James Galbraith: "President Obama is not a progressive - he is not what Americans call a liberal"

[Better Believe It]

The Bad Deal
The debt agreement should finally make clear to Europeans that Barack Obama is not the progressive President they had hoped for. Instead, writes James K. Galbraith, he is a willful player in the Washington politics game.
August 8, 2011

Obama is no progressive

The debt deal will make things clear. The President is not a progressive – he is not what Americans still call a “liberal.” He is a willful player in an epic drama of faux-politics, an operative for the money power, whose job is to neutralize the left with fear and distraction and then to pivot rightward and deliver a conservative result.

What Barack Obama got from the debt deal was exactly what his sponsors have wanted: a long-term lock-in of domestic spending cuts, and a path toward severe cuts in the core New Deal and Great Society insurance programs – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And, of course, no tax increases at all.

To see the arc of political strategy, recall that from the beginning Obama handed economic policy to retainers recruited from the stables of Robert Rubin. From the beginning, he touted “fiscal responsibility” and played up the (economically non-existent) “problem” of the budget deficit. From the beginning his team sabotaged economic recovery with optimistic forecasts and inadequate programs – in the clear interest of protecting the banking system from reform.

So now the die is cast. Practically nothing to address any real economic problem can now get done. Actual austerity will come slowly – the cuts are not abrupt and some may yet be blocked – but unless there is a radical change of events or mood it will come. Meanwhile as the economy stalls and despair deepens, the deficits and debt will continue to climb.

Please read the full article at:

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15295143,00.html

[daa]

1. Only the Hillary supporters aren't surprised nt

[AtomicKitten]

4. The primary election was over in June 2008. Did you miss the memo?

[daa]

7. I am looking at 2012 nt

[vroomvroom]

17. Hilary would be JUST AS Conservative as Obama -- Let's Face the facts

Hillary openly admitted to loving corporate cash and doing what they want. The only difference i could see is Obama is less willing to say the same thing in public.
I think the action she'd take as President would be the same. But i think if it was a position that didnt involve making money she'd be more likely to stand and fight for the belief than Obama would.

[DURHAM D]

25. No she didn't admit to "loving" it. And no she didn't say she would do what "they" want.

That is just primary spin, crap and nonsense.

And, I wish everyone who wants all Democrats (not just original Obama supporters) to vote, give money, and work for his re-election needs to stop this crap. Whoever brought Hillary into this thread to begin with is just a trouble maker and needs to stop it.

So, please stop trying to trash Obama by bringing up Hillary. Its over. Its done. There is no going back.

The endless speculation about What Hillary Would Have Done? is just stupid and divisive. And, I assume the people that do it are not Democrats or democrats.

[Mimosa]

37. Amen. Barack Obama is president.

We all respect Hillary. We respect Barack Obama.

What we need now is a STRONG president.

[Beacool]

50. Sorry to tell you this, but we ain't got one.

:-(

[Skittles]

34. she would not have been on her knees for repukes from day one

[polichick]

2. "his sponsors" - WHO are his sponsors?

[NorthCarolina]

42. If you have to ask,

you haven't been paying attention.

[polichick]

46. Spell it out, if you know. We all speculate, but does anyone really know?

[roxiejules]

47. from May 2008

"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. ... 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."




http://www.counterpunch.org/martens05062008.html

[polichick]

48. I recall some hip-hop singer saying that allowing our first black president might have been...

...the perfect way to end a real revolution, since even the war protests ended with his election.

Who knows how orchestrated it all is - scary stuff.

[AtomicKitten]

3. Yada, yada ... Some guy has an opinion.

[Better Believe It]

10. Ya! Who does he think he is? Galbraith .... just "some guy with an opinion"

What does he know about economics and stuff?

James K. Galbraith (born January 29, 1952) is an American economist who writes frequently for mainstream and liberal publications on economic topics. He is currently a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and at the Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Senior Scholar with the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.

[AtomicKitten]

13. Posting an opinion piece that presumably (no comment?) reflects your opinion

... is still an opinion.

[Better Believe It]

20. So you think that Galbraith took the opportunity to present my opinion!!!???

Thank you .... I guess.

But I think Mr. Galbraith is fully capable of presenting his own views without my help and I happen to agree with much of what he wrote.

[Bobbie Jo]

23. The question remains.....

Are you capable of expressing your own opinions?

[Lorien]

26. Avoid the issues much?

[Bobbie Jo]

28. Running interference much?

[chill_wind]

14. ..

In March 2008 Galbraith used the 25th Annual Milton Friedman Distinguished Lecture to launch a sweeping attack on the Washington Consensus on free market policies, especially the monetarist version.<3> He argued strongly that Keynesian economics offered a solution to the financial crisis that started in 2007 whereas monetarist polices would deepen the recession. Towards the end of 2008 policy makers around the world began acting in line with Galbraith’s recommendations, as part of the Keynesian resurgence described by the Financial Times as "a stunning reversal of the orthodoxy of the past several decades".<4>


Galbraith argues that modern America has fallen prey to a wealthy, government-controlling "predatory class":

"Today, the signature of modern American capitalism is neither benign competition, nor class struggle, nor an inclusive middle-class utopia. Instead, predation has become the dominant feature — a system wherein the rich have come to feast on decaying systems built for the middle class. The predatory class is not the whole of the wealthy; it may be opposed by many others of similar wealth. But it is the defining feature, the leading force. And its agents are in full control of the government under which we live."<6>

Galbraith is also highly critical of the Bush administration's foreign policy apropos of the Iraq invasion:

"There is a reason for the vulnerability of empires. To maintain one against opposition requires war — steady, unrelenting, unending war. And war is ruinous — from a legal, moral and economic point of view. It can ruin the losers, such as Napoleonic France, or Imperial Germany in 1918. And it can ruin the victors, as it did the British and the Soviets in the 20th century. Conversely, Germany and Japan recovered well from World War II, in part because they were spared reparations and did not have to waste national treasure on defense in the aftermath of defeat...The real economic cost of Bush's empire building is twofold: It diverts attention from pressing economic problems at home and it sets the United States on a long-term imperial path that is economically ruinous."<7>

He is also a merciless critic of his own profession:

"Leading active members of today's economics profession, the generation presently in their 40s and 50s, have joined together into a kind of politburo for correct economic thinking. As a general rule — as one might expect from a gentleman's club — this has placed them on the wrong side of every important policy issue, and not just recently but for decades. They predict disaster where none occurs. They deny the possibility of events that then happen. They offer a "rape is like the weather" fatalism about an "inevitable" problem (pay inequality) that then starts to recede. They oppose the most basic, decent, and sensible reforms, while offering placebos instead. They are always surprised when something untoward (like a recession) actually occurs. And when finally they sense that some position cannot be sustained, they do not re-examine their ideas. Instead, they simply change the subject."<8>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_K._Galbraith

[daa]

29. I am not sure what they are thinking

The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too by James K. Galbraith (May 12, 2009)

[brentspeak]

36. And...you are?

[ProSense]

5. I really have to wonder

"The debt deal will make things clear. The President is not a progressive – he is not what Americans still call a “liberal.” He is a willful player in an epic drama of faux-politics, an operative for the money power, whose job is to neutralize the left with fear and distraction and then to pivot rightward and deliver a conservative result.

What Barack Obama got from the debt deal was exactly what his sponsors have wanted: a long-term lock-in of domestic spending cuts, and a path toward severe cuts in the core New Deal and Great Society insurance programs – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And, of course, no tax increases at all."

...if people like Galbraith believe the shit they write? OK, let's all agree that Obama isn't a progressive. What's the alternative: "a willful player in an epic drama of faux-politics, an operative for the money power, whose job is to neutralize the left with fear and distraction and then to pivot rightward and deliver a conservative result."

What utter nonsense! Seriously, does portraying Obama in this light make Clinton a teabagger?

"a long-term lock-in of domestic spending cuts, and a path toward severe cuts in the core New Deal and Great Society insurance programs – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid."

More nonsense!

[polichick]

11. Actually, considering what the bill looks like, it doesn't seem like "nonsense" at all.

[chill_wind]

6. See also Stiglitz's commentary

this same day. The recent debt deal is a move in the wrong direction.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=619341&mesg_id=619341


K & R to "0".

[ProSense]

9. Stiglitz

makes sense:

<...>

And matters are little better on the other side of the Atlantic. There, the extreme right threatened to shut down the US government, confirming what game theory suggests: when those who are irrationally committed to destruction if they don't get their way confront rational individuals, the former prevail.

As a result, President Barack Obama acquiesced in an unbalanced debt-reduction strategy, with no tax increases - not even for the millionaires who have done so well during the past two decades, and not even by eliminating tax giveaways to oil companies, which undermine economic efficiency and contribute to environmental degradation.

<...>

The crap in the OP is simply absurd.

[chill_wind]

8. Just "some guy" (lol) who laid it out a long time ago.

James K Galbraith

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8674977&mesg_id=8674977

And bunch of several hundred other some guys:

Dean Baker plus a few more hundred progressive economists.

300 Economists Warn Obama: Grave Danger Ahead
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x560332

[polichick]

12. Haters!!! ;)

[chill_wind]

16. Yes WHY do they hate America?

Why oh why?

[Davis_X_Machina]

15. No one who didn't spend 2007-2008 in a cave...

...has any business thinking what Galbraith thinks we think.

[xchrom]

18. Recommend

[Jakes Progress]

19. Agreed, but this is becoming a "well duh" statement.

Not even his stalwart gang still claims that.

[Lorien]

24. His True Believers only care about one thing: "winning"

it's all just a big sports game to them. The repugs are their opponents, and "supporting the team" is job one. Ask them what ISSUES matter to them and you'll get nothing except a charge that you are acting as the "purity police". They no longer stand for anything.

[Jakes Progress]

27. And most of them don't get it that their approach will cost the WH

Others are probably shills for RW just alienating the hell out of real Democrats.

[DirtyDawg]

21. All this time...

...I was certain that Obama was pullin' the old 'rope-a-dope' on the Republicans...obviously he plays a far more complex game than we ever imagined, cause he's really fooled those of us that thought he was 'one of us'. In other words he's been ropin' the other dopes.

[Lorien]

22. This all falls into the "NSS" category:

"Political news travels slowly, and in my casual observation progressive Europeans have held on to the myth of Barack Obama as a good man much longer than most progressive Americans did. How could a young black American from Chicago and Harvard be otherwise?

Over here reality has been evident for a while, thanks to the President's pattern of giving way to banks, lobbies, Republicans and right-wing extremists. Whether your prime interest is housing, health care, peace, justice, jobs or climate change, if you are an activist in America you have known for a long time that this President is not your friend.

Still, even on these shores disillusion often took a mildly forgiving form. The President was a “disappointment.” He was weak. He had “bad negotiating skills.” He had a tendency to “deal with hostage-takers,” to “surrender.” All of this fed the image of a man with a noble spirit, a good heart, the best intentions, but trapped by limited ability and the relentless and reckless determination of his foes."

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Better Believe It]

31. "Pushing stuff"? "I must be rolling around in glee"? What kind of "stuff" is being "pushed"?

If you have actually read the article I'd like to know your opinion on it rather than experience yet another drive-by personal attack by you.

OK?

This is a discussion board.

[Bobbie Jo]

32. Ironic, in that....

We've yet to hear YOUR opinion on the article. Did you read it?

This is a discussion board. Copy/Paste/Admonish hardly qualifies.

I'm listening, etc.....

[Name removed]

53. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Hart2008]

33. Obama is a "neoliberal" who believes in deregulation, not a "liberal" who regulates banks, etc. NT

[Mimosa]

39. I hope you're wrong.

If you are right, then his admiration of Ronald Reagan is explained. When candidate Obama was running we had no clue how much he admired Reagan. :(

[Better Believe It]

40. Maybe we were not paying close enough attention to his record and statements.

[Hart2008]

44. The problem is that you elected someone with a 2 year record the national level.

And now you are slowly discovering that you didn't really know enough about him.

Yes, but he sure gave great speeches, didn't he?

[hay rick]

54. Master salesman, corporate shill, conservative.

The description fits both men.

[hulka38]

35. K&R

[Vidar]

38. K&R.

[RBInMaine]

41. More hyperbole from the fringe. Yawn.

[NorthCarolina]

43. You obviously forgot to include this in your post

:sarcasm:

[Douglas Carpenter]

45. kick and recommend

[Freddie Stubbs]

49. Did he ever say that he was a liberal?

[Starbucks Anarchist]

52. No, which makes the outrage a little confusing.

[Beacool]

51. Wow.......

"The good news is: it won't save him. For if and when he ventures out, for the rest of his life, the eyes of all those, whose hopes he once raised will follow him. The old, the poor, the jobless, the homeless: their eyes will follow him wherever he goes."

:o

[Skittles]

55. he's no liberal, but he is a master at making people think he is

I for the life of me do not understand how people fell for him, but they did - in DROVES