In other words:

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2008/08/big-diff.html

he could have put out a plan that said nothing about specifics, and instead would be uniting. He is putting this out to see who on the left is loyal.

If you can swallow this, you can swallow anything.

I will also state that unless events go very favorably for Obama, there is a very high degree of likelihood that he will be punished in the 2010 elections, and then defeated in his re-election bid in 2012.

Jindahl-Palin '12 baby!

he could have put out a plan that said nothing about specifics, and instead would be uniting.

My own view is that Obama would have been better advised to put forward a progressive agenda as the basis for a new vision for America that is really new politics — and which clearly breaks with Reaganomics as a socio-economic pseudo-scientific program as a cover for neoliberalism, neo-imperialism and neocolonialism, instead of trying to make a failed ideology work by tweaking it. Disappointing that the US left is underrepresented, to put it mildly, and the rest of the world shafted.

But neither you nor I are running his campaign. Hopefully, it is a stealth campaign, like W's in 2000, but the reverse of it.

Glove.

So Obama is Reaganite in his approach, and his advice? And firm and unyielding, not changing once elected? So is this why what I might term the Agonist Inner Circle was more enamored of Edwards or Clinton, if at all?

Stirling I really appreciate your analysis, along with Ian's, Sean-Paul's, and others, yet can't imagine how your economic views would have worked for a successful presidential candidate this year.

I have to assume you want to check any more conservative appointments to the Supreme Court, that you want a lot more alternative energy investment, more regulation even re-regulation of Wall Street, to say nothing of checking Big Media and raising taxes for the wealthy. I expect that from Obama and don't find that very Reaganite.

Do you think he's all Reaganite, or just Reaganite on domestic economy? Please be more specific. And tell us if you're sitting out this election because of this.

Thanks.

Tom Robinson

McCain is the smelling salt and Obama is the aphrodisiac for our Disneyfied sense of reality.

As Stirling implied, Obama's kitchen smells nice and the crowd is ready for a free lunch; the problem? nothing is free forever.

People just don't understand that governments can't gaurantee currency since we saw folks burning their money in germany since it was the cheapest form of fuel available.

So Obama scares me because he's the pied piper and folks are now punch drunk and don't see the metaphorical cliff that lies ahead for the next generation.

the war on drugs is a jobs program; i.e. the rich have the job of straightening out the lives of the poor; such an arrangement keeps society from completly splitting apart. sadly, the powers that be, therefore, have to create poor folks so rich folks have jobs.

The war on drugs is just another brick in the wall of the militarization of every aspect of society.

The 'war' creates a worldwide mafia - then that mafia is presented as evidence that society needs to be further militarized - when in reality is should be presented as evidence that the 'war' and proscribed physical stimulants/depressants are actually the problem.

after the USSR fell, I believe that the US was paying the salaries of the nuclear scientists there so they wouldn't go to rouge nations.

hence, I agree with you 100% about the MIC and, sadly, that could be our downfall since military technology folks have extortion power.

Does government spending on things like social organization (including security), education, infrastructure, R&D, health care, and social safety actually amount to a kind of investment that is necessary in a complex society, and a type of investment that the private sector is not capable of handling as well?

I don't think that government does a better job than the private sector; in singapore, for example, they were producing the best math students in the world and then, suddenly, the government ordered a 30% cut in content so teaching could be replaced with "social messages."

In my own case, I've been learning piano and only visit a pianist twice a month for a sanity check; It's been the best experience of my life to do something on my own and without having to depend on "the system."

There are pro's and con's in all of these and they need to be debated in terms of real issues not wedge ones manufactured for political purposes. My view is that the purported liberal-conservative divide is bogus, and that there are a range of options and a spectrum of thinking on which ones are most workable, affordable, efficient and effective.

One of the minority party candidates in a previous election was a scientist (theoretical physicist) who campaigned on the platform that the major questions beginning "debated" have already been solved and the factual evidence is in on what works and what doesn't. Instead of arguing over ideology, we should pay attention to evidence based research, and where it is lacking, do it.

My own preference is letting a hundred flowers bloom, but the government shouldn't be expected to be the gardener for all of them. Government can play a role, but what that role should be needs to be examined intelligently, not on the basis of ideological bias and wishful thinking. The stakes are too great to be learning from mistakes that once committed are not only wasteful but also difficult to fix because of their inertia.

here in minneapolis, the democrats and republicans weren't going to fund the library unless we bought the Twin's a new stadium;

I was pissed since I never thought I'd see democrats using the public library as a wedge issue but they did and a light bulb went off in my head about why politicians won't create predictable funding sources for public libraries.

"because taxes theoretically reduce the amount available for productive investment"

Tests of the hypothesis: TGV, Airbus, DARPA, Internet, Integrated Circuit, Roads, Airports, Ports, Mass Transit, Bus Routes, New Deal programs, Water Infrastructure, Sewers...

The tests don't support the hypothesis. The assumption behind this statement is Governments just burn money with no productive results. The results as listed above just don't support that hypothesis.

Taxes don't reduce the amount availble for investment. They direct it. Or redirect it, based on social goals. Government also invests where private money will not, as there is a different risk/reward calculation. Each investment has different goals and efficiencies: Efficient (for some): Single Payer health care; Inefficient (for some): Iraq War. The difference is social goals.

The fight over taxes is not about taxes, it's about wealth transfer. The republicans have done a bang up job of controlling (allocating) spending in the last few years (wealth transferred from the poor to the rich), just as the democrats spent in prior years (transferrig wealth from the rich to the poor).

Two items:

1. As the Economist wrote in 1981: Republicans and Democrats both believe in big Government. What form of big Government do we want?
2. Democrats seem to favor transferring wealth from the rich to the poor (progressive taxation), Republicans on transferring wealth from the poor to the rich (borrowing and inflation), to pay for big Government. What form of society do we want?

Change the hypothesis. Focus on root cause. My root causes might be wrong, there is a different focus - wealth transfer and investment priorities, based on social goals.

Well said.

I would disagree that this is the Democratic liberal/progressive agenda. Rather, it is an elitist charge without actual basis. National prosperity involves distributive justice as a sine qua non, not as a dole by the wealthy to the poor forced by unreasonable taxation.

The wealthy are more politically powerful than the poor and their agenda has often been to direct wealth to the top instead of managing the countries finances to promote the general welfare and advance national prosperity, which requires distributive justice.

Transfer of wealth is the consequence the social goals.

I'm direct. "National prosperity involves distributive justice as a sine qua non" reads to me as "wealth transfer from the rich to the poor."

There is the underlying sentiment

"To those who much is given, much is expected"

I don't expect "trickle down" to work because it based on selfishness, not a good social goal. I do expect taxes to work becuase taxes are based on "social goals" and "common good".

Democrats should be very clear in their expectations, and wealth transfer is one of them.

There is a saying "Behind every great fortune, there is a great crime". Progressive taxation (If you will: "distributive justine", or wealth transfer) has an implicit recognition of this truth (or distributive justice as a sine qua non) without actual prosecution for the crime.

My take is that much of the so-called wealth transferred to the rich is the result of wealth capture instead of the wealth creation they claim to be largely responsible for producing. The notion that capital can take as much as it can extract (exploit) has no basis in either political science, economics, or justice. It's a fiction of liberalism and neoliberalism that is based on the false notion that there are no positive or negative externalities involved, that every person is an island, and that the law of the jungle — survival of the fittest — applies in human affairs, which is a demonstrably false presumption masquerading as either self-evident principle or scientific law. Actually, these myths are subjective norms in a universe of political and economic discourse that has been imposed by rightist propaganda and accepted at purported face value by the uncritical.

Gains are the result of a system working on the basis of a sound and sustainable internal dynamic in relation to other such systems in an international environment. My contention is that a few have arranged the system to their advantage and then when there is a push for justice, often when the system is breaking down because of dislocations, the cry arises at the top, "Class warfare." Total nonsense.

This is an important debate to have because the GOP propaganda to the contrary that has not only been successful in getting the poor to vote against their own interests but has also resulted in a system that is unsustainable for everyone, both in the US and internationally. This is just a myth that the wealthy have perpetrated for their own apparent advantage and they are now finding that it is indeed a myth as governments are forced to step in to save the day.

However, the dislocations are already too great and all the ammo is exhausted. The inevitable result will be systemic collapse down the road away as the global financial architecture crumbles and real economies grind to a screeching halt.

Unless a progressive solution is introduced in time to stem the tide.

Even so, huge losses are coming as delevering continues. Debts that cannot be repaid will be defaulted on.

we agree.

I'll take the contrarian view here! The infrastructure which the government built us takes resources to maintain; thus, the "new deal programs" encouraged our country to become an empire.

However, if the US loses its special financial status, disneyfied views about the "new deal" won't make the unavailabile resources, to support the desired economic activity, suddenly appear.

and the "global warming taxes" will suck money out middle class pockets and funnel it to the elite so they can play while we live poorer lives.

is to create a sustainable organizational structure for the whole world that "equitable" in the sense of giving all factors their due in order to generate a self-sustaining system. As long as the US continues in the path of it is on and continues to think that 3% of the world's population is somehow entitled to use a quarter of its resources because we were here first, this is not happening.

I'm probably too cynical, but I expect to see a mass die off before people become equitable.

is going on here.

?

and got reelected in 2004 anyway on more BS.

If campaign promises are hooey, please tell me what this whole process is about. I guess we are supposed to intuit how a candidate will govern.

Well, Obama promised to be a different type of candidate and then, if you are right, broke that promise. But now he is hinting that he will be a different type of leader by breaking all the incoherent promises he is now making.

If all of this is true then we are so far gone as to be wholly unredeemable.

Now, I have some concept of the reality of our politics and I'll be damned if I understand why a progressive can't run as a progressive and win. It hasn't been tried yet. Reagan ran as a conservative when that hadn't been tried and won as one setting the stage for the Bush's and for Clintons retreats. You can't change the game if you don't try.

On some level, we're seeing how well the candidates lie and run campaigns, or how good their advisors are at getting them to do that.

In this election we're seeing a pretty striking difference in apparent temperament. Do you think that Obama or McCain is going to have a steadier hand at the helm?

...shall ye know them. Presidential campaigns are mostly personality contests--think of them as the political equivalent of "American Idol". Especially since the advent of TV.

Local campaigns are a different matter and candidates don't have hordes of strategists and PR flacks to tell them what they need to say to get the votes.

But for national office, no one will promise to raise taxes.

the bail out bill to go on as an act of governance.

The people talking about the campaign have missed something: we've seen President Obama in action.

It wasn't pretty.

Remember that it was Joe Biden who spearheaded the push for the changes in bankruptcy law. I figure mass credit card default is going to rear its ugly head before long.

So what's possible?
Redirect (some) of the health care $ into universal health care?

What would be the cost of providing medicare for all, vs current health insurance premiums?

What are the savings?

How many people get laid off? (That's the savings).

We need some substantive discussion here, about the cost/benefits & implications.

I operate under the assumption that he is just using the most expedient rhetoric available for winning an election. He uses mutant versions of the dominant ideology to give himself a chance to change it.

After 40 years of conservative economics it is impossible to win an election with Keynesian rhetoric. As Gramschi would suggest you need to change the dominant ideology before you win the people to your opinions. And that you can only do as president.

FDR himself only gradually espoused agressive Keynesian politics and it is important to keep this in mind because it probably tells us that politicians are no monoliths with unchanging opinions. You are right to suspect the Chicago economists around Obama. I am suspicious of them as well, but I think you are fundamentally wrong in assuming that an Obama presidency would basically act in the way that its campaign promises seem to indicate. A president has the most powerful bully pulpit available on any one on earth and can, should he need to, start shaping public opinion and drag it away from the electoral politics bromides.

That is the optimist in me speaking.

eom

on as crude a Keynesianism as you can imagine.

The desire of the American electorate, since 1968, has been to have a liberal government run by conservatives.

What they are finding is that the right is only good at running things into the ground.

I've talked to some of them, and I think that they are making up what they think they are hearing instead of hearing what they don't want to hear.

When he is specific, Obama has been consistently clear that he is for transferring ops from Iraq to Afghanistan rather than ending the GWOT, for beefing up the military while changing its mission to suit current challenges, and for tweaking economic neoliberalism to make it more user-friendly without abandoning the neo-imperialism and neocolonialism that it involves. This basically playing the same hand a different way, not a new deal, let alone proposing a new vision, as some seem to feel he is.

Unfortunately, many people are hearing "hope" and "change" and filling in what they want to hear and then thinking that Obama said it himself. That's not what I'm hearing, and I've been saying this from the get-go.

Is not the key to GWOT success. Or the Middle East. Isreal/Palestine is the cancer. Evrything else is a palliative.

And I would also add, "It's the oil, stupid." The US has got to break its addiction to petroleum because its huge military is needed to control access to resources, and its foreign policy revolves around energy access.

If it weren't for the oil, and the Guilt trip from WW II, we'd let the people in the middle east fight each other to the last particle of sand, and would not care.

There is a large, diverse, wealthy, powerful and well-organized coalition backing Israel in the US. This problem transcends oil, and it's going to be to the fore in the next administration, W & Cheny having screwed it up so badly after Clinton.

Nobody said Obama was dumb.

It's just that porta-potty of kon-serf-idive ideology has been tipped over while we were sitting in it. The answer isn't just to take a shower, tip it back to 'right' and hope it doesn't tip over and cover us in our own effluent again.

I fear the election will just be the beginning of a new struggle, in which Obama plays 'uniter' and he ends up 'distancing himself' from the net-roots and MoveOn (the MoveOn dis already started) just the same way he threw Rev. Wright under the bus.

"he really is an economic idiot."

eom.

_{"The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy" - Bob Herbert}