Even if President Obama caved in on the recent debt confrontation, and under a different theory he did not, the facts reveal that he capitulated long before the current so-called debt extension compromise, which was instead granting better than 90 percent of what was sought by that renowned institution of political moderation, the Tea Party.
I was one of those who wrote that Obama gave away the store long before this current crisis, which was arguably manufactured, came into being. The time to take a stand was earlier when John Boehner and his Republican Tea Partiers insisted that a budget agreement could not be reached unless the Bush tax cuts that were set to elapse were reinstated.
Senator Mitch McConnell and others proclaimed that not reinstating these cuts benefiting the rich would constitute a tax increase. A tax increase, they insisted, was something one should not levy during a recession without the situation worsening. Boehner was fond of warning then as he did during the recent debt squabble that ending these cuts would cost jobs.
The argument was fraudulent and the ones making it no doubt knew better, save for the Tea Party newcomers, at least some of whom appear naà ¯ve enough to swallow such absurdity. What is scarcely mentioned is that the Bush tax cuts were initially tacked on to a voluminous budget bill and there was no provision in it to pay for them. Hence, it was unfunded, floating in a red ink sea amid a mounting national debt. It marked more of the same trickle down, Republican Coolidge-Hoover era economics re-launched by Ronald Reagan, who would be later topped by George W. Bush as the debt massively increased.
When such a massive tax cut for the wealthy unaccompanied by cuts elsewhere to pay for them expires, the result of such terminal action is not a tax increase. It is failure to renew a tax cut. Studies clearly reveal that such efforts are regressive and unproductive in terms of trickling down to the rest of society in the manner that their proponents proclaim to be the case.
One of the many Obama broken campaign promises was that of promoting tax fairness and opposing Reagan and Bush regressive tax cuts benefiting the rich. When he failed to take a stand the first time he assured us in typical Obamaese that the citizenry need not worry. He needed to take the action he did in the spirit of compromise and was looking out for Mr. and Mrs. Middle Income America. This would become a major issue of the 2012 election and at that time his stand would be made.
Numerous mainstream media members began trumpeting the 2012 election, when Obama would challenge Republicans and take a stand by squarely opposing the Bush tax cuts. When I wrote that earlier Democratic presidents such as Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy would have refused to cave in and instead make their case to the people, concerning which numerous polls confirmed that the majority of Americans oppose the Bush tax cuts, an unrelenting Obama apologist apparently saw my article and contended that I was not seeing the total picture in the manner of our president. Obama needed to take the position he did in the spirit of compromise since important items in the budget such as Social Security and Medicare would be otherwise jeopardized.
So now we have Obama redux with the same result. Even before the debt extension agreement was reached this same writer extended sympathy to Obama and bemoaned that our president was again caught in such a tough position. The writer expressed regret that so many progressives were criticizing Obama. They should support him during this crisis period.
By the time the so-called compromise was reached, Obama had already conceded the possibility of raising the Social Security retirement age from 65 to 67 and leaving Medicare on the table for negotiation. Negotiation means the possibility of a deal such as that made by Bush and signed onto by a wishy-washy AARP to shift more money away from Medicare administrators and into the coffers of the medical insurance oligopoly.
After the latest tragedy many angry writers attacked Obama's backbone and judgment. He had, after all, broken key promises from the 2008 campaign. Voters who never expected to see such abandonment were furious. What had happened to the determined Obama and his 2008 rhetoric featuring his slogan of "Yes we can"?
The important thing for analysts seeking factual reality is to, as Little League coaches tell youngsters, "Keep your eye on the ball." Ever wonder how Obama got as far as he did so fast? Think of this. Obama was still an Illinois state senator and Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate when he not only was tapped to deliver the party's keynote address at the 2004 national convention. As cover boy on Time magazine and elsewhere he was being touted as a potential future president. Just four short years later Obama was elected president.
Early in his political existence it was noted that Obama had been tapped for instruction in the process by definitive Washington insider Zbigniew Brzezinski. This is the same neocon who, as President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, sold Carter on the need to take bold action in Afghanistan to repel the Evil Empire's Russian Bear.
It was Brzezinski who also wrote a book called "The Grand Chessboard" that boldly stated a hypothesis in which a "New Pearl Harbor" occurred. If such an event happened, Brzezinski stated that public opinion would be galvanized and it would, in the interest of national security, become acceptable to invade numerous nations in pursuit of oil and other riches.
Was Brzezinski that prescient or was it pure coincidence that 9/11 occurred? After declaring that he would keep America out of foreign wars so that we could focus on jobs and move the nation out of its economic malaise, what has Obama done? He has adopted Bush's game plan, not only holding military matters in place in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in curtailing liberty at home and sanctioning terrorism by continuing rendition abroad.
Are all these coincidences or part of a grand design?
As for the debt crisis, Paul Krugman wrote that Obama could have asked for extension last December. When asked about this, Obama replied that he had assumed that the Republicans would later bargain "in good faith."
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