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The AFL-CIO, Change to Win, and virtually every
individual union in the country are supporting Barack Obama for
president. Yet as we'll show below, he's just another pro-corporate,
pro-ruling-class politician.
First, a word about McCain's economic platform,
whose pro-corporate planks are so obvious that they need little
exposure. Until the ruling class and its politicians and media forged a
consensus around the Wall Street Bailout, McCain adamantly opposed any
and all forms of regulation. He supports privatization of Social
Security, tax breaks for corporations, and granting even more tax
breaks to the wealthy than Bush.
In recent months in its daily e-mail alerts
to members, the AFL-CIO has proudly announced that it has taken action
around jobs, inflation, health care, housing costs, and other issues of
profound interest to working people. What that means is that they've
held a rally or gone door-knocking for Obama and the Democrats. So
let's look at the credentials of this supposed working-class hero.
Obama's true colors were shown in his rush to
endorse the Paulson Plan to bail out Wall Street. The Washington Post
reported that "Obama's decision to join his rival at the White
House in a show of bipartisanship appeared to set the stage for a final
deal." Obama even called McCain to propose a joint statement
supporting the bailout.
The Post added that "McCain and Obama
have laid out conditions [for their support] that are largely in sync:
more transparency, more oversight, a taxpayer stake so that a successful
turnaround would recoup federal money, and limits on compensation for
executives whose firms get help." None of these stipulations would
change the basic function of the bill: to transfer hundreds of billions
to Wall Street crooks.
In addition, "Obama dropped his
insistence that the plan include a stimulus package for the broader
economy." And he even contradicted members of his own party by
saying the package should not allow judges to restructure mortgages for
people facing foreclosure. Furthermore, the cost of the bailout, said
Obama, would likely mean that his plans to spend more on needed
services would be delayed and/or cut back (and, as we'll see below,
those plans never amounted to much anyway).
Obama’s "pragmatic" philosophy
In 1996, Black political scientist Adolph
Reed described the then-new state senator Obama as representing
"the new breed of foundation-hatched black voices: a smooth
Harvard lawyer with neoliberal politics, and a base in the liberal
foundation and development worlds."
An article by David Leonhardt in the Aug. 20
New York Times Magazine describes the ideology behind Obama's economic
stances, and paints Obama as above all a pragmatist.
He describes an incident this summer,
"after Obama named Jason Furman, a protégé of Robert Rubin, as
lead economic adviser. AFL-CIO head John Sweeney worried aloud
about 'corporate influence on
the Democratic Party.'"
It's not surprising that Obama's running
mate, Joe Biden, is a flack for the corporations who dominate his
native state, Delaware, which, thanks to tax and regulation breaks, is
a corporate haven second only to Bermuda.
Leonhardt reports that Obama spent 12 years
teaching at the University of Chicago, home of free market fetishist
Milton Friedman and his followers. While there, Obama became friendly
with liberals who had been won over to many of Friedman's ideas—though,
Leonhardt says, Obama does lean toward having some increased government
regulation and other measures that the free-market advocates detest.
In his second book, "The Audacity of
Hope," Obama wrote: "Reagan's central insight—that the
liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic,
with Democrats more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than growing
it—contained a good deal of truth."
A typical example of the "incremental,
market-based solutions" Obama prefers is his plan to require
companies to automatically set aside a portion of their workers' salary
in a 401k plan, forcing workers to opt out of the plan if they want a
traditional pension. His health-care plan also depends on market
solutions, as does his support for the cap-and-trade
"solution" to global warming.
"The market is the best mechanism ever
invented for efficiently allocating resources to maximize
production," Obama told Leonhardt. "There is a connection
between the freedom of the marketplace and freedom more
generally."
Andrew Leonard noted in Salon that while
Obama's tax cuts would give $700 more a year to those in the bottom 80 percent
of the population, because the wealthy have done so well over the past
few decades, this "would leave the gap between the rich and
everyone else far wider than it was 15 or 30 years ago."
Distrust among working people
Obama's pro-ruling-class beliefs and
proposals are making it harder for him to win working-class votes in an
economy that normally would lead to a landslide for the party out of
power. (It appears he's gotten a boost in the polls from hostility to
the Paulson Plan despite his support for it, simply because in the
absence of a genuine alternative, voters in such situations usually
swing to the party out of power regardless of its stated positions.)
He's compounded this weakness by avoiding the
issue of race—despite the fact that Black and Latino workers are
suffering disproportionately from the economic crisis. But this
pandering hasn't won him any more support among white workers.
In August, The New York Times sent a reporter
to the once-solidly pro-Democratic Western Pennsylvania Rust Belt, who
claimed to find much hostility or at least ambivalence about Obama
among white workers there. A typical comment was that of one retiree:
"McCain keeps talking about being a prisoner of war. Great. The
economy stinks; tell me his plan." But this same man was
"uncertain who Obama is."
"People around here want practical
language," said the daughter of a steel-mill worker. "They
don't want high-flown talk," like she hears from Obama. And it's
not that voters in this area prefer guns over butter: Only two of 38
people interviewed favored remaining in Iraq.
One retired steelworker, whose pension had
been eliminated, said, "Obama got one thing right. We are bitter
here." Another worker said she likes Obama but doesn't talk about
it, because "people are split between their politics and their
prejudice."
A United Steelworkers organizer tried to
counter such statements by telling members: "Obama stands for
national health care, strong unions and preserving Social Security.
"Some of you won't vote for him because he's Black. Well, he's a
Democrat. Get over it."
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka
wrote: "There are a thousand good reasons for any worker to vote
for him. There is only one very bad reason not to and that is because
he is not white." Radical author Michael Yates notes that despite
the prevalent racism in the region, from which he hails, "even a
nod to working-class sentiments would have made a difference. A lot of
white workers would have eaten this up."
The Washington Post described his troubles
winning over "Wal-Mart Moms," who it categorized as
"slightly older than soccer moms and without college degrees, and
are struggling to pay for their children's college, to take care of
their parents, and face high energy prices, rising unemployment,
soaring health care costs and housing foreclosures."
Obama’s economic platform
• Obama promises to give tax breaks to
companies "that create good jobs right here." Yet time after
time, companies receiving tax breaks have taken the money and run, closing
plants and moving production elsewhere.
• Other promises include: "A windfall
tax on excessive oil company profits to give families an immediate
$1000 emergency energy rebate." But workers have lost far more
than $1000 to the oil companies.
• "Provide $25 billion to prevent state
and local cuts." This is a tiny percentage of the funds needed by
state and local governments.
• "A new tax credit of up to $500 per
person." Again, this will do little to help families facing foreclosure,
or bankruptcy due to huge medical bills, much less recoup the wages
lost over decades.
• "Obama will fight to open up foreign
markets to support good American jobs. Obama will pressure the World
Trade Organization to enforce trade agreements and stop countries from
continuing unfair government subsidies to foreign exporters and
non-tariff barriers on U.S. exports." This is the rhetoric of
U.S.-based multinationals who want to continue to get subsidies from
Washington and open, by force if need be, other countries' markets.
• "Create an Advanced Manufacturing
Fund, double funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, and
make the Research and Development tax credit permanent." Again,
more giveaways to auto and high-tech companies.
• "Invest $150 billion" in biofuels
and other alternative energy technologies. Yet again, tax breaks for
private developers of such technologies. And note the support for
biofuels, which is worsening the climate crisis and driving up prices
for starving Third World workers.
• "Put $60 billion over 10 years in a
National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank." The Congressional
Budget Office says $20 billion is needed right now just to maintain
current levels of road and railway service and safety. And this doesn't
say anything about the hundreds of billions needed to rebuild the Gulf
Coast or devastated inner cities.
Obama has said: "The free market has
created a prosperity that is the envy of the world, a standard of
living unmatched in history. We are all in this together. From CEOs to
shareholders, from financiers to factory workers, we all have a stake
in each other's success."
Yes, Obama, you have a stake in the success
of the ruling class. But workers have their own needs, and their
success starts with seeing through the phony rhetoric of politicians
like you.
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