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TAS Live
Obama’s New Deal
In Denver, progressives gathered to discuss what they expect from him. From our October issue.
(This article appeared in the October 2008 issue of The American Spectator.)
ON A HOT AUGUST DAY in Denver, just a few hours before a vote at the Pepsi Center made Sen. Barack Obama the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, liberal activists gathered less than two miles away at the Central Presbyterian Church for a forum on economic justice and ending global poverty.
A man strummed on an acoustic guitar inside the sanctuary, which was temporarily decorated with anti-war and pro-impeachment banners, all helping to make the facility live up to its name: Progressive Central.
“I think we can be on the edge of an era in this country of bold, dramatic change equal to the Great Society and the New Deal,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) declared during the session that followed, as the scraggly bearded actor and activist Sean Penn listened from one of the pews toward the back. “We’re going to need people with the mindset to do big things. Ending poverty is not a tiny matter — it’s a big thing. Universal health care is a big thing. Making sure we eliminate hunger in this country is a big thing. These are big, big, things. They require big solutions. Not little baby steps, but big, bold, dramatic change.”
While prominent Democrats took to the airwaves to explain to the American people why they needed to elect Obama president, members of the party’s progressive wing were gathering throughout the Mile High City, and discussing how to make sure that once elected, Obama governs as a liberal.
With the Republican brand name badly damaged and Democrats
expected to make further gains in Congress, progressives see this
as a moment when the country is turning against conservatism,
giving them a rare opportunity to make the case for a radical set
of changes that would uproot the U.S. economic system and place
government at the center of people’s lives.
Over the course of the 20th century, there have been a number of
Democratic presidents, but they have met with varying degrees of
success when it came to actually advancing liberalism. While
Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson greatly
expanded the role of government in the economy, with a permanent
legacy that included Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,
Jimmy Carter proved too inept to enact such major changes. Bill
Clinton, despite his political success, ultimately put his
short-term political goals ahead of any liberal agenda, and
eventually universal health care gave way to welfare reform.
AS THE Progressive Democrats of America gathered in the church for a five-day shadow convention, the popular blog DailyKos and several other liberal groups hosted progressive speakers in another venue blocks away from the convention, dubbed the Big Tent.
In a panel organized by Campaign for America’s Future, Robert Kuttner, co-founder of the American Prospect, spoke about his new book: Obama’s Challenge: America’s Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency.
“It is increasingly clear to me that there are moments in American history where the crisis is so severe, that only radical change can achieve moderate ends…” Kuttner told the crowd assembled within the tent. “This is one of those moments.”
According to Kuttner’s account of history, the three transformational presidents — Abraham Lincoln, LBJ, and FDR — did not start out intending to make bold changes, but “became more radicalized in office” because of the existence of powerful “social movements.”
In Lincoln’s case, Kuttner argued, he started out wanting to save the Union but ended slavery under pressure from the abolitionists; FDR was initially opposed to deficits, public works, and deposit insurance, but was forced to embrace all three by the industrial labor movement; LBJ was a Southern moderate who signed the Civil Rights Act because of Martin Luther King, Jr. and other activists. The same will be true for Obama.
“Whether we get a progressive president, and whether that president governs as a progressive, is up to us,” Kuttner said.
Many progressives were reluctant to get behind Obama during the primary because he was seen as more moderate on some domestic policy issues than his rivals, Kuttner explained, but the existence of his massive movement and his potential to transcend party with moderate-sounding rhetoric made them give him a pass on the issues.
“But the time for giving him a pass is over,” Kuttner said of
Obama. “If he doesn’t understand that everything that needs to be
done for the economy is more radical than almost anything that
can be debated in polite company, he will neither be elected, nor
will he be a great president.”
Kuttner called for “bolder, gutsier programs,” including a
“Roosevelt scale” re-regulation of financial markets.
About the Author
Philip Klein is The American Spectator’s Washington correspondent. You can follow him on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/Philipaklein
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oldpapajoe| 11.3.08 @ 2:04PM
Dream on. It will take the Conservative movement a decade to recover from a BHO victory--that is why McCain has to win. There is no second chance this time around.
Mike Sawyer| 11.4.08 @ 3:33AM
Are you kiddin me? The entire basis of this article is as if the "progressive" movement has any claim to legitimacy. LBJ, FDR, "where we were with Barry"?
How did this guy get away from CNN? OK - I finally give up, but who will they come to now after they wreck the economy, denude our forces, and are compelled to convert with the sword at their neck? How many limos will be there then?
Ms. Know| 11.14.08 @ 11:10AM
They have him like Roosevelt on the cover of time. I can't wait until the socialist illuminati turn this world upside down. What will people think then?
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org | 12.1.08 @ 9:24PM
Mr. Obama's New Deal December 01, 2008.
Mr. Obama's New Deal
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
December 01, 2008.
“If FDR's New Deal had worked then, it is not entirely obvious why it should not work again.” (Why Bluff Martial Law?)
After that sentence was written, which was based on the populist understanding of what FDR had supposedly accomplished in the New Deal, through actual research into the facts of the matter however, it has now become blatantly apparent why it would not work again. FDR at the time had capitulated to the banksters – some say he was in fact the banksters own very clever pointman – and changed America's money which was previously redeemable in gold, into fiat paper money, with the passing of The Emergency Banking Act, March 9, 1933. All the gold of the American peoples was confiscated, and in effect, handed over to the Federal Reserve System in lieu of an infinite supply of paper money constructed as a national debt. The principal of this national debt was never intended to be ever paid back – it was setup as an infinite inflationary supply source. However, the interest on it was to accrue exponentially – compound-interest – and this interest was payable by the American peoples, the consumers, the corporations, and all economic activity in the United States. In addition, making the US dollar world's reserve currency at Bretton-Woods by the victor of World War II, made increasing that principal a global impetus from the entire world's economic activity. Every US Treasury Security held by the oil producing nations courtesy of Henry Kissinger, every dollar held in foreign exchange reserves by the world's nations, indeed every dollar in circulation, contributed to this principal! Every dollar added to the principal that was beyond the growth of the American nation's real GDP – based on real production and not financial wizardry – was inflationary. Thus all economic activity due to debt financing, as opposed to balanced budget financing, was by design, made inflationary. The word “inflationary” means when a dollar purchases less than it did before, or the same thing costs more than it did before. However it's official measurement also has become a con-game, and therefore, that word here is used to mean the real empirical experience of real wage-earning consumers who are the most susceptible to inflation (and who, incidentally, also pay the bulk of the interest on the national debt through their federal income tax), and not official reportage based on some artificial basket of goods.
More the American worker made, more he paid out in taxes and in rising cost of living, so that he and she ended up with less and less in working families with even both parents working! Thus American public took on more and more debt, sometimes to make ends meet, and sometimes to enjoy the good times that were easily handed them on the platter of inextricable debt. And so the monster of debt fed itself. This wasn't just a side-effect as almost all the economists and politicians would have the ill-informed public believe, but by the very design of the monetary system under the Federal Reserve System. That was quite a brilliant coup d'état under the guise of solving the problem of the Great Depression by the banksters! The same banksters funded the causes, and all participants, of World War II, just as they precipitated the Great Depression itself. It was a banksters' World War, and a banksters' Great Depression! And a banksters' currency that kept creating more and more debt by design. Their 'small' calculated baby-step to create world government led to more millions dead and disillusioned than all wars of all history added together. Just as it is re-playing out the same game today, but much closer to endgame. Since the year 1933 was only the beginning of the paper money scam – this incarnation of the central bankers' perpetual scam since time immemorial, actually began in 1910 at Jekyll Island, and got cemented with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act on December 23, 1913 – the cumulative national debt then was low, the interest payments were low, and the Frankenstein was just a cute baby boy. Therefore, President Roosevelt could trivially embark on his debt-financed spending spree which became known as the New Deal. See the debt-chart from 1900 to 2006 in the book by Van K Tharp here, and current national debt numbers proudly reported by the U.S. Treasury here. Today, such a spending spree is not possible in the existing monetary system because the Frankenstein of debt has now matured into an ugly monster about to devour its feeders. And yet, such a spending spree is still generously being granted to the banksters to the tune of $7.7 Trillion for bailout, as reported by Bloomberg on November 24, 2008! This was a brilliantly orchestrated design, because the cure for this now fully grown grotesque Frankenstein – in order that it not devour its own creators – is being presented as a common global monetary system run by private central banks, owned by the very same banksters! A crafty and audacious planning of a hundred years expertly being brought to fruition! Please see the Monetary Reform Bibliography, and Monetary Conspiracy for World Government.
The unfortunate populist version of FDR's New Deal is deeply entrenched in American society – like all its other indoctrinations – and it is even more exacerbated by polished disinformation documentaries like “1932” (see LaRouche: A nuanced and expert Disinformationist or merely Uber Alles? ). And the whole shebang of the Federal Reserve System is very cleverly camouflaged, and confounded, by its learned exponents and detractors alike (see Monetary Reform: Who will bell the cat? and also Chapter 6 of Ron Paul's book: Revolution; caveat lector on Ron Paul here!)
Mr. Obama's Agendas are anything but 'New Deal'. To uncover his agendas, one must uncover the men, money, power, and ideologies backing him. The most prominent are Zbigniew Brzezinski who groomed Obama, and David Rockefeller who brought an unknown polish Jew who had written the seminal book “Between Two Ages” into world prominence. Between the two of them, they invented an unknown peanut farmer from Georgia, as the President of the United States in 1976. That American President eagerly destroyed the USSR by “giving to the USSR its Vietnam War” at the expense of devastating an innocent civilization, called Afghanistan! For that achievement, a Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to that gentleman from Georgia. For the conquest of the planet into a one-world government – the dream of the financial oligarchs and banksters – another Peace Prize awaits its political executors. Be forewarned. Please see Response to 'Why I won't vote for Obama' November 03, 2008.
While Project Humanbeingsfirst does not agree with all points of perspective with Webster G. Tarpley, it does concur with Mr. Tarpley's dire warnings on Obama (see his book, interview part1, part2), primarily because the agendas are writ in plain-sight by studying its prime authors. The confrontation with Russia looms ahead as the next baby-step to seed further “revolutionary times” in Asia as ominously foretold in “Georgia-Russia: It's a Classic Brzezinski Project!”. Pakistan is in the gun-sights too for its long-planned dismemberment, as was disclosed in the 2007 analysis “Saving Pakistan from Synthetic 'Terror Central'”.
If anything, all that is Mr. Obama's real New Deal, planned by the 'ubermensch' masterminds, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, and the Rockefeller's many foundations for world-government.
It is shameful that in the otherwise interesting analysis of America's post election prognosis, Noam Chomsky – “arguably the most important intellectual alive” according to the New York Times – appearing on 'Democracy Now' with Amy Goodman on November 24, 2008, in a conversation titled “What Next? The Elections, the Economy, and the World”, did not even once mention the name Zbigniew Brzezinski, or the Rockefeller's Trilateralist agenda for world-government to be run by the world's private central-banks. See the Monetary Reform Bibliography for evidence – since Noam Chomsky likes evidence, but of course not of the forensic type. Only that which is ex post facto revealed by the New York Times! Because it is a safe bet that the NYT will never reveal that 911 was an inside job of expert controlled-demolition behind the magic-show of highjacked airplanes and 'Bin Laden', nor reveal the Machiavellian agenda for world government of the financial hegemons, it is quite safe to accept the axioms du jour. To challenge the obvious would be “ignorant and meddlesome”, and quite beyond the pale of an intellectual who hath once boldly proclaimed: “Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions. In the Western world, at least, they have the power that comes from political liberty, from access to information and freedom of expression. For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation...”. Only ordinary plebeians are left to do that today – and that's okay because few pay any attention to the “ignorant and meddlesome” peoples anyway.
Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2008/12/obamas-new-deal-dec012008.html
Deals in China | 3.22.11 @ 5:12AM
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