Obama is not a Socialist

It's a testament to just how narrow the realm of acceptable public discourse about the economy (and politics) has become when you hear so-called serious news outlets question whether Obama is a socialist. But that's just what the mainstream media (MSM) is currently debating (I assume that means no celebrities have shaved heads or plumbers became jounalists this week).

This type of demagoguery, usually reserved for the likes of Fox News and Republican presidential campaigns, has become a serious topic of discussion on outlets such as the New York Times and ABC. There seems to be, among the MSM, a serious misunderstanding (either involuntary or willful) of what socialism is. It is not difficult to conclude that both Obama's budget and his free market tendencies quickly disqualify such a label. Both the NYT and ABC, often accused of being bastions of liberal propaganda, are not so subtely pandering to their corporatist agenda. Not only is this sort of labeling inaccurate and unfair (to both Obama and socialists), but is serves to stifle honest discussion of how to deal with the current economic crisis when the last thing we need is ideolgolical handcuffs preventing our government from doing what it should have done in November - nationalize the banks. Ironically, if we had done that from the start of the crisis, less capital would have been needed.

Interviewing with the NYT aboard Air Force One yesterday, Obama was asked the socialist question. He dodged the question but called back after the interview. His response is below:

"Just one thing I was thinking about as I was getting on the copter. It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question. I did think it might be useful to point out that it wasn’t under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. It wasn’t on my watch. And it wasn’t on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement – the prescription drug plan without a source of funding. And so I think it’s important just to note when you start hearing folks through these words around that we’ve actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles and that some of the same folks who are throwing the word socialist around can’t say the same."

And here is how it was discussed on ABC's This Week:

Obama's budget, Iran, Afghanistan

I have often heard others wonder aloud why we seem to get so little for our taxes - "Other first world countries have universal health care, universal day care, tax funded education through college, significantly better maternity care and unemployment insurance, etc.." That's when the conversation inevitably seems to veer towards our bloated military budget. Progressives are quick to label Obama and his budget proposal as a wide and refreshing change from politics of the last two or three decades - and much of that is well founded. However, as I mentioned in previous blogs, we can't go into this with our eyes closed. There are aspects of Obama's proposal to worry about, and to criticize.

A very interesting article from Paul Craig Roberts, a Republican who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and worked at the CATO Institute in the mid 1990s, yet has been widely critical of the Iraq War (from the start), had called for Bush's impeachment, detests neoconservativism - arguing it is pushing us towards a nuclear showdown, is extremely critical of NAFTA, and is very skeptical of the Bush (and now Obama) stance towards Iran. This willingness to stick to his beliefs only serves to add credibility. That being said, Roberts labels Obams's proposal as "the most irresponsible budget in US history." While, it may be premature to speak in such superlatives, he is much much more analytical when discussing the ramification of the size of Obama's budget. He raises a valid point - very soon we will no longer be able to borrow from the Japanese, Saudis, and Chinese. As a result of "Clinton/Bush financial deregulation and Wall Street and bankster greed, the rest of the world is in financial turmoil and hasn’t $1.75 trillion in savings to lend." Inevitably, Roberts argues, this would trigger a level of massive inflation with which US citizens could not cope.

One way to combat this is by attacking the aforementioned bloated military budget. Instead, as Roberts points out, "Obama is requesting $130 billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during 2010 plus a $75 billion supplemental request for the wars during 2009. This $205 billion is on top of $534 billion for the Pentagon in 2010, for total military spending of $739 billion." We spend more on the military than every other country on the globe combined. For every dollar we pay in taxes, about sixty cents goes towards defense spending. This is at the same time progressives and some moderates are pressuring Obama to cut the military budget. And now we are facing another (or is it continuing?) boondoggle in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as a showdown with Iran - who we even admit do not have nuclear capabilities, and are only using low enriched uranium (unsuitable for usage as a bomb). It's difficult to fully understand Iran's stance toward us when as Americans, we don't fully understand the destructive role the US has played in Iran since Kermit Roosevelt helped to overthrow Mossadegh after WWII(a Time Magazine slideshow history ignores everthing before 1979 - only casually mentioning the Shah was a puppet to foreign influence).

Essentially, Obama is trying to eat his cake and have it too. Perhaps I'm missing something, but he simply can't propose a sustainable, progressive, and stimulus budget while maintaing our current military spending. It's not enough to attack the ineffeciency of the defense budget. If the moral implications of US hegemony (i.e. blowback, race to the bottom, anti-Americanism, US support of several horrific regimes) have not been enough to stop our juggarnaut, then one would think this would do it. If Obama is the change many purport him to be, he would be using the current economic crisis as a way to shrink the military budget AND to significantly alter the global purpose of the US and its military. He could free us from the financial obligations necessary to maintain hegemony, and divert those funds towards more appropriate expenses. In fact, even Obama's plan to end the war in Iraq involves maintaining 50,00 US troops in Iraq, and possible a permanent military base in Kirkuk. Grouped with Obama's cryptic stances on state secrets and his refusal to completely end rendition, we have rather ominous signs that Obama seeks to maintain US hegemony at the expense of the US taxpayer - when we need some real change.