserves their day in court. This bill, while not perfect, gives people that day while still providing the reasonable reforms necessary to safeguard against the most blatant abuses of the system. I also hope that the federal judiciary takes seriously their expanded role in class action litigation, and upholds their responsibility to fairly certify class actions so that they may protect our civil and consumer rights..”.
Three days before Senator Obama expressed that fateful yea vote, 14 state attorneys general, including Lisa Madigan of Senator Obama’s home state of Illinois, filed a letter with the Senate and House, pleading to stop the passage of this corporate giveaway: The AGs wrote: “State attorneys general frequently investigate and bring actions against defendants who have caused harm to our citizens... In some instances, such actions have been brought with the attorney general acting as the class representative for the consumers of the state. We are concerned that certain provisions of S.5 might be misinterpreted to impede the ability of the attorneys general to bring such actions..”.

The Senate also received a desperate plea from more than 40 civil rights and labor organizations, including the NAACP, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Human Rights Campaign, American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Justice and Democracy, Legal Momentum (formerly NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund), and Alliance for Justice. They wrote as follows:
“Under the [Class Action Fairness Act of 2005], citizens are denied the right to use their own state courts to bring class actions against corporations that violate these state wage and hour and state civil rights laws, even where that corporation has hundreds of employees in that state. Moving these state law cases into federal court will delay and likely deny justice for working men and women and victims of discrimination. The federal courts are already overburdened. Additionally, federal courts are less likely to certify classes or provide relief for violations of state law”.
This legislation, which dramatically impaired labor rights, consumer rights and civil rights, involved five years of pressure from 100 corporations, 475 lobbyists, tens of millions of corporate dollars buying influence in our government, and the active participation of the Wall Street firms now funding the Obama campaign. “The Civil Justice Reform Group, a business alliance comprising general counsels from Fortune 100 firms, was instrumental in drafting the class-action bill”, says Public Citizen.

One of the hardest working registered lobbyists to push this corporate giveaway was the law firm Mayer-Brown, hired by the leading business lobby group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Chamber of Commerce spent $16 million in just 2003, lobbying the government on various business issues, including class action reform.

According to a 2003 report from Public Citizen, Mayer-Brown’s class action lobbyists included “Mark Gitenstein, former chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee and a leading architect of the Senate strategy in support of class-action legislation; John Schmitz, who was deputy counsel to President George H.W. Bush; David McIntosh, former Republican congressman from Indiana; and Jeffrey Lewis, who was on the staffs of both Sen. John Breaux (D-La) and Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La)”.

While not on the Center for Responsive Politics list of the top 20 contributors to the Obama presidential campaign, Mayer-Brown’s partners and employees are in rarefied company, giving a total of $92,817 through December 31, 2007, to the Obama campaign. (The firm is also defending Merrill Lynch in court against charges of racial discrimination.)

Senator Obama graduated Harvard Law magna cum laude and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Given those credentials, one assumes that he understood the ramifications to the poor and middle class in this country as he helped gut one of the few weapons left to seek justice against giant corporations and their legions of giant law firms. The class-action vehicle confers upon each citizen one of the most powerful rights in our society: the ability to function as a private attorney general and seek redress for wrongs inflicted on ourselves as well as for those similarly injured that might not otherwise have a voice.

Those rights should have been strengthened, not restricted, at this dangerous time in our nation’s history. According to a comprehensive report from the nonprofit group, United for a Fair Economy, over the past eight years the total loss of wealth for people of color is between $164 billion and $213 billion for subprime loans which is the greatest loss of wealth for people of color in modern history:
“According to federal data, people of color are more than three times more likely to have subprime loans: high-cost loans account for 55 per cent of loans to blacks, but only 17 per cent of loans to whites”.
If there had been equitable distribution of subprime loans, losses for white people would be 44.5 per cent higher and losses for people of color would be about 24 per cent lower. “This is evidence of systemic prejudice and institutional racism”.

Before the current crisis, based on improvements in median household net worth, it would take 594 more years for blacks to achieve parity with whites. The current crisis is likely to stretch this even further.

So, how should we react when we learn that the top contributors to the Obama campaign are the very Wall Street firms whose shady mortgage lenders buried the elderly and the poor and minority under predatory loans? How should we react when we learn that on the big donor list is Citigroup, whose former employee at CitiFinancial testified to the Federal Trade Commission that it was was standard practice to target people based on race and educational level, with the sales force winning bonuses called “Rocopoly Money” (like a sick board game), after “blitz” nights of soliciting loans by phone? How should we react when we learn that these very same firms, arm in arm with their corporate lawyers and registered lobbyists, have weakened our ability to fight back with the class-action vehicle?

Should there be any doubt left as to who owns our government? The very same cast of characters making the Obama hit parade of campaign loot are the clever creators of the industry solutions to the wave of foreclosures gripping this nation’s poor and middle class, effectively putting the solution in the hands of the robbers. The names of these programs (that have failed to make a dent in the problem) have the same vacuous ring: Hope Now; Project Lifeline.

Senator Obama has become the inspiration and role model to millions of children and young people in this country. He has only two paths now: to be a dream maker or a dream killer. But be assured of one thing: this country will not countenance any more grand illusions.

The Obama Bubble Agenda: Bankrolling a Presidential Campaign

The Obama phenomenon has been likened to that of cults, celebrity groupies and Messiah worshipers. But what we’re actually witnessing is ObamaMania (as in tulip mania), the third and final bubble orchestrated and financed by the wonderful Wall Street folks who brought us the first two: the Nasdaq/tech bubble and a subprime-mortgage-in-every-pot bubble.

To understand why Wall Street desperately needs this final bubble, we need to first review how the first two bubbles were orchestrated and why.

In March of 2000, the Nasdaq stock market, hyped with spurious claims for startup tech and dot.com companies, reached a peak of over 5,000. Eight years later, it’s trading in the 2,300 range and most of those companies no longer exist. From peak to trough, Nasdaq transferred over $4 trillion from the pockets of small mania-gripped investors to the wealthy and elite market manipulators.

The highest monetary authority during those bubble days, Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, consistently told us that the market was efficient and stock prices were being set by the judgment of millions of “highly knowledgeable” investors.

Mr. Greenspan was the wind beneath the wings of a carefully orchestrated wealth transfer system known as “pump and dump” on Wall Street. As hundreds of court cases, internal emails, and insider testimony now confirm, this bubble was no naturally occurring phenomenon any more than the Obama bubble is.

First, Wall Street firms issued knowingly false research reports to trumpet the growth prospects for the company and stock price; second, they lined up big institutional clients who were instructed how and when to buy at escalating prices to make the stock price skyrocket (laddering); third, the firms instructed the hundreds of thousands of stockbrokers serving the mom-and-pop market to advise their clients to sit still as the stock price flew to the moon or else the broker would have his commissions taken away (penalty bid). While the little folks’ money served as a prop under prices, the wealthy elite on Wall Street and corporate insiders were allowed to sell at the top of the market (pump-and-dump wealth transfer).

Why did people buy into this mania for brand new, untested companies when there is a basic caveat that most people in this country know, i.e., the majority of all new businesses fail? Common sense failed and mania prevailed because of massive hype pumped by big media, big public relations, and shielded from regulation by big law firms, all eager to collect their share of Wall Street’s rigged cash cow.

The current housing bubble bust is just a freshly minted version of Wall Street’s real estate limited partnership frauds of the ‘80s, but on a grander scale. In the 1980s version, the firms packaged real estate into limited partnerships and peddled it as secure investments to moms and pops. The major underpinning of this wealth transfer mechanism was that regulators turned a blind eye to the fact that the investments were listed at the original face amount on the clients’ brokerage statements long after they had lost most of their value.

Today’s real estate related securities (CDOs and SIVs) that are blowing up around the globe are simply the above scheme with more billable hours for corporate law firms.

Wall Street created an artificial demand for housing (a bubble) by soliciting high interest rate mortgages (subprime) because they could be bundled and quickly resold for big fees to yield-hungry hedge funds and institutions. A major underpinning of this scheme was that Wall Street secured an artificial rating of AAA from rating agencies that were paid by Wall Street to provide the rating. When demand from institutions was saturated, Wall Street kept the scheme going by hiding the debt off its balance sheets and stuffed this long-term product into mom-and-pop money markets, notwithstanding that money markets are required by law to hold only short-term investments. To further perpetuate the bubble as long as possible, Wall Street prevented pricing transparency by keeping the trading off regulated exchanges and used unregulated over-the-counter contracts instead. (All of this required lots of lobbyist hours in Washington.)

But how could there be a genuine national housing price boom propelled by massive consumer demand at the same time there was the largest income and wealth disparity in the nation’s history? Rational thought is no match for manias.

That brings us to today’s bubble. We are being asked to accept on its face the notion that after more than two centuries of entrenched racism in this country, which saw only five black members of the U.S. Senate, it’s all being eradicated with some rousing stump speeches.

We are asked to believe that those kindly white executives at all the biggest Wall Street firms, which rank in the top 20 donors to the Obama presidential campaign, after failing to achieve more than 3.5 per cent black stockbrokers over 30 years, now want a black populist president because they crave a level playing field for the American people.

The number one industry supporting the Obama presidential bid, by the start of February, -- the crucial time in primary season -- according to the widely respected, nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, was “lawyers/law firms” (most on Wall Street’s payroll), giving a total of $11,246,596.

This presents three unique credibility problems for the yes-we-can-little-choo-choo-that-could campaign: (1) these are not just “lawyers/law firms”; the vast majority of these firms are also registered lobbyists at the Federal level; (2) Senator Obama has made it a core tenet of his campaign platform that the way he is gong to bring the country hope and change is not taking money from federal lobbyists; and (3) with the past seven ignoble years of lies and distortions fresh in the minds of voters, building a candidacy based on half-truths is not a sustainable strategy to secure the west wing from the right wing.

Yes, the other leading presidential candidates are taking money from lawyers/law firms/lobbyists, but Senator Obama is the only one rallying with the populist cry that he isn’t. That makes it not only a legitimate but a necessary line of inquiry.

The Obama campaign’s populist bubble is underpinned by what, on the surface, seems to be a real snoozer of a story. It all centers around business classification codes developed by the U.S. government and used by the Center for Responsive Politics to classify contributions. Here’s how the Center explained its classifications in 2003:
“The codes used for business groups follow the general guidelines of the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes initially designed by the Office of Management and Budget and later replaced by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)...”
The Akin Gump law firm is a prime example of how something as mundane as a business classification code can be gamed for political advantage. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Akin Gump ranks third among all Federal lobbyists, raking in $205,225,000 to lobby our elected officials in Washington from 1998 through 2007. The firm is listed as a registered federal lobbyist with the House of Representatives and the Senate; the firm held lobbying retainer contracts for more than 100 corporate clients in 2007. But when its non-registered law partners, the people who own this business and profit from its lobbying operations, give to the Obama campaign, the contribution is classified as coming from a law firm, not a lobbyist.

The same holds true for Greenberg Traurig, the law firm that employed the criminally inclined lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. Greenberg Traurig ranks ninth among all lobbyists for the same period, with lobbying revenues of $96,708,249. Its partners and employee donations to the Obama campaign of $70,650 by February 1 -- again at that strategic time -- appear not under lobbyist but the classification lawyers/law firms, as do 30 other corporate law firm/lobbyists.

Additionally, looking at Public Citizen’s list of bundlers for the Obama campaign (people soliciting donations from others), 27 are employed by law firms registered as federal lobbyists. The total sum raised by bundlers for Obama from these 27 firms till February 1: $2,650,000. (There are also dozens of high powered bundlers from Wall Street working the Armani-suit and red-suspenders cocktail circuits, like Bruce Heyman, managing director at Goldman Sachs; J. Michael Schell, vice chairman of Global Banking at Citigroup; Louis Susman, managing director, Citigroup; Robert Wolf, CEO, UBS Americas. Each raised over $200,000 for the Obama campaign.)

Senator Obama’s premise and credibility of not taking money from federal lobbyists hangs on a carefully crafted distinction: he is taking money, lots of it, from owners and employees of firms registered as federal lobbyists but not the actual individual lobbyists.

But is that dealing honestly with the American people? According to the website of Akin Gump, it takes a village to deliver a capital to the corporations:
“The public law and policy practice [lobbying] at Akin Gump is integrated throughout the firm’s offices in the United States and abroad. As part of a full-service law firm, the group is able to draw upon the experience of members of other Akin Gump practices – including bankruptcy, communications, corporate, energy, environmental, labor and employment, health care, intellectual property, international, real estate, tax and trade regulation – that may have substantive, day-to-day experience with the issues that lie at the heart of a client’s situation. This is the internal component of Akin Gump’s team-based approach: matching the needs of clients with the appropriate area of experience in the firm ... Akin Gump has a broad range of active representations before every major committee of Congress and executive branch department and agency.”
When queried about this, Massie Ritsch, communications director at the Center for Responsive Politics, says: “The wall between a firm’s legal practice and its lobbying shop can be low – the work of an attorney and a lobbyist trying to influence regulations and laws can be so intertwined. So, if anything, the influence of the lobbying industry in presidential campaigns is undercounted.”

Those critical thinkers over at the Black Agenda Report for the Journal of African American Political Thought and Action have zeroed in on the making of the Obama bubble:
“The 2008 Obama presidential run may be the most slickly orchestrated marketing machine in memory. That’s not a good thing. Marketing is not even distantly related to democracy or civic empowerment. Marketing is about creating emotional, even irrational bonds between your product and your target audience.”
And slick it is. According to the Obama campaign’s financial filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and aggregated at the Center for Responsive Politics, the Obama campaign has spent over $52 million on media, strategy consultants, image building, marketing research and telemarketing.

The money has gone to firms like GMMB, whose website says its “goal is to change minds and change hearts, win in the court of public opinion and win votes” using “the power of branding – with principles rooted in commercial marketing,” and Elevation Ltd., which targets the Hispanic population and has “a combined experience of well over 50 years in developing and implementing advertising and marketing solutions for Fortune 500 companies, political candidates, government agencies.”

Their client list includes the Department of Homeland Security. There’s also the Birmingham, Alabama, based The Parker Group which promises: “Valid research results are assured given our extensive experience with testing, scripting, skip logic, question rotation and quota control ... In-house list management and maintenance services encompass sophisticated geo-coding, mapping and scrubbing applications.” Is it any wonder America’s brains are scrambled?

The Wall Street plan for the Obama-bubble presidency is that of the cleanup crew for the housing bubble: sweep all the corruption and losses, would-be indictments, perp walks and prosecutions under the rug and get on with an unprecedented taxpayer bailout of Wall Street. (The corporate law firms have piled on to funding the plan because most were up to their eyeballs in writing prospectuses or providing legal opinions for what has turned out to be bogus AAA securities. Lawsuits naming the Wall Street firms will, no doubt, shortly begin adding the law firms that rendered the legal guidance to issue the securities.) Who better to sell this agenda to the millions of duped mortgage holders and foreclosed homeowners in minority communities across America than our first, beloved, black president of hope and change?

Why do Wall Street and the corporate law firms think they will find a President Obama to be accommodating? As the Black Agenda Report notes, “Evidently, the giant insurance companies, the airlines, oil companies, Wall Street, military contractors and others had closely examined and vetted Barack Obama and found him pleasing.”

That vetting included his remarkable “yes” vote on the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, a five-year effort by 475 lobbyists, despite appeals from the NAACP and every other major civil rights group. Thanks to the passage of that legislation, when defrauded homeowners of the housing bubble and defrauded investors of the bundled mortgages try to fight back through the class-action vehicle, they will find a new layer of corporate-friendly hurdles.

I personally admire Senator Obama. I want to believe Senator Obama is not a party to the scheme. But corporate interests have had plenty of time to do their vetting. Democracy demands no less of we, the people.

3rd June 2008, 14:50

Ralph Nader is a bourgeois politician. He is anti-union and anti-immigrant.

Do you have more information on his stance on unions?

st imperialist-oppressed countries and says he will maintain the criminal blockade against socialist Cuba.

All claims of socialism aside, I've heard that Obama has made statement about "softening up" the embargo. Does this hold any validity?

Instead they're going to increase the business of private insurance companies by forcing millions of people onto their rolls.

AFAIK that's just Clinton's plan; Obama's doesn't force anyone. I could be wrong, though.

Cool. I'll be sure to remember all that while John McCain is asking for the launch codes because I was busy "inspiring" people to stay home.

Stop spreading this democratic party propaganda. McCain is no crazier than the other candidates, and to imply as such is a completely ridiculous thing to claim.

It's also true, however, that his campaign has raised the vast majority of its money from small donations made by ordinary, working class Americans.

This is completely false. 80-85% of his funds are from donations made exceeding $1000.

I would urge U.S comrades to vote for Barack Obama for three reasons:

1) The election of a black man would be a symbolic blow against racism, and symbols matter

2) A victory for McCain would almost certainly lead to a devastating new war in the Middle East with Iran. Such an event would be a disaster for Iranians and Americans alike.

3) McCain represents not just American imperialism but the particularly virulent, hubristic, ideological and venval wing of American imperialism called "neo-conservatism". Obama, for whatever else he is, cannot be described as a neo-con. Indeed, to his credit, he was against the war in Iraq before it begun. A defeat for McCain would mark a setback for American imperialism.

I don't think comrades should campaign for him but I absolutely think they need to vote for him.

You make a reasonable and correct analysis that Obama's campaign has gotten a lot of people politically active that weren't before and that want to see change, but your conclusions are completely wrong. This is because your analysis is stopped short causing you to come to wrong conclusions.

When a "candidate of change" comes along that gets people politically active and hopeful for real change, the purpose of this candidate is to control that desire for change and to effectively contain it.

Here's a great article by John Pilger relating him to Obama and discussing the phenomenon of the "candidate of change":
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20015.htm

It also leads into the next mistake in your conclusion, which is implying that McCain is different than Obama by any significant degree. This is completely false; McCain is no more or less willing to go to war with Iran than Obama is. It should also be noted that Obama is planning on increasing the pentagon budget, sending more troops to Afghanistan and has toyed with the idea of bombing Pakistan. He also hasn't taken "nuclear options" off the table with regards to Iran.

As for your third point, that is a typical CPUSA argument for coopting ourselves with the democratic wing of capital and is really a shit argument; it is also an exaggeration of where McCain stands politically, and is a great tool used by the democrats and their cronies to portray McCain as someone much more crazy than Obama in order to gain support for their side, when the reality of the situation is that McCain and Obama really aren't that different.

As their contest for the White House draws closer, watch how, regardless of the inevitable personal smears, Obama and McCain draw nearer to each other. They already concur on America's divine right to control all before it. "We lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good," said Obama. "We must lead by building a 21st-century military . . . to advance the security of all people [emphasis added]." McCain agrees. Obama says in pursuing "terrorists" he would attack Pakistan. McCain wouldn't quarrel.

Both candidates have paid ritual obeisance to the regime in Tel Aviv, unquestioning support for which defines all presidential ambition. In opposing a UN Security Council resolution implying criticism of Israel's starvation of the people of Gaza, Obama was ahead of both McCain and Hillary Clinton. In January, pressured by the Israel lobby, he massaged a statement that "nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people" to now read: "Nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people from the failure of the Palestinian leadership to recognise Israel [emphasis added]." Such is his concern for the victims of the longest, illegal military occupation of modern times. Like all the candidates, Obama has furthered Israeli/Bush fictions about Iran, whose regime, he says absurdly, "is a threat to all of us".

On the war in Iraq, Obama the dove and McCain the hawk are almost united. McCain now says he wants US troops to leave in five years (instead of "100 years", his earlier option). Obama has now "reserved the right" to change his pledge to get troops out next year. "I will listen to our commanders on the ground," he now says, echoing Bush. His adviser on Iraq, Colin Kahl, says the US should maintain up to 80,000 troops in Iraq until 2010. Like McCain, Obama has voted repeatedly in the Senate to support Bush's demands for funding of the occupation of Iraq; and he has called for more troops to be sent to Afghanistan. His senior advisers embrace McCain's proposal for an aggressive "league of democracies", led by the United States, to circumvent the United Nations.

Amusingly, both have denounced their "preachers" for speaking out. Whereas McCain's man of God praised Hitler, in the fashion of lunatic white holy-rollers, Obama's man, Jeremiah Wright, spoke an embarrassing truth. He said that the attacks of 11 September 2001 had taken place as a consequence of the violence of US power across the world. The media demanded that Obama disown Wright and swear an oath of loyalty to the Bush lie that "terrorists attacked America because they hate our freedoms". So he did. The conflict in the Middle East, said Obama, was rooted not "primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel", but in "the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam". Journalists applauded. Islamophobia is a liberal speciality.

sonicbluetm

3rd June 2008, 16:47

When a "candidate of change" comes along that gets people politically active and hopeful for real change, the purpose of this candidate is to control that desire for change and to effectively contain it.

My fears EXACTLY. The desire for change is the stuff of revolutions.

PRC-UTE

3rd June 2008, 18:38

You have a solid understanding of the issues and have clearly made a concerted attempt to analyze Chomsky's decision. Though I am sure someone as scholarly as yourself already knew Chomsky's reasons for doing so, I thought it might be beneficial to quote Phil Gasper, the professor of philosophy at Notre Dame de Namur University in California: "An article in Saturday's Guardian reports that left-wing icon Noam Chomsky has given his "reluctant endorsement to the Democratic party's presidential contender, John Kerry". Chomsky's support for Kerry is far from enthusiastic. He describes the choice between Bush and Kerry as one "between two factions of the business party" and Kerry as "Bush-lite", only a "fraction" better than his Republican opponent. But Chomsky argues that the current administration is exceptionally "cruel and savage" and "deeply committed to dismantling the achievements of popular struggle through the past century no matter what the cost to the general population." He concludes that "despite the limited differences [between Bush and Kerry] both domestically and internationally, there are differences. In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."" (1 (http://www.counterpunch.org/gasper03202004.html))

We'd rather see the working class organise themselves politiically, even if this aided some reactionaries in gaining elected office, then continue to bind the working class to a party of the bourgeoisie's lesser evil. An important task for socialists in the USA is to break the unions and working class voters from the democratic party, which has historically been even more anti-communist than the republicans.

The fundamental problem is that working class people aren't active enough, not so much who's in power.

PRC-UTE

3rd June 2008, 18:45

Really? Your source is a blog? Do you know what an argument is? Have you ever made a legitimate one in your life? To do so requires you to warrant your claims with substantive evidence. This is the poorest attempt at an argument yet on revleft. You actually quoted a blog (without providing information as to who wrote the article, the name of the blog, qualifications, etc.) and expect people to take what you said seriously.

The bigger travesty, though, is that there are many people on these forums who would see that as an acceptable warrant.

whether he links to a blog or not, it's still a sound analysis of what class interests Nader represents.

Killer Enigma

3rd June 2008, 20:57

whether he links to a blog or not, it's still a sound analysis of what class interests Nader represents.
In order to be taken seriously and formulate an argument, one must warrant their claims. Linking to a blog without providing any information as to (1) why we ought to grant it any credence and (2) what qualifications the writer has is an insufficient warrant, least of all in light of such a large, sweeping claim (denouncing Nader entirely as a presidential candidate).

And you prove my point about revleft having the poorest argumentation of any forum I have had the displeasure of witnessing.

Nothing Human Is Alien

3rd June 2008, 21:04

One that comes from one of his former employees (John Maggs, info: http://timshorrock.blogspot.com/2006/06/boss-nader-or-how-i-was-fired-by-ralph.html )... that just happened to be posted in a blog.

Umm, no! Here's what I said:

Quote:
The answer clearly is that, as well as representing capitalists,they also represent other social forces.
Where is the contradiction? I pointed out that the Democratic Party was a capitalist party and that Obama is a capitalist politician. You make the insane assertion that he and his party aren't the servants of capital, but instead politicians that represent the capitalists and "other social forces," in which you include workers.

I've heard of a worker&farmer party, and a bourgeois workers' party, but never a boss&worker party... I guess if you can invent a capitalist class in the USSR you can invent anything.

So you see, CDL, YOU'RE A FUCKING LYING SCUMBAG.But my post is the one not worth responding to? :rolleyes:

But the more important point to understand is that it's less who is in power and more what working class people are doing to get organsied that effects politics. The liberal hero Kennedy committed ground troops, the rightist villain nixon had to withdraw them- and neither choice had to do with their politics or integrity as individuals, but with what pressure they faced from protests and armed resistance in Vietnam.Hear, hear!

That is indeed the case comrade.. and that's what we have to fight for. No representative of the capitalist class, whether Democrat or Republic, will ever do anything to aid the workers in their struggle against the capitalists! Every gain we've made has come as a result of our struggles independent of the capitalist shell game that is elections in the U.S.. The bosses don't give us anything, we have to use our power to wrest it from them, and that's the case whether or not the person in the White House claims to be a "friend of labor."

YKTMX

3rd June 2008, 22:00

CDL: Why don't you just vote Stalin in the election? Can felons vote in NY anyway?

Zampano:
80-85% of his funds are from donations made exceeding $1000

Source for this? Even if you're right, "to date, Obama has raised $235 million (and has $51 million cash on hand) based on the latest Federal Election Commission filings. McCain, on the other hand, raised $76 million and has only $11 million cash on hand. According to the Campaign Finance Institute, 45% of Obama’s contributors donated $200 or less".

http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/PeterJWirs/2008/05/01/obama_and_the_internet

the purpose of this candidate is to control that desire for change and to effectively contain it.

The purpose of the candidate is to get elected. The purpose of the "movement for change" that's mobilized so many people (many of whom previously were not mobilized) is to get him elected. I have no illusions about that, you seem to. There is no danger of the "movement for change" becoming anything but an electoral tool, so there is no need to control it.

which is implying that McCain is different than Obama by any significant degree.

This "conclusion" is based on the evidence, some of which I've given in the course of this thread. Your job is prove how the differences I've claimed are substantial enough to warrant a vote for Obama are not that substantial.

McCain is no more or less willing to go to war with Iran than Obama is.

I'm not sure how you reach this conclusion. McCain is a warmonger who's aligned himself with a warmonger President and has packed his team with warmonger advisors.

I doubt even the silliest ultra-leftist would call Obama a warmonger.

It should also be noted that Obama is planning on increasing the pentagon budget, sending more troops to Afghanistan and has toyed with the idea of bombing Pakistan.

Well, I think the Pakistan reference is a little misleading. What I think he was saying was that the U.S would strike "Al-Qaeda" leaders in Pakistan if they had the intelligence.

The other two things you've said are true.

that is a typical CPUSA argument for coopting ourselves with the democratic wing of capital

I'm not suggesting "cooption". I'm suggesting that leftists go, soberly and without fanfare, on Nov. 4th and vote Obama. I don't see how this is "cooption". I've not suggested surrendering any organization independence. In fact, I said explicitly people should not campaign for him. They should not be beholden to him, his ideas or his "movement" in any way, shape or form.

Once again, I'm saying you should VOTE for him, nothing more.

Do you have a moral objection, perhaps?

Mariner's Revenge

3rd June 2008, 22:10

Obama's advisor's are very imperialistic. I had a list of all of them on another site but that crashed so I lost all of the them.

The way it has been explained to me, I haven't put the effort into researching it myself, is that McCain's imperialism will be very similar to Bush's in the sense that it will serve solely the United State's capitalistic interests and Obama's imperialism will be one that will serve the globalized capitalist system as a whole. To sum it up, US corporations will make more money out of McCain but Obama's imperialism will be more efficient because other countries will join in.

PRC-UTE

5th June 2008, 02:21

In order to be taken seriously and formulate an argument, one must warrant their claims. Linking to a blog without providing any information as to (1) why we ought to grant it any credence and (2) what qualifications the writer has is an insufficient warrant, least of all in light of such a large, sweeping claim (denouncing Nader entirely as a presidential candidate).

And you prove my point about revleft having the poorest argumentation of any forum I have had the displeasure of witnessing.

Not sure how I prove your point. I don't even usually rely on websites to begin with- I often quote directly from books I read. And some comrades here started a long and ongoing thread listing useful primary sources, which is far better what you'd find on most internet forums, so I think your assertion that revleft has the 'poorest argumentation' is weak.

But that's not really the point, here. You have not engaged with anyone on their claims, you have nitpicked and effectively dodged the issue.

Excluding the blog, it is clear from everything we know about Nader- from his record, his own rhetoric and claims- that at best he represents a reactionary political trend (the petit-bourgeoisie, the middle class generally) who are actually trying to roll back capitalism to a more simple time. Corporations have marginalised or replaced those classes (a class always in decay).

That in itself is not the problem as much as the fact that many working class folks have been led to believe that he represents their interests. The blog he linked to should be seen in this context as a positive effort to break left-leaning workers from the delusion that a self-serving bourgeois millionaire is in anyway their saviour (and before you start in about sources, we know he's a millionaire as he had to disclose his assets back when he was running for president).

Your apologism of Chomsky is in the same context very negative. The last thing we need is a bourgeois academic (however noble) held up as some kind of hero of the Left. The working class needs a better example then lesser-evilism; it needs to believe in itself and its own ability to change the world through solidarity and mass struggle.

Die Neue Zeit

5th June 2008, 02:30

PRC-UTE

5th June 2008, 02:47

^^^ Comrade, I don't understand the sympathies towards Chomsky, either. :confused: Sure, he's good with linguistics and what not (although I swear he did NOT in any way influence my recent "obsession" with words), but he's just another academic... :rolleyes:

I think it says a lot about the shallowness of what you might call the American Left; he's well-regarded for calling himself an anarchist despite being a slightly left of centre academic, the obsession in the USA with celebrity, and so on.

sonicbluetm

5th June 2008, 02:56

YKTMX (http://www.revleft.com/vb/../member.php?u=7757) why don't you read the articles I posted?

sonicbluetm

5th June 2008, 02:58

Can a Democrat change US Middle East policy?
Noam Chomsky
Khaleej Times (http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2008/April/opinion_April10.xml&section=opinion&col=), April 3, 2008

Recently, when Vice-President Cheney was asked by ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz about polls showing that an overwhelming majority of US citizens oppose the war in Iraq, he replied, "So?"

"So -- you don't care what the American people think?" Raddatz asked.

"No," Cheney replied, and explained, "I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in public opinion polls."

Later, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, explaining Cheney's comments, was asked whether the public should have "input."

Her reply: "You had your input. The American people have input every four years, and that's the way our system is set up."

That's correct. Every four years the American people can choose between candidates whose views they reject, and then they should shut up.

Evidently failing to understand democratic theory, the public strongly disagrees.

"Eighty-one per cent say when making 'an important decision' government leaders 'should pay attention to public opinion polls because this will help them get a sense of the public's views,"' reports the Program on International Policy Attitudes, in Washington.

And when asked "whether they think that 'elections are the only time when the views of the people should have influence, or that also between elections leaders should consider the views of the people as they make decisions,' an extraordinary 94 per cent say that government leaders should pay attention to the views of the public between elections."

The same polls reveal that the public has few illusions about how their wishes are heeded: 80 per cent "say that this country is run by a few big interests looking out for themselves," not "for the benefit of all the people."

With its unbounded disregard for public opinion, the Bush administration has been far to the radical nationalist and adventurist extreme of the policy spectrum, and was subjected to unprecedented mainstream criticism for that reason.

A Democratic candidate is likely to shift more towards the centrist norm. However, the spectrum is narrow. Looking at the records and statements of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, it is hard to see much reason to expect significant changes in policy in the Middle East.

IRAQ

IT IS Important to bear in mind that neither Democratic candidate has expressed a principled objection to the invasion of Iraq. By that I mean the kind of objection that was universally expressed when the Russians invaded Afghanistan or when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait: condemnation on the grounds that aggression is a crime -- in fact the "supreme international crime," as the Nuremberg Tribunal determined. No one criticised those invasions merely as a "strategic blunder" or as involvement in "another country's civil war, a war (they) can't win" (Obama, Clinton, respectively, on the Iraq invasion).

The criticism of the Iraq war is on grounds of cost and failure; what are called "pragmatic reasons," a stance that is considered hardheaded, serious, moderate -- in the case of Western crimes.

The intentions of the Bush administration, and presumably McCain, were outlined in a Declaration of Principles released by the White House in November 2007, an agreement between Bush and the U.S.-backed Nuri al-Maliki government of Iraq.

The Declaration allows U.S. forces to remain indefinitely to "deter foreign aggression" (though the only threat of aggression in the region is posed by the United States and Israel, presumably not the intention) and for internal security, though not, of course, internal security for a government that would reject US. domination. The Declaration also commits Iraq to facilitate and encourage "the flow of foreign investments to Iraq, especially American investments" -- an unusually brazen expression of imperial will.

In brief, Iraq is to remain a client state, agreeing to allow permanent US military installations (called "enduring" in the preferred Orwellism) and ensuring US investors priority in accessing its huge oil resources -- a reasonably clear statement of goals of the invasion that were evident to anyone not blinded by official doctrine.

What are the alternatives of the Democrats? They were clarified in March 2007, when the House and Senate approved Democratic proposals setting deadlines for withdrawal. Gen. Kevin Ryan (retired), senior fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center of International Affairs, analysed the proposals for The Boston Globe.

The proposals permit the president to waive their restrictions in the interests of "national security," which leaves the door wide open, Ryan writes. They permit troops to remain in Iraq "as long as they are performing one of three specific missions: protecting U.S. facilities, citizens or forces; combating Al Qaeda or international terrorists; and training Iraqi security forces." The facilities include the huge U.S. military bases being built around the country and the U.S. Embassy -- actually a self-contained city within a city, unlike any embassy in the world. None of these major construction projects are under way with the expectation that they will be abandoned.

The other conditions are also open-ended. "The proposals are more correctly understood as a re-missioning of our troops," Ryan sums up: "Perhaps a good strategy -- but not a withdrawal."

It is difficult to see much difference between the March 7 Democratic proposals and those of Obama and Clinton.

IRAN

WITH regard to Iran, Obama is considered more moderate than Clinton, and his leading slogan is "change." So let us keep to him.

Obama calls for more willingness to negotiate with Iran, but within the standard constraints. His reported position is that he "would offer economic inducements and a possible promise not to seek 'regime change' if Iran stopped meddling in Iraq and cooperated on terrorism and nuclear issues," and stopped "acting irresponsibly" by supporting Shia militant groups in Iraq.

Some obvious questions come to mind. For example, how would we react Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he would offer a possible promise not to seek "regime change" in Israel if it stopped its illegal activities in the occupied territories and cooperated on terrorism and nuclear issues?

Obama's moderate approach is well to the militant side of public opinion -- a fact that passes unnoticed, as is often the case. Like all other viable candidates, Obama has insisted throughout the electoral campaign that the United States must threaten Iran with attack (the standard phrase is: "keep all options open"), a violation of the U.N. Charter, if anyone cares. But a large majority of Americans have disagreed: 75 per cent favour building better relations with Iran, as compared with 22 per cent who favour "implied threats," according to PIPA. All the surviving candidates, then, are opposed by three-fourths of the public on this issue.

American and Iranian opinion on the core issue of nuclear policy has been carefully studied. In both countries, a large majority holds that Iran should have the rights of any signer of the Nonproliferation Treaty: to develop nuclear power but not nuclear weapons.

The same large majorities favour establishing a "nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East that would include both Islamic countries and Israel." More than 80 per cent of Americans favour eliminating nuclear weapons altogether -- a legal obligation of the states with nuclear weapons, officially rejected by the Bush administration.

And surely Iranians agree with Americans that Washington should end its military threats and turn towards normal relations.

At a forum in Washington when the PIPA polls were released in January 2007, Joseph Cirincione, senior vice-president for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress (and Obama adviser), said the polls showed "the common sense of both the American people and the Iranian people, (who) seem to be able to rise above the rhetoric of their own leaders to find common sense solutions to some of the most crucial questions" facing the two nations, favouring pragmatic diplomatic solutions to their differences.

Though we do not have internal records, there is good reason to believe that the Pentagon is opposed to an attack on Iran. The March 11 resignation of Admiral William Fallon as head of the Central Command, responsible for the Middle East, was widely interpreted to trace to his opposition to an attack, probably shared with the military command generally.

The December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate reporting that Iran had not pursued a nuclear weapons program since 2003, when it sought and failed to reach a comprehensive settlement with the United States, perhaps reflects opposition of the intelligence community to military action.

There are many uncertainties. But it is hard to see concrete signs that a Democratic presidency would improve the situation very much, let alone bring policy into line with American or world opinion.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

ON ISRAEL-Palestine too, the candidates have provided no reason to expect any constructive change.

On his web site, Obama, the candidate of "change" and "hope," states that he "strongly supports the US-Israel relationship, believes that our first and incontrovertible commitment in the Middle East must be to the security of Israel, America's strongest ally in the Middle East."

Transparently, it is the Palestinians who face by far the most severe security problem, in fact a problem of survival. But Palestinians are not a "strong ally." At most, they might be a very weak one. Hence their plight merits little concern, in accord with the operative principle that human rights are largely determined by contributions to power, profit and ideological needs.

Obama's web site presents him as a superhawk on Israel. "He believes that Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state should never be challenged." He is not on record as demanding that the right of countries to exist as Muslim (Christian, White) states "should never be challenged."

Obama calls for increasing foreign aid "to ensure that (the) funding priorities (for military and economic assistance to Israel) are met." He also insists forcefully that the United States must not "recognise Hamas unless it renounced its fundamental mission to eliminate Israel." No state can recognise Hamas, a political party, so what he must be referring to is the government formed by Hamas after a free election that came out "the wrong way" and is therefore illegitimate, in accord with prevailing elite concepts of "democracy."

And it is considered irrelevant that Hamas has repeatedly called for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus, which the United States and Israel reject.

Obama does not ignore Palestinians: "Obama believes that a better life for Palestinian families is good for both Israelis and Palestinians." He also adds a reference to two states living side by side that is vague enough to be unproblematic to U.S. and Israeli hawks.

For Palestinians, there are now two options. One is that the United States and Israel will abandon their unilateral rejectionism of the past 30 years and accept the international consensus on a two-state settlement, in accord with international law and, incidentally, in accord with the wishes of a large majority of Americans. That is not impossible, though the two rejectionist states are working hard to render it so.

A second possibility is the one that the US-Israel are actually implementing. Palestinians will be consigned to their Gaza prison and to West Bank cantons, virtually separated from one another by Israeli settlements and huge infrastructure projects, the whole imprisoned as Israel takes over the Jordan Valley.

Nevertheless, circumstances may change, and perhaps the candidates along with them, to the benefit of the United States and the region. Public opinion may not remain marginalised and easily ignored. The concentrations of domestic economic power that largely shape policy may come to recognise that their interests are better served by joining the general public, and the rest of the world, than by accepting Washington's hard line.

(This article is adapted from the updated paperback edition of Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy. By Noam Chomsky and Gilbert Achcar published by Paradigm Publishers, September 2007)

sonicbluetm

5th June 2008, 03:04

Obama's advisor's are very imperialistic. I had a list of all of them on another site but that crashed so I lost all of the them.

Damn... well I know he is close with the Council on Foreign Relations and in particular Zbigniew Brzezinski so there's no doubt in my mind that at the very least the people working for him behind the scenes are fairly imperialistic.

Killer Enigma

5th June 2008, 15:30

But that's not really the point, here. You have not engaged with anyone on their claims, you have nitpicked and effectively dodged the issue.I will not (and cannot) engage a non-existent argument. Those whom I have called out on lacking any kind of meaningful warrant have the burden of proof for making their claims and before anyone can/should respond to them, they must put forth some substantive evidence.

Excluding the blog, it is clear from everything we know about Nader- from his record, his own rhetoric and claims- that at best he represents a reactionary political trend (the petit-bourgeoisie, the middle class generally) who are actually trying to roll back capitalism to a more simple time. Corporations have marginalised or replaced those classes (a class always in decay).Note to self: Underline certain phrases to get my point across more effectively.

Thus far, you re-assert that this is something that "we know" about Nader, yet neither you nor anyone else in this thread has been able to offer substantive evidence upon which to base this claim.

That in itself is not the problem as much as the fact that many working class folks have been led to believe that he represents their interests. The blog he linked to should be seen in this context as a positive effort to break left-leaning workers from the delusion that a self-serving bourgeois millionaire is in anyway their saviour (and before you start in about sources, we know he's a millionaire as he had to disclose his assets back when he was running for president).How about we try out your idea. I'll go make a blog and have a few of my friends do the same. We can write up a few articles asserting that Raplh Nader is a champion of the working class, I can throw in a few buzzwords, and my friends can provide some unsubstantiated annecdotal evidence. We can have a nice time of it, and when it's all done, I'll come back and post a link here attached to the claim, "Ralph Nader is a champion of the working class! Source (http://comrade-nader.blogspot.com/2008/06/nader-and-working-class.html)!" Change your opinion?

Your apologism of Chomsky is in the same context very negative. The last thing we need is a bourgeois academic (however noble) held up as some kind of hero of the Left. The working class needs a better example then lesser-evilism; it needs to believe in itself and its own ability to change the world through solidarity and mass struggle.I have not defended or advocated a single position throughout the course of this thread and I am well-aware of what I have and have not said in regards to Ralph Nader, Barack Obama and Noam Chomsky. For all you know, I may agree with your position. The point is that you do not know; you have no way of knowing my opinion on anything being discussed in this thread because I have only either (1) called people out on poor/non-existant argumentation or (2) filled in gaps where there has clearly been no attempt to look at the issue objectively, as was the case with Chomsky.