The Obama Presidency - Promise or the same mistakes

Arrogance & Corruption - two very good words that describe American Foreign Policy.  I'm not talking about the last 8 years under Bush/Chaney, although they  were very adept at a re-emphasis of the Ugly American probably not surpassed by any predecessor.  I am talking about a 20Th century that caused the coining of that epitaph. It is not a government, big or small, epitaph.  It refers to a culture that transcends government and its supportive corporate partners, because the American government has had a very purposeful partnership with American corporations.  The last 8 years was but a culmination of a 100 years of this partnership brutally destroying millions of lives and countless governments to the advantage of the various interests at the time.

President Obama has presented a far reaching social agenda for Americans. It targets classic liberal grails of social justice here in America.  It supports lower and middle class families, health care for everyone, and a quality public education system available and attainable to all.  But where will foreign policy fall? Iraq will wind down but not as quickly as originally promised or called for by many still elected and serving.  On a seesaw pivot, Afghanistan will wind upward.  Taliban and Al Qeada terrorists have gained popularity, land, and power once again in this rocky mountainous Muslim country.  It wasn't that long ago when US funding in the 100thousands then millions supported these same 'freedom fighters' against the Russian Bear.   I don't support or agree with or even like what the Taliban Al Qeada stand for.  But have they changed in any way from their beliefs between now and 25 years ago?  They were a brutal military & strict religious wing of the Muslim religious culture 25 years ago.  They still are today.  The only difference is we were giving them millions of dollars then, now we're spending billions fighting them.  But I digress.  I was talking about our Ugly American foreign policy.  Our involvement in Afghanistan is but one small example (25 - 30 years ago, our support of 'freedom fighters' against the then current Afghanistan government forced that government to ask for the Soviet Union to help them fight them off) of how our support of 'freedom fighters' has turned against us as they 'suddenly' become terrorists.  How many wars have we initiated because of our own (closely tied to corporate) self interest?  lets start a list: Korea, Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama, Grenada, Afghanistan, Iraq.  And how many assassination (or attempted assignations) go with that: at least 12 high profile, well documented since 1961.  That counts Saddam Hussein only once (and Fidel & Raul Castro once each) even though there were multiple attempts.  some of the men targeted, leaders of their respective countries, were not what I would call 'good' men.  some were brutal dictators (Papa 'Doc" Duvalier - Haiti).  That doesn't change the fact that our government continued its well played Ugly American part in this tragic historical play.

The question is where will President Obama take the next act? How much change will this President of Change really be?

Bailout Should Not Mean Layoffs

General Motors to Ask for $16.6B in Govt. Aid; to Slash 47,000 Jobs
Chrysler Says It Needs $5B More in Federal Money; to Cut 3k Jobs, AP Reports .

What is wrong with this picture. The United States is in the worst economic condition since the 1930s; unemployment rolls are growing by thousands every day. The stimulus package is supposed to turn that as well as many other downward, economic problems around. Why is a company, and GM is not the only one, allowed to take billions of dollars from tax payers with one hand and with the other put many of those same people out of work. It is counter productive. The major purpose of stimulus is to create jobs. Wouldn't it make all the sense in the world to save 47,000 jobs at GM with at least a part of the $16.6 billion it will be getting! Will that make GM more profitable: Of course not. But, right now, that is not the objective. GM needs to be viable. Our economy doesn't need it to be profitable right now. It does need it to survive, save the 47,000 jobs and the other 244,000 across the country in order to maintain the consumer engine. GM is no doubt in trouble. There will only be 4 brands left form a once giant of the car industry boasting double that number. It absolutely needs to find ways to reduce expenses and assets and increase money intake. The Saturn never lived up to its promise; it was never built as well as the Japanese products it was designed to compete with. Why? Quality was never #1. Environmental leadership was never #1. Efficiency was never #1. Good management was never #1. So, I'm thinking there are many areas of opportunity to make GM a viable company. Start with a management overhaul - preaching integrity, ethical behavior, customer 1st focus. Start making cars for the 21st century instead of the 20th. Work with the union to save the 47,000. Retool, Redesign, and Remake the image. Don't sell a Saturn for $25K. Sell it for $20K. Sales will increase. Moneyflow will be generated. Figure out cuts in expenses that will make that $20K sticker price keep from selling at a loss. Cuts that do not include 47,000 jobs. It may mean a new salary structure. What would a 10% reduction in all salaries mean to the bottom line? $5,000 per employee times 244,000 employees = $1,220,000,000. That's $1.2Billion! Now, that wasn't hard was it? Nobody lost their job. I figure Rick Wagoner, (CEO) can help make up for some of the lower income earners by giving up a little more than the $5000 himself. Bonus pools shrink bigtime when tax dollars start paying for them. Instead, incentives to workers, managers, vice presidents, et. al. are delivered by way of stock options payable sometime in the future. If the company succeeds, those options will be worth something. Talk about having a stake in the future. So, why won't this work? There are hundreds of other actions that can be taken to reduce expenses. The company just has to be inventive enough to make them. As Barak Obama has said: Stimulus means spend. we're spending to save jobs. Saving jobs means families will have the money to buy food, clothing, and (get this) CARS! Wow, what could be better than that.

Happy Valentine's Day

To everyone, love and be loved.

Senate Rhetoric

I was listening to the a news program tonight where Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison got to talking about the Recovery Act of 2009. She was not very happy with it. Her major objection - 'too much pork, unnecessary spending'. When pressed to identify any item of concern, she could not. What was revealing was her identification that although the President has said there were no earmarks or pork in this bill, when the bureaucracy gets their hands on it, 'they will put their own earmarks into it'. When you actually define what this means, someone will be making money, that's a given. But what Senator Hutchison is really upset about is that she will not have any control of where the money is going. It's not that money will be going to Texas, some of it most definitely will, but she won't be able to decide where or who in Texas gets it. It's never about the what, but always about the who and from whom.
Speaking of the whom, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC fame was on a rant during his Morning Joe show. He wouldn't let up. His beef: Congress is spending too much too quickly. $300 Billion would be plenty now. Wait 6-12 months, assess how the economy is responding, then potentially send out another $300 Billion. I think the Scarborough man has been watching too many time-released capsules commercials. One criticism of Japan during its decade of deflation during the 1990's was that too little money was pushed into the economy over too long a time. It wasn't until 2004 that Japan reached GDP growth of other major economies. If we learn something from history, it is that more money introduced quicker will have a better, faster impact than slow/longer. What Joe really wants is to put the breaks on Obama's liberal agenda. The package has billions of dollars that will support social programs lasting for a very long time. The Bush administration manufactured a war, forcing the country into debt, to preclude any money being left for social programs. This strategy would have worked except that the US Economy was ignored by that administration, allowing for the rampant corruption, non-controlled markets to freely gamble and lose the public's money. We are now experiencing the backlash, trillion dollar debt be damned.

This stimulus thing

Welfare used to be a highly debated topic. back in the days of Newt, the agenda was to get every welfare recipient on the job and earning their wages. handouts were going to be a thing of the past. Strict rules were put in place. If you want government money, you need to abide by the rules. It all sounds so well thought out, so well intentioned and well, common sense. A new Welfare is upon us. Banks, Investment firms, car manufacturers, all want government money. Did they do anything to earn this money? Not really. They all have one thing in common: They are going broke - or went broke. How did they get that way? Was it just bad luck, bad circumstance, too competitive of a market? Not really. It was bad policy, bad strategy, and a whole lot of greedy bad dealings. OK, I get it, our economy will absolutely die, bringing on an economic apocalypse and Mel Gibson riding around on motorcycles or oil carrying trucks. So what are we going to do. We are going to give these companies billions of dollars. Hundreds of billions of dollars. That kinda sounds like welfare doesn't it? Except they don't think it should have any rules attached. What would Newt say? I bet he would say something like: America needs to aim at reducing recipient dependence on the government; welfare programs, as they stand, act counter-productively towards their stated goals by perpetuating poverty through creating dependence on the government. He had absolutely no problem designing welfare reform back in 1996 prohibiting welfare to mothers under 18 years of age, denying increased AFDC for additional children while on welfare, and enacting a two-years-and-out provision with work requirements to promote individual responsibility. H.R.4, the Family Self-Sufficiency Act, included provisions giving food vouchers to unwed mothers under 18 in lieu of cash AFDC benefits, denying cash AFDC benefits for additional children to people on AFDC, requiring recipients to participate in work programs after 2 years on AFDC, complete termination of AFDC payments after five years. That seems to be a lot of rules to get a few dollars a week to live on. Today, the US Congress is capping CEO compensation at $500K per year to those companies that have failed miserably; failed to make ethical decisions, failed to hold to honest fair profits, failed to maintain a standard of wages that kept CEO compensation within the 100 times the value of the standard wage earner. To me, if you want government money, it is reasonable for the government to put some small restrictions on it. Newt felt that way. I agree with him.

adendum

$5.8 billion targeted for health prevention activity got cut from the recovery package. It just isn't the right time for preventive health measures. Preventive care helps everyone, but especially the middle and low income families and individuals. So this will hurt those that need it most. The elephants keep on winning.

What you hear is not what you get

what we have here is a failure to communicate. what i hear is nothing but lies. what does it matter if money for vaccinations for the purpose of stopping a flu epidemic is going to provide jobs? Why would someone be against preventing the flu? I would say that it is pure elephant garbage to hold up a stimulus package that is necessary to get our economy back on track but it is elephants doing it this time; it could be donkeys doing it next time. If they want to eliminate the funding for flu vaccinations it is probably because some drug company hasn't figured out an angle to make enough money from it yet and their congressional flunkies are just following orders and taking it off the board. Don't believe for a second it is because they think it is spending unnecessarily or it won't be funded sometime down the road when the drug companies can make more out of the program. You would think with 9 billion dollars there would be enough for everyone to make a small, no make that large fortune on. But the greedy elephants want more for their investment bankers and their own offshore accounts. Cynical? maybe. Why would Senator Susan Collins go on national TV and say that flu vaccinations shouldn't be in the stimulus package just 1 week after Chairman of the senate committee for Aging, Herb Kohl, expanded the package to include 800 million dollars for it; note Sen Collins is also on the same senate committee. You might remember back in 2001 Bayer came to the American people's rescue and provided Cipro during the anthrax scare at a reduced price ($1.77 reduced to $.95 per pill).What you may not know is that Bayer was making the pill for .20. & it was paying at least 3 competitor companies $200 million to keep generic alternatives off the market. We have HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson to thank for pushing this great deal between government and private enterprise. so, what about the Honorable Ms. Collins? why is she really going after flu vaccinations now that she is on the very powerful senate appropriations committee that has oversight & review of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009? Lets wait and see. She received $98K from commercial banks for her 2008 senate campaign and $71.5K from pharmaceutical manufacturing companies. GlaxoSmithKline is one of the world leaders in flu vaccination development and production. GSK just bought IDBiomedical. Together, they represent 1/3 of all flu vaccine manufacturing in the world. GSK spends over $1 Million giving to congressional campaigns - they cover almost everyone. Collins received $10K this year. I guess we'll just have to wait to find out how they profit by this delay in funding.
There is so much going on now. I'll be back soon.

Bolivia

The United States certainly has its own myriad of problems and crises. However, there are many conflicts, ethnic race conflicts around the world. Bolivia was an indian land before Europeans (Spanish) turned the agricultural people into miners. That was about 500 years ago. The descendants of the Spaniards own most of the lands and farms and mines. The indigenous descendants do most of the farming and man the mines. This is probably not much of a surprise to most anyone reading this. If you believe this is unique, you have not gone outside much. 1825 saw the creation of an independent, constitutional Bolivia. That didn't help the ethnic bigotry. During the 1900s growing social movements won small battles until the 1950s when the indigenous population won suffrage and property rights. Although a majority, they have not been able to control the government. Finally 2 years ago, Evo Marales, a cocoa farmer and leader of the social movement, became President. He nationalized the gas industry and began work on a new constitution. Its that new constitution that is causing the current fuss. It seems that the the constitution, debated with several riots disrupting and suspending talks over the last 2 years, has specific language that legitimizes indigenous peoples' claims to titles of land never allowed before. It also limits land ownership to 24000 acres. This seems to be a fighting point. Several large land owners have said they would take up arms if the constitution passes. Not that they would lose any of their current holdings. It would be limiting to future titles. Land of course is power. I present this as another conflict in our world, happening around us. Can our government help this new democracy? should we? by example? by aid and trade? or do we aid the international companies that built the gas industry in Bolivia whose works have been nationalized by Morales? cut off trade or limit it and force Morales into positions more difficult for the democracy? These last were positions taken by previous US administrations. How will this change?

Villages ravaged

With a Blog name like Marauding When it Counts, how could I start with anything but some thoughts on ravaged villages. I intend to fully explore the world, historically and currently; from the front door of my house and to a burnt door of a foreign embassy. I am reading a book (yes, thank you for the applause) about a man who devotes himself to helping poor people. He is a doctor. He is a humanitarian. He is also a pragmatist who has leveraged his genius to create an oasis within the absolute poverty of Haiti, fight and overcome MDR -TB in Peru, and moved policy within the World Health Organization. Paul Farmer. That's his name. I am still reading this well written biography, Mountains Beyond Mountains. It is inspirational and uplifting. It is also politcally charged. Paul Farmer understands the politics of poverty and tries to turn it. It is not my purpose here to do a book review. Politics of poverty though is a catchy phrase. There are inequities around the world. Big news flash huh. Programs targeted toward the poor will always be poor programs. Universal programs win political acceptance, get appluaded at government & world stages, but never get funded to levels that would change how poor people live and die. Can we do better? Is there a way to hope? There may be. Today I was part of history. I watched a changing of the guard. You probably did so as well. Millions of Americans, potentially a billion people world wide, did so. A new Great non-White Hope took the highest office of our country and the world. He said today "To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it. " There are many challenges. The way to our Country's leadership role in the world is to regain the respect of the world. We will see how well this pledge is kept.