Saving US sovereignty

The longer the Obama administration goes on the more I get the feeling Obama has his eyes on something greater than winning small battles against House Republicans. Some in media have excused Obama's lack of relationship-building with Congress as just not his style, but Obama has built relationships all his life. It's easy to notice that Obama thinks very little of Congress, mostly as obstacles that are presently a necessary evil in our system of governance. Obama, like Clinton and Gore and Carter, has his eyes on global relationships and issues of global governance, development and law-making.

I might be wrong. I guess we'll see how the negotiations over budgets and such go in the next few months, but it seems beneath Obama at this point to get excited about the prospects. The media-created "charm offensive" has been a joke. Obama and his team were taking so much heat from public opinion regarding dysfunction in government, they had to do something. One WH official even admitted it's a joke and only for show. My hunch is that Obama is focused on 2014, like many pundits have suggested, as a short term goal, then on setting up America to advance further in international relationships (pundits haven't suggested the last part). Global governance is a bigger concern to Obama than US governance. In fact, the worse our situation becomes, and the worse the situations of the world at large become, the less likely Americans are to become cocky and independent again. I'm not saying this is a conspiracy and that major governments have all decided to collapse together so that a new order can be created. No, I think Obama and the leaders of other countries and international power players all see the last remains of capitalism crumbling, thus they foresee a day soon when a new order will become necessary. Worldwide interventions in the various economies have been so great and numerous, the world thinks of what's collapsing as capitalism, but it is nothing of the sort, except maybe in a technical, partial defintion of capitalism. What we've experienced in the US and what's been experienced around the world has definitely had nothing to do with free markets, but then statist global leaders, including Obama and his predecessors, don't think free markets are even possible. They see free markets as an illusion carried forward by simplistic proponents of an American ideal that's never been realistic or possible. They especially think free market principles are silly notions in the context of global needs for cooperation, development in third world countries, laws to prevent human rights abuses, or the establishment in general of social justice.

Global development efforts are nothing new -- it's just that US media and political pundits don't talk much about it. Al Gore, George Soros, Kofi Annan and Maurice Strong know about globalism, but not many people know much about them or their activities, except Gore as a national joke because he was once VP.  It's more interesting for media to do their reality TV deal wondering if Boehner and Obama are going to play golf and talk about a Grand Bargain or whether Boehner's redneck base will prevent him from acting, and whether Harry Reid will block the House and say something stupid, and so forth. Yes, Obama has been aloof in all this, because it's just a lot of small political wrangling in his eyes. The issues of the UN, IMF, the World Bank, WTO, etc, are where the action is for ambitious world players like Obama. Clinton has surely kept Obama in the loop regarding his interactions regarding global advancements toward development and international law. Global governance, global development and international law are more important than economic concerns in the US, which to Obama seem small and self-serving for US business people thinking only about profit and personal gain.

If Obama has any concern with "business" it's on a larger, global scale in the vein of corporate governance talked about a few decades ago and is now in full bloom with the big international corporations which are enmeshed with governments of major nations. The large multi-national corporations are fully protected from competition. They were globally grown to fit into the global scheme to control production needs and to fund global governance, development and law-making. This is where I believe Obama and his circle of associates are headed. Like Clinton, Obama is young, and global concerns are where the action is at for those out to change the world.

Americans, although we're simple and foolish, had better gain control of our government, unless we want to obey the would-be global masters who've been working diligently for control for a long, long time.

Up with Chris Hayes 1/27/2013 -- I agree with Phyliss Bennis

After 9 days overseas straining first in Marseille to understand French and the other languages in this diverse port city, then trying to understand the people of Barcelona, watching tv was something that produced little fruit except the comic fruit when watching The Simpsons and their version of Homer in a foreign language. It was a great treat to watch Chris Hayes' show this morning. Not only because i understood the language, but because Hayes moderated an intelligent discussion of US foreign policy and how this relates to Hillary Clinton and the recent Benghazi hearings.

I did my best to keep up with the Benghazi hearing on BBC, but I did have a few other priorities that interfered with BBC's take on the hearings. I understand that many on the Left believe Rand Paul was disrespectful, and I understand many on the Right were outraged that Clinton asked why it matters if there was a prostest leading to the terrorist act or not. What Hayes and his guests did was go beyond  this controversy to the heart of US foreign policy in the Mideast and Northern Africa. I won't list the names of the guests, but they were all experts on Africa or foreign policy in general. I would like to discuss the general ideas and to say I agree mostly with the positions put forth by Phylliss Bennis and Horace Campbell.

Although Campbell held a non-interventionist position, I suspect he and I would disagree on forms of interventions -- in other words, I suspect Campbell welcomes reconstructive, peaceful intervention from super-powers like the US, although he made it clear that the French will do nothing but harm in Mali and North Africa in general. I agreed mostly with Phyliss Bennis's non-interventionist position regarding US interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Egypt, etc., although I'm sure we agree on very little when it comes to economic interventionism by government powers. In other words, I don't think either Bennis or Campbell are "vulgar" libertarians who share my broad-ranging non-interventionist ideas.

Hayes made the claim of Devil's Advocate when he pushed back on Bennis's and Campbell's criticisms of US interventions, but I suspect he was uncomfortable with the association of failed interventions with the Obama administration and how this association reflects poorly on Clinton. Hayes couldn't escape, though, the conclusions, either as Devil's Advocate or as a partisan protecting a popular President and Sectretary of State. Hayes countered Bennis and Campbell by saying that Syria has followed the implosion of Libya without direct US intervention and that history shows these implosions happen even when the US is not involved. This is a weak counter, because even if it's true that implosions like this happen in the Mideast and Northern Africa whether the US intervenes or not, then let's not bother intervening and wasting precious human lives and material resources. Unless Hayes can show successful interventions that justify US involvement, then his counter argument fails.

Campbell shot back that recent history shows US interventions are the causes of negative consequences in this region -- plus we are looking at myriad interventionist moves in the region since the US first started intervening long, long ago-- some effects are so far removed from original causes it's practically impossible to follow the trail from current effects to original causes in a 2 hour debate. The logic of the debate works against Clinton's proclamation that the US has to intervene in the Mideast and Northern Africa to prevent instability and the increase in terrorist influence in the region. From my perspective, Campbell and Bennis were right regarding the failure of US interventions. To continue and interventionist policy as Clinton has recommended is insanity. If Republicans and Democrats could look beyond superficial, modern, faux-patriotism and reclaim the original classical liberal position of non-interventionism held by many Founders in the beginning, maybe the US can get back to a major focus on strong defense, free trade, peace and universal prosperity.

The grand, meddling schemes of Clinton, Obama, Rice and others on the Left and McCain and Graham and the like on the Right, are leading us to disaster and leaving trails of misery in our paths.

Denial on the Left regarding Benghazi

It's hard to imagine honest liberals sincerely believing that the Benghazi attack and the subsequent spin from the White House are unimportant and that Rice was just doing her job. There has to be accountability in government, and it's obvious that the administration lied then covered up the lie.

I know it's embarrassing for Democrats to admit this, but it has to be addressed. Denying it will not make it go away. Obama has to man up and stop hiding behind Petraeus, Rice and Clinton -- this is cowardly behavior. 

Morning Joe 6/8/2012 -- Unions aren't immune from innovation

On Morning Joe today, Sam Stein, Willie Geist and Michael Steele, among others, discussed the meaning of the Wisconsin victory for Walker, the future of unions and Bill Clinton's ideas regarding the Bush tax cuts.

The conventional wisdom is that government has to raise revenues, but raising taxes across the board will harm the fragile recovery, so only the richest should be taxed. Of course, taxing the rich is more symbolic than practical, because it's unlikely to raise the needed revenues. Bill Clinton has been pressured by the Obama administration to support soaking the rich, and Clinton would do this if it was a pragmatic solution, but Clinton knows it's not a solution. It's a shame Clinton doesn't just say what's on his mind and leave it at that -- this bind he's in is making him look foolish.

The topic of unions brought up contrarian positions from liberal guests -- unions are alive and well, despite their set-back, the Left says. Some on the Left are depressed at the moment, but they don't believe unions are dead. The problem is that the Left doesn't see the problem. The Democratic Party union supporters don't understand the problem, because just as the political class doesn't understand the business world, they don't understand the world of workers. The world of workers has changed.

Unions have to innovate and find a voice and mission that are consistent with the technological changes in a brain-work job market. The relationships between management and workers have changed for the most part, therefore unions must offer something that fits into the new relationships. The old, big industry Boss/Worker relationship is dead. And the public unions that exist to confiscate tax payer dollars and create benefits at the expense of those in the private sector who get no such benefits for free are definitely out of touch with the public at large. 

Unions have to transform and become part of the new market that's emerging from under the thumb of the State. This new market will remove the State thumb, and unions can be a part of the change and transformation, or they can stand on the sidelines as obstructionists and reactionaries carrying signs and making threats.

For Heaven's sake, get people in DC who understand business

Mitch McConnell said in an interview today that the Bush tax cuts should be extended for at least a year. This is his idea of giving the business community confidence. Bill Clinton and Larry Summers said basically the same thing, although it's impossible to know what any Democrat is saying lately, because the administration has them change it as soon as they say something.

These one year gimmicks, stimulus tricks, and all the indecision about what the great minds in DC will do to jumpstart the economy, are killing the economy. It's has become a theater of the absurd, with all the political manipulations going on, and "experts" pretending they have answers to the recession. Biden today was calling for immediate action to end the recession they inherited -- hell, he's admitting there was never a recovery. What plan does Biden have in mind? When they do a stimulus and it fails, they say it wasn't big enough. Well, if they know the correct size, why didn't they do it in 2009?

The truth is that no one in DC knows what to do to get the economy going. As I've said before, if "experts" in the political class knew how to avoid recessions, then we wouldn't even have this conversation. Politicians are doing exactly what FDR did in the 30s, prolonging the downturn through misguided government interventions. Until businesses know that government is not going to intervene and that their tax rates aren't going to soar, then investors are not going to invest, builders will not build, consumers will not purchase big ticket items and new wealth will not be created, thus, debt will spiral out of control.

Get the statists out of DC -- then we'll see recovery.