The section on Iraq will be the longest on any topic covered in this blog. The reason for this is that the invasion of Iraq was one of the great disasters of U.S. policy. It has had devastating consequences for both Iraq and the United States, as well as pulling in other nations to their detriment.
Iraq - The last U.S. combat troops left Iraq on December 17, 2011, nominally ending a war that was started by President George W. Bush.in March 2003, almost nine years ago -- "nominally" because the war continues in many real ways for all Iraqis, especially for some 3.5 million who are either internally displaced in Iraq or refugees in another country. According to the Bloomberg-John Hopkins survey, using well-established survey methodology, a mean average of over 600,000 Iraqis were killed in the war -- the survey was taken several years ago. Moreover, the war has left a ruined country that was formerly one of the most advanced in the Middle East in terms of health and education:
* Up to 70 percent lack access to clean water
* Up to 80 percent lack access to sanitation
* Half of the doctors are either dead or have emigrated
*Average electricity availability is 14.6 hours per day.
The political situation in Iraq is also complicated and dangerous.Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently accused Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi of running a hit squad five years ago. He is also pursuing a vote of no-confidence against Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlag. More broadly, al-Maliki has threatened to fire all nine of the cabinet ministers put together by Ayad Allawi, a former prime minister. Allawi's grouping ( Iraqiya) is boycotting all cabinet and parliamentary meetings, because even though Iraqiya won the most seats in the last parliamentary election, it feels it has been pushed out of a meaningful role in the governance of the country.
And in the United States, direct expenditures to date exceed $800 billion and there have been some 4,500 U.S. troop combat deaths, over 1,000 U.S. troop suicides and over 30,000 wounded. The $800 billion will grow substantially despite the war's nominal end, because as a nation we must keep our commitment to care for the veterans of the war.
The U.S. is maintaining a substantial presence in Iraq, with the largest embassy in the world and an army of mercenaries hired to guard the Americans working and living in that "embassy."
This war was a moral, humanitarian, financial and foreign policy disaster for the United States and its ramifications will continue for many decades.
Afghanistan - Obama believes that the Taliban's "momentum has been broken," a statement that is at odds with the assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies that Afghanistan "is mired in stalemate" and security gains have been cut.
Iran - President Obama reiterated his warning that all options are open if Iran crosses certain "red lines" in its claimed pursuit of developing nuclear weapons. One of the options is the use of nuclear warheads to obliterate Iran's deeply dug-in nuclear facilities. There is a computer model which calculates three million deaths if nuclear warheads are used against Iran's facilities.
If Iran is attacked, transport of oil through the Strait of Hormuz would be endangered and Iran has the capability to cause the United States other types of serious harm.
Both ABC News and the Washington Post have employed fact-checkers to analyze Obama's State of the Union speech. Both media outlets have disputed Obama's jobs gained and lost figures. Using Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, ABC News says he has he has over-estimated the job loss figures under Bush and over-estimated by almost a million jobs the jobs created by the Obama administration in its first three years. The Washington Post disputes the time periods during which these job losses and gains took place.
Another fact-check by ABC News raises doubts about Obama's claim that he has doubled the trade cases brought by Bush against China: Bush brought seven cases to the World Trade Organization and Obama has filed five.
Obama's statement that U.S. oil production is now at its highest level in eight years is largely meaningless because the level has remained relatively steady for those eight years.
President Obama proposed to use half of the money saved by reducing war-fighting costs to pay down the debt and half to do nation-building at home; however, all of the costs of the wars were financed by borrowed money, so there is no new money available to do that.
When President Obama said that the health care law "relies on a reformed private market, not a government program," he omitted the crucial fact that about half of the 34 million now uninsured who will receive coverage, will be placed in Medicaid. States are sharply reducing Medicaid coverage and lowered reimbursement rates are reducing the number of doctors who will take Medicaid recipients.
A Pew Center Research poll taken in May 2011 throws cold water on Obama's claim that foreign opinions of the United States are at the highest levels in years. Pew found that among two of our closest allies, Turkey and Jordan, confidence in Obama has dropped sharply: from 33 percent in 2009 to 11 percent in 2011 in Turkey, and from 25 percent in 2009 to 13 percent in 2011 in Jordan. Obama's confidence numbers have also fallen in Indonesia, part of the Asian theater where Obama wants to augment the U.S. military presence.
Probably the most incomprehensible proposal made by Obama was that all public school students will be required to stay in school until age 18 or until graduation. Obama gave absolutely no indication on how this would be done.
President Obama's glorification of the military at the beginning and end of his speech was devoid of any mention -- as has been the case in the past -- of the approval of widespread use of torture through the entire chain of command in the armed forces. Also, besides the many acts of compassion and kindness displayed to Iraqi and Afghan citizens, there have been disrespectful and even criminal acts performed on these citizens. A U.S. president has an obligation to provide a balanced and accurate account of how U.S. troops perform when serving overseas.
Finally, I would have liked to have a ballpark figure on how much the programs described by President Obama will cost and how that cost will be met. The most direct guidance we now have is Obama's 12-year plan, which proposes to raise revenue by $1 trillion but cut the accumulated debt by $4 trillion.
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Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
President Obama's Fractured State of the Union
President Obama's State of the Union speech was a long laundry list of proposals, a number of them distilled from prior State of the Union speeches and others either unworkable or dead on arrival in Congress. Obama started his speech with a claim that the current generation of military heroes has made the nation safer and more respected in the world and concluded with a recommendation that a democratic republic should operate in the same way as the hierarchical, orders from the top down structure as found in the military. Except for a brief mention of a new defense strategy, Obama gave no indication that there would be a significant reduction of a bloated Pentagon, a less formidable nuclear weapons inventory and any trimming of a sprawling intelligence empire.
Obama's celebration of killing those designated as terrorists overlooks the contention of some analysts, including former intelligence czar, Dennis Blair, that conducting the War on Terror through primary use of the military, especially missile-firing drones, is probably creating more terrorists. So Obama's way of dealing with terrorists is probably doomed to failure. Obama should also have explained why and how he has abrogated to himself the right to order killings, even of U.S. citizens.
President Obama's :fair share" tax policy is heavily oriented to requiring millionaires and billionaires to pay a tax rate of at least 30 percent. Only about a quarter of these very wealthy people pay a lower tax rate than the average middle-income taxpayer; thus, the overall increase in revenue would be very modest.
Relative to the post-World War II, pre-Reagan years, when the nation was economically prosperous and the top marginal tax rate was never lower than 70.45 percent, current U.S. taxpayers, in general, are under-taxed in regard to federal income tax. What is needed is a progressive tax rate schedule, with a top rate of 60 to 70 percent.
In his State of the Union speech, Obama proposed to have a two- or even more tier system, whereby corporations that outsource jobs would pay a higher tax rate than corporations that create U.S. jobs. Obama would also give high-tech manufacturers a double tax credit. Manufacturers currently receive multiple tax credits and deductions. Counting both national and state corporate income taxes, the average corporation's tax rate is 39.2 percent but it falls to 27 percent when tax loopholes are included. These are Tax Foundation percentages. 280 corporations in the Fortune 500 paid an average rate of 18.5 percent in the last tax year studied.
When all loopholes, credits, deductions and exemptions are taken into account, U.S.-based corporations pay a lower tax rate than do corporations based in the other industrialized nations; also, according to the Congressional Budget Office, two-thirds of U.S. corporations pay no income tax. Moreover, a study of the top Fortune 100 corporations found that 25 of them paid their CEO more than they paid in corporate income tax.
Obama's stated intent to create tax breaks for specific groups of people and corporations runs a danger of riddling the tax code with more exceptions than it has now. Military veterans already have a number of benefits which those without military service do not have. Why build more tax breaks for them into the tax code?
President Barack Obama has already cut governmental revenue by more than he proposes to increase it during the rest of his presidency; therefore, the nation's capacity to do home nation-building will have been diminished during his presidency.
Obama's claim that the Pentagon will be saving energy by changing its operations to be more fuel-efficient -- the Navy alone will save enough energy to power 3 million homes -- is misguided because a much smaller military would use far less energy.
Renewable energy was to have been a major focus of the Obama administration; however, to this point, Obama has devoted more resources to the fossil fuel industry than to renewable energy sources, by opening up more coal mining in the Western states and opening up more offshore oil leases. In the State of the Union speech, Obama proposed to provide access to 75 percent of the potential offshore oil and gas leases. Obama also wants much more reliance on natural gas, yet he has been depicted as "leaning" toward support of fracking. Fracking is suspected of contaminating underground water sources and possibly even causing earthquakes where they were unknown to occur before.
In regard to underwater homeowners, President Obama is proposing to provide each "responsible" family an annual savings of $3,000. This proposal is built on one he proposed in an October 2011 speech in Las Vegas. Most underwater homeowners didn't participate in that program. Economists calculate that because of many restrictions built into the Obama proposal, only about one million of the six million underwater homeowners will fully participate in the most recent program.
Obama was being grossly hypocritical when he asked for an end to deportation of the fully Americanized children of illegals. Immigration rights groups have assailed Obama for heedlessly breaking up families in the one million plus illegals he has sent back to Mexico.
The next blog will key in on some foreign policy issues and provide some fact-checks on the speech.
Obama's celebration of killing those designated as terrorists overlooks the contention of some analysts, including former intelligence czar, Dennis Blair, that conducting the War on Terror through primary use of the military, especially missile-firing drones, is probably creating more terrorists. So Obama's way of dealing with terrorists is probably doomed to failure. Obama should also have explained why and how he has abrogated to himself the right to order killings, even of U.S. citizens.
President Obama's :fair share" tax policy is heavily oriented to requiring millionaires and billionaires to pay a tax rate of at least 30 percent. Only about a quarter of these very wealthy people pay a lower tax rate than the average middle-income taxpayer; thus, the overall increase in revenue would be very modest.
Relative to the post-World War II, pre-Reagan years, when the nation was economically prosperous and the top marginal tax rate was never lower than 70.45 percent, current U.S. taxpayers, in general, are under-taxed in regard to federal income tax. What is needed is a progressive tax rate schedule, with a top rate of 60 to 70 percent.
In his State of the Union speech, Obama proposed to have a two- or even more tier system, whereby corporations that outsource jobs would pay a higher tax rate than corporations that create U.S. jobs. Obama would also give high-tech manufacturers a double tax credit. Manufacturers currently receive multiple tax credits and deductions. Counting both national and state corporate income taxes, the average corporation's tax rate is 39.2 percent but it falls to 27 percent when tax loopholes are included. These are Tax Foundation percentages. 280 corporations in the Fortune 500 paid an average rate of 18.5 percent in the last tax year studied.
When all loopholes, credits, deductions and exemptions are taken into account, U.S.-based corporations pay a lower tax rate than do corporations based in the other industrialized nations; also, according to the Congressional Budget Office, two-thirds of U.S. corporations pay no income tax. Moreover, a study of the top Fortune 100 corporations found that 25 of them paid their CEO more than they paid in corporate income tax.
Obama's stated intent to create tax breaks for specific groups of people and corporations runs a danger of riddling the tax code with more exceptions than it has now. Military veterans already have a number of benefits which those without military service do not have. Why build more tax breaks for them into the tax code?
President Barack Obama has already cut governmental revenue by more than he proposes to increase it during the rest of his presidency; therefore, the nation's capacity to do home nation-building will have been diminished during his presidency.
Obama's claim that the Pentagon will be saving energy by changing its operations to be more fuel-efficient -- the Navy alone will save enough energy to power 3 million homes -- is misguided because a much smaller military would use far less energy.
Renewable energy was to have been a major focus of the Obama administration; however, to this point, Obama has devoted more resources to the fossil fuel industry than to renewable energy sources, by opening up more coal mining in the Western states and opening up more offshore oil leases. In the State of the Union speech, Obama proposed to provide access to 75 percent of the potential offshore oil and gas leases. Obama also wants much more reliance on natural gas, yet he has been depicted as "leaning" toward support of fracking. Fracking is suspected of contaminating underground water sources and possibly even causing earthquakes where they were unknown to occur before.
In regard to underwater homeowners, President Obama is proposing to provide each "responsible" family an annual savings of $3,000. This proposal is built on one he proposed in an October 2011 speech in Las Vegas. Most underwater homeowners didn't participate in that program. Economists calculate that because of many restrictions built into the Obama proposal, only about one million of the six million underwater homeowners will fully participate in the most recent program.
Obama was being grossly hypocritical when he asked for an end to deportation of the fully Americanized children of illegals. Immigration rights groups have assailed Obama for heedlessly breaking up families in the one million plus illegals he has sent back to Mexico.
The next blog will key in on some foreign policy issues and provide some fact-checks on the speech.
Monday, January 23, 2012
The Troublesome Future of an Obama Second Term (continued)
16) Iraq: Not a Real Success - I am not sure that if the voting public had been told by a campaigning Barack Obama that there would be a substantial U.S. military force in Iraq throughout the first three years of his presidency that Barack Obama would have been elected president. He had created an impression in the campaign that all the troops would have left Iraq well before three years had passed.
It is also the case that President Obama would not have withdrawn all of the troops by December 31, 2011, if Iraq had agreed to give U.S. forces immunity from the exercise of Iraqi law. The Pentagon wanted to keep at least 3,000 troops in Iraq and maybe as many as 15,000. So what Obama did was withdraw troops in accordance with an agreement drawn up between George W. Bush and the then-existing Iraqi government.
Despite the optimistic talk about creating a democracy in Iraq, virtually every sector of Iraqi life that one wants to seriously examine is in shambles due to the long years of war and occupation.
17) A Dangerous Take on Iran - A second term for President will keep the nation on tenterhooks regarding U.S. military attacks on Iran. Obama has not ruled out use of nuclear weapons if a "red line" is crossed. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on December 2, 2011 that the imminent or actual development of a nuclear bomb by Iran was a "red line" that would trigger an attack by the United States. An attack utilizing nuclear weapons on Iran's deeply buried nuclear facilities could cause as many as three million deaths according to a computer program projection.
Iranian disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz would cause a major spike in oil prices and Iran can cause the United States major grief in many other sorts of ways.
18) The Continued Proliferation of Overseas Military Bases - Except for Iraq, where U.S. bases have been emptied of troops and a possible trimming of bases due to a draw down from Afghanistan, there are no visible plans to reduce the large number of U.S. overseas bases. At least one major base will be added, as 2,500 U.S. Marines will be stationed in Darwin, Australia.
The Pentagon doesn't know how many overseas bases there are. A primary reason for this deficit of information is that many bases are called "lily-pad" due to the small number of troops stationed on them. Most estimates of total bases fall into the range of "over 800" to "over 1,000."
The proposed shift of strategic military interest from the European to the Asia/Pacific theater may result in a wash between bases closed and bases opened.
The 18 topics briefly examined above provide a perspective on what policies President Obama will likely follow in a second term and how they don't represent a major change in direction, which Barack Obama promised would happen if he was elected president. Under Obama we will remain a nation whose major governmental priorities are premised on fear.
It is also the case that President Obama would not have withdrawn all of the troops by December 31, 2011, if Iraq had agreed to give U.S. forces immunity from the exercise of Iraqi law. The Pentagon wanted to keep at least 3,000 troops in Iraq and maybe as many as 15,000. So what Obama did was withdraw troops in accordance with an agreement drawn up between George W. Bush and the then-existing Iraqi government.
Despite the optimistic talk about creating a democracy in Iraq, virtually every sector of Iraqi life that one wants to seriously examine is in shambles due to the long years of war and occupation.
17) A Dangerous Take on Iran - A second term for President will keep the nation on tenterhooks regarding U.S. military attacks on Iran. Obama has not ruled out use of nuclear weapons if a "red line" is crossed. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on December 2, 2011 that the imminent or actual development of a nuclear bomb by Iran was a "red line" that would trigger an attack by the United States. An attack utilizing nuclear weapons on Iran's deeply buried nuclear facilities could cause as many as three million deaths according to a computer program projection.
Iranian disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz would cause a major spike in oil prices and Iran can cause the United States major grief in many other sorts of ways.
18) The Continued Proliferation of Overseas Military Bases - Except for Iraq, where U.S. bases have been emptied of troops and a possible trimming of bases due to a draw down from Afghanistan, there are no visible plans to reduce the large number of U.S. overseas bases. At least one major base will be added, as 2,500 U.S. Marines will be stationed in Darwin, Australia.
The Pentagon doesn't know how many overseas bases there are. A primary reason for this deficit of information is that many bases are called "lily-pad" due to the small number of troops stationed on them. Most estimates of total bases fall into the range of "over 800" to "over 1,000."
The proposed shift of strategic military interest from the European to the Asia/Pacific theater may result in a wash between bases closed and bases opened.
The 18 topics briefly examined above provide a perspective on what policies President Obama will likely follow in a second term and how they don't represent a major change in direction, which Barack Obama promised would happen if he was elected president. Under Obama we will remain a nation whose major governmental priorities are premised on fear.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
The Troubling Future of an Obama Second Term
12) Renewable Energy Slighted in Obama Second Term - During his three years in office, President Obama has devoted more resources to fossil fuels than he has to renewable energy. He has opened up the Western states for much more production of coal and he has expanded the number of offshore oil drilling leases. Meanwhile, while he has inveighed against the tax breaks for fossil fuel industries, no action has been taken to reduce or eliminate any of the breaks.
President Obama did provide $80 billion for renewable energy in his initial stimulus spending plan. The electric-car industry received $5 billion of funding but much of it has not produced positive results. For instance, in August 2009, Obama announced $2.4 billion in more than 40 grants to car industry firms, much of it going to battery manufacturers. Several of these manufacturers have floundered or failed, laying off large numbers of workers. The Energy Department said in February 2010 that a goal was one million EVs by 2015. Actual sales now stand at 16,800, or about 2/10ths of one percent of 2011 domestic car sales.
13) Pluses and Minuses on the Environment - President Obama has had a mixed record on environmental policy. His greatest achievement was to get an agreement to require passenger cars and light trucks to achieve 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Probably his next most important achievement was to set a national standard for mercury, a toxic metal. The EPA has also reduced allowable downwind pollution for manufacturing and power plants.
Easily the two most controversial environmental decisions made by Obama were to block tougher standards on smog creation and to delay a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until 2013. Even though the EPA's independent scientific panel was unanimous in supporting the tougher standards on smog, Obama rejected them due to the higher costs they would impose on the industries primarily responsible for the smog.
The EPA's record on mountaintop removal mining has been uneven, as it has denied some permits for such mining and approved others. The Obama administration has not moved to ban such environmentally destructive mining.
14) The Wrong Track on Education - President Obama has proposed some useful changes in No Child Left Behind, by giving the states more control and removing the focus on failure as a predominant outcome; however, he has continued to support high stakes testing, with its attendant narrowing of the educational horizon for students.
Obama is also a strong proponent of charter schools, even though the evidence continues to accumulate that they don't perform any better, in general, than traditional public schools; they are more segregated than traditional public schools; and are more prone to fraud and corruption than are traditional public schools. Only about five percent of charter schools employ unionized teachers -- a dagger aimed at his own party by Obama, because unionized teachers are among the most faithful constituencies of the Democratic Party.
As a general proposition, students from states with highly unionized teaching corps perform better on standardized tests than do students learning in right-to-work states. Students in industrialized nations with a heavily unionized teaching force also test better than do students form right-to-work states.
One of President Obama's main educational projects is the Race to the Top. In order to qualify, any cap on charter schools must be removed and teacher evaluations must be closely tied to student performances on tests. Most public schools do not participate in Race to the Top.
15) Near Status Quo in War on Drugs - President Obama has largely embraced the War on Drugs, increasingly seen as a colossal failure. Despite the expenditure of billions of U.S. dollars in Columbia, that nation remains a violent land for union leaders and other activists. Drug-related violence has actually increased in Mexico during the Obama years and the "Fast and Furious" program to trace U.S.-supplied firearms to Mexican drug cartels has been a major fiasco.
The Obama White House has stepped up raids of medical marijuana dispensaries and users in those states that have liberalized their marijuana laws. These raids and prosecutions have created a terrible quandary for those following their state law, only to be hit with a federal prosecution.
The first drug czar appointed by President Obama spoke of the need to emphasize treatment over law enforcement; however, that called-for policy change has been mostly rhetorical in nature.
President Obama did provide $80 billion for renewable energy in his initial stimulus spending plan. The electric-car industry received $5 billion of funding but much of it has not produced positive results. For instance, in August 2009, Obama announced $2.4 billion in more than 40 grants to car industry firms, much of it going to battery manufacturers. Several of these manufacturers have floundered or failed, laying off large numbers of workers. The Energy Department said in February 2010 that a goal was one million EVs by 2015. Actual sales now stand at 16,800, or about 2/10ths of one percent of 2011 domestic car sales.
13) Pluses and Minuses on the Environment - President Obama has had a mixed record on environmental policy. His greatest achievement was to get an agreement to require passenger cars and light trucks to achieve 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Probably his next most important achievement was to set a national standard for mercury, a toxic metal. The EPA has also reduced allowable downwind pollution for manufacturing and power plants.
Easily the two most controversial environmental decisions made by Obama were to block tougher standards on smog creation and to delay a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until 2013. Even though the EPA's independent scientific panel was unanimous in supporting the tougher standards on smog, Obama rejected them due to the higher costs they would impose on the industries primarily responsible for the smog.
The EPA's record on mountaintop removal mining has been uneven, as it has denied some permits for such mining and approved others. The Obama administration has not moved to ban such environmentally destructive mining.
14) The Wrong Track on Education - President Obama has proposed some useful changes in No Child Left Behind, by giving the states more control and removing the focus on failure as a predominant outcome; however, he has continued to support high stakes testing, with its attendant narrowing of the educational horizon for students.
Obama is also a strong proponent of charter schools, even though the evidence continues to accumulate that they don't perform any better, in general, than traditional public schools; they are more segregated than traditional public schools; and are more prone to fraud and corruption than are traditional public schools. Only about five percent of charter schools employ unionized teachers -- a dagger aimed at his own party by Obama, because unionized teachers are among the most faithful constituencies of the Democratic Party.
As a general proposition, students from states with highly unionized teaching corps perform better on standardized tests than do students learning in right-to-work states. Students in industrialized nations with a heavily unionized teaching force also test better than do students form right-to-work states.
One of President Obama's main educational projects is the Race to the Top. In order to qualify, any cap on charter schools must be removed and teacher evaluations must be closely tied to student performances on tests. Most public schools do not participate in Race to the Top.
15) Near Status Quo in War on Drugs - President Obama has largely embraced the War on Drugs, increasingly seen as a colossal failure. Despite the expenditure of billions of U.S. dollars in Columbia, that nation remains a violent land for union leaders and other activists. Drug-related violence has actually increased in Mexico during the Obama years and the "Fast and Furious" program to trace U.S.-supplied firearms to Mexican drug cartels has been a major fiasco.
The Obama White House has stepped up raids of medical marijuana dispensaries and users in those states that have liberalized their marijuana laws. These raids and prosecutions have created a terrible quandary for those following their state law, only to be hit with a federal prosecution.
The first drug czar appointed by President Obama spoke of the need to emphasize treatment over law enforcement; however, that called-for policy change has been mostly rhetorical in nature.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
The Troubling Future of an Obama Second Term (continued)
9) The Ongoing Housing Crisis - The Obama administration has been far more concerned with helping bankers avoid the consequences of their bad and potentially illegal loans, than with rescuing underwater homeowners. The programs set up to help homeowners have been poorly promoted or ineptly administered, so that most underwater homeowners have not taken advantage of them.
Financial experts are saying that it will now be difficult for Obama to shift to a regulatory focus on bankers. No bankers have gone to prison for the major role they played in creating the housing mess.
10) No Adverse Regulatory Climate for Big Business - It is not likely that big business would face an adverse regulatory climate in an Obama second term. Obama notably wrote an op-ed published in the New York Times, in which he warned against placing regulatory controls on business. One of the prime reasons that Obama rejected the new smog rules that the EPA was going to put into effect, was because they would add too much to the cost of the industries chiefly responsible for causing the smog.
One of the reasons that the Dodd-Frank legislation is criticized as being too weak to control business malpractice is that Obama did not press for stronger regulation. Even in regard to the creation of the new consumer protection agency, Obama reportedly wanted to lodge it in the Federal Reserve system, where consumer protection advocates argued it would lose the independence it should have as a stand-alone agency.
11) All Over the Waterfront on Taxes and Spending - President Obama has been all over the waterfront regarding taxes and spending. The best source of his long-term view is the 12-year plan, in which he proposes $4 trillion in deficit reduction, of which only $1 trillion will come from tax increases and only $400 billion will come from military spending cuts. Domestic spending will be hit the hardest.
This initial 3-to-1 ratio of spending cuts to increased revenue was widened significantly when Obama put Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid on the table in the negotiations on raising the debt ceiling.
President Obama subsequently endorsed other proposed long-term spending and taxation plans even before the ink was dry on them: them: the Reid plan and the "Gang of Six" plan were most prominent among these. The "Gang of Six" plan was particularly recklessly and sloppily written. It would have eliminated the Alternative Minimum Tax, causing a substantial revenue loss in the future; also, it set the top marginal tax rate in a range of 23 to 29 percent. Presumably, a future legislative action could have set the top rate as low as 23 percent. Even at 29 percent it would have been a huge giveaway to the top bracket people now paying 35 percent.
President Obama devoted much of his tax talk in July 2011 to calling for the closing of tax loopholes; in contrast, there was virtually no mention of allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire. Of course, Obama's agreement to a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts has caused a big loss in revenue and broke a signature campaign pledge not to extend them.
President Obama's jobs package unveiled in September 2011 changed the tax equation once again. Obama has broken the package into "bite-sized pieces;" has agreed to drop the payroll tax cut for employers; and has accepted a surcharge on income over $1 million as a new funding mechanism -- subsequently abandoned by the Democratic legislative leadership. .
Given that President Obama is arguing that a failure to extend the payroll tax is a tax increase for about 160 million wage earners, he will find it hard to argue against another payroll tax cut and even an extension of the Bush tax cuts if economic conditions remain dire in late 2012.
Financial experts are saying that it will now be difficult for Obama to shift to a regulatory focus on bankers. No bankers have gone to prison for the major role they played in creating the housing mess.
10) No Adverse Regulatory Climate for Big Business - It is not likely that big business would face an adverse regulatory climate in an Obama second term. Obama notably wrote an op-ed published in the New York Times, in which he warned against placing regulatory controls on business. One of the prime reasons that Obama rejected the new smog rules that the EPA was going to put into effect, was because they would add too much to the cost of the industries chiefly responsible for causing the smog.
One of the reasons that the Dodd-Frank legislation is criticized as being too weak to control business malpractice is that Obama did not press for stronger regulation. Even in regard to the creation of the new consumer protection agency, Obama reportedly wanted to lodge it in the Federal Reserve system, where consumer protection advocates argued it would lose the independence it should have as a stand-alone agency.
11) All Over the Waterfront on Taxes and Spending - President Obama has been all over the waterfront regarding taxes and spending. The best source of his long-term view is the 12-year plan, in which he proposes $4 trillion in deficit reduction, of which only $1 trillion will come from tax increases and only $400 billion will come from military spending cuts. Domestic spending will be hit the hardest.
This initial 3-to-1 ratio of spending cuts to increased revenue was widened significantly when Obama put Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid on the table in the negotiations on raising the debt ceiling.
President Obama subsequently endorsed other proposed long-term spending and taxation plans even before the ink was dry on them: them: the Reid plan and the "Gang of Six" plan were most prominent among these. The "Gang of Six" plan was particularly recklessly and sloppily written. It would have eliminated the Alternative Minimum Tax, causing a substantial revenue loss in the future; also, it set the top marginal tax rate in a range of 23 to 29 percent. Presumably, a future legislative action could have set the top rate as low as 23 percent. Even at 29 percent it would have been a huge giveaway to the top bracket people now paying 35 percent.
President Obama devoted much of his tax talk in July 2011 to calling for the closing of tax loopholes; in contrast, there was virtually no mention of allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire. Of course, Obama's agreement to a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts has caused a big loss in revenue and broke a signature campaign pledge not to extend them.
President Obama's jobs package unveiled in September 2011 changed the tax equation once again. Obama has broken the package into "bite-sized pieces;" has agreed to drop the payroll tax cut for employers; and has accepted a surcharge on income over $1 million as a new funding mechanism -- subsequently abandoned by the Democratic legislative leadership. .
Given that President Obama is arguing that a failure to extend the payroll tax is a tax increase for about 160 million wage earners, he will find it hard to argue against another payroll tax cut and even an extension of the Bush tax cuts if economic conditions remain dire in late 2012.
Monday, January 16, 2012
The Troubling Future of an Obama Second Term (continued)
6) Torture Not Ended - Although President Obama has disavowed the use of torture, it appears, based on Associated Press reporting and that of human rights groups, that the United States is employing torture in Afghanistan. Not only is the U.S. accused of treating detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions, but it is accused of overlooking torture being practiced by the Afghan government.
When the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was amended in 2009 to give detainees more rights, the provision in the 2006 law which permits the president to sanction CIA use of torture -- euphemistically termed "enhanced interrogation" -- was not removed.
7) Civil Liberties Record Builds on Bush - According to Bill Quigley, human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, President Obama privately promised Bush officials that no one would be prosecuted for torture. He also advocated "a just following orders" defense, which the Nuremberg trials had specifically termed invalid as a legal defense.
President Obama has adopted most of the civil liberties positions of George W. Bush: he supports indefinite detention -- with periodic review -- extraordinary rendition, warrantless wiretapping, telecom immunity, the Patriot Act and Special Security Measures: extra harsh conditions of confinement have actually increased under Obama.
Obama has made use of a state secrets legal theory to block dozens of public interest lawsuits; the FBI use of national security letters has increased dramatically during Obama's first term; he has cracked down on whistleblowers after saying how valuable they were in an early speech after becoming president; and he has failed to close Guantanamo as promised.
The Bush administration got away with an unconstitutional legislative act of creating a new criminal category: the enemy combatant. President Obama has gone one up on Bush by asserting the power to order the killing of U.S. citizens.
The Obama's use of military commissions is troublesome due to the lack of legal safeguards found in state and federal courts.
The infiltration of Muslim communities is yet another troublesome aspect of Obama's civil liberties record. The Associated Press has identified informants called "mosque crawlers," who monitor sermons, bookstores and cafes, as part of a large army of informants who pay particularly close attention to Muslims. Virtually all of the terrorist plots exposed to public notice since 9/11 were instigated by FBI undercover agents targeting those who had come under suspicion of harboring hostile feelings toward the U.S. society or government.
8) An Immigration Record of Betrayal - Barack Obama made two immigrant-related promises during the presidential campaign: he said immigration reform legislation would be a major priority and he would work to pass the Dream Act, allowing college-entry parity for the children of illegal immigrants. Obama has failed in both promises, although he faced and faces formidable political opposition to do either.
Besides the lack of movement on immigration reform and the Dream Act, immigrant rights groups have faulted Obama for the big increase in illegal immigrants deported south to Mexico. The number deported has now crossed the one million mark and the administration has been strongly criticized for not taking care to avoid breaking up families in the deportations.
A real scandal in immigration policy is occurring among those in detention. Huge backlogs of cases make a mockery of due process and the lack of a database makes it almost impossible to locate many of the detention facilities and where individuals are being held.
The next blog will continue to explore the probable future course of Obama policy if elected to a second term.
When the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was amended in 2009 to give detainees more rights, the provision in the 2006 law which permits the president to sanction CIA use of torture -- euphemistically termed "enhanced interrogation" -- was not removed.
7) Civil Liberties Record Builds on Bush - According to Bill Quigley, human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, President Obama privately promised Bush officials that no one would be prosecuted for torture. He also advocated "a just following orders" defense, which the Nuremberg trials had specifically termed invalid as a legal defense.
President Obama has adopted most of the civil liberties positions of George W. Bush: he supports indefinite detention -- with periodic review -- extraordinary rendition, warrantless wiretapping, telecom immunity, the Patriot Act and Special Security Measures: extra harsh conditions of confinement have actually increased under Obama.
Obama has made use of a state secrets legal theory to block dozens of public interest lawsuits; the FBI use of national security letters has increased dramatically during Obama's first term; he has cracked down on whistleblowers after saying how valuable they were in an early speech after becoming president; and he has failed to close Guantanamo as promised.
The Bush administration got away with an unconstitutional legislative act of creating a new criminal category: the enemy combatant. President Obama has gone one up on Bush by asserting the power to order the killing of U.S. citizens.
The Obama's use of military commissions is troublesome due to the lack of legal safeguards found in state and federal courts.
The infiltration of Muslim communities is yet another troublesome aspect of Obama's civil liberties record. The Associated Press has identified informants called "mosque crawlers," who monitor sermons, bookstores and cafes, as part of a large army of informants who pay particularly close attention to Muslims. Virtually all of the terrorist plots exposed to public notice since 9/11 were instigated by FBI undercover agents targeting those who had come under suspicion of harboring hostile feelings toward the U.S. society or government.
8) An Immigration Record of Betrayal - Barack Obama made two immigrant-related promises during the presidential campaign: he said immigration reform legislation would be a major priority and he would work to pass the Dream Act, allowing college-entry parity for the children of illegal immigrants. Obama has failed in both promises, although he faced and faces formidable political opposition to do either.
Besides the lack of movement on immigration reform and the Dream Act, immigrant rights groups have faulted Obama for the big increase in illegal immigrants deported south to Mexico. The number deported has now crossed the one million mark and the administration has been strongly criticized for not taking care to avoid breaking up families in the deportations.
A real scandal in immigration policy is occurring among those in detention. Huge backlogs of cases make a mockery of due process and the lack of a database makes it almost impossible to locate many of the detention facilities and where individuals are being held.
The next blog will continue to explore the probable future course of Obama policy if elected to a second term.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
The Troubling Future of an Obama Second Term
Supporters of President Obama are contending that a second term for him would differ significantly from the first because he wouldn't be saddled with as many "Bluedog" Democrats in the U.S. House; those who deserted the Democratic Party in the 2010 elections would come back due to fear of the election of a Republican president; and Obama would no longer need to trim his agenda to get re-elected. I believe that these kinds of contentions are rendered wistful in nature when looked at in terms of Obama's performance to date and what he has revealed about his future plans.
1) A Bloated Pentagon - The United States, with about five percent of the world's population, accounts for almost half of world military spending. In President Obama's FY 2012 budget, he submitted a ten-year projection of Pentagon spending, totaling nearly $6.4 trillion. Obama's 12-year plan calls for only $400 billion in military spending cuts, or about five percent of projected spending in those years.
President Obama has also appointed a defense secretary, Leon Panetta, who sees any further cuts in military spending as endangering national security.
2) More Nukes - President Obama gave a speech early in his presidency in which he painted a bright future of a world without nuclear weapons. Since that speech, the only action Obama has taken to reduce the number of nuclear warheads has been the New START treaty with Russia. Getting that treaty ratified in the U.S. Senate was costly, however, because to get the ratification, Obama poured many billions of dollars into a nuclear weapons modernization program.
The heart of that modernization program is the building of three new facilities, which will quadruple the capacity to build nuclear warheads. The Pentagon's JASON study found that the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile is safe and reliable for a hundred or more years. The future blueprint for nukes includes a new nuclear-armed submarine fleet and a new bomber capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
3) The Intelligence Empire - There has been a tremendous expansion of building complexes, organizations, locations for intelligence work, personnel and spending since 9/11, as chronicled in a series run in the Washington Post. In the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to rein in the intelligence empire and make its operations more transparent; however, as set forth in a PBS "Frontline" program, he has taken no action to reduce the growth of this empire. Obama actually requested more intelligence spending in his FY 2012 budget than Congress was willing to give him; the Obama administration also strongly objected to the request by Congress for more information about the status of Guantanamo and government-to-government contacts. So much for the campaign promise of more intelligence transparency.
4) The Growth of Anti-Missile Defenses - President Obama has followed the practice of prior presidents in continuing the funding of Ronald Reagan's Star Wars fantasy, which purported to destroy intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) before they reached the United States. Not only have these anti-missile missiles failed many tests, they stand as an admission that the national government has no faith in the large deterrent inventory of offensive missiles.
President Obama has also continued the George W. Bush plan to station anti-missile missiles in Eastern Europe to protect against Iran improbably launching nuclear warheads in that direction. The only change is that Obama has switched the defenses from a long-range to a short-range missile threat. This future deployment has seriously strained U.S. relations with Russia.
5) Increased Use of Drones - The best estimate of the Obama administration's use of drones is that it has quadrupled over the use of drones under Bush. Great Britain's Guardian newspaper says that the Obama White House has or is making use of drones in six countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. Missile strikes by drones would, in times before 9/11, have been considered to be acts of war. Some analysts fear that the growing popularity of drones in the world may make wars more likely because no more pilots are exposed to harm.
The next blog will continue to explore the likely consequences of an Obama second term.
1) A Bloated Pentagon - The United States, with about five percent of the world's population, accounts for almost half of world military spending. In President Obama's FY 2012 budget, he submitted a ten-year projection of Pentagon spending, totaling nearly $6.4 trillion. Obama's 12-year plan calls for only $400 billion in military spending cuts, or about five percent of projected spending in those years.
President Obama has also appointed a defense secretary, Leon Panetta, who sees any further cuts in military spending as endangering national security.
2) More Nukes - President Obama gave a speech early in his presidency in which he painted a bright future of a world without nuclear weapons. Since that speech, the only action Obama has taken to reduce the number of nuclear warheads has been the New START treaty with Russia. Getting that treaty ratified in the U.S. Senate was costly, however, because to get the ratification, Obama poured many billions of dollars into a nuclear weapons modernization program.
The heart of that modernization program is the building of three new facilities, which will quadruple the capacity to build nuclear warheads. The Pentagon's JASON study found that the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile is safe and reliable for a hundred or more years. The future blueprint for nukes includes a new nuclear-armed submarine fleet and a new bomber capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
3) The Intelligence Empire - There has been a tremendous expansion of building complexes, organizations, locations for intelligence work, personnel and spending since 9/11, as chronicled in a series run in the Washington Post. In the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to rein in the intelligence empire and make its operations more transparent; however, as set forth in a PBS "Frontline" program, he has taken no action to reduce the growth of this empire. Obama actually requested more intelligence spending in his FY 2012 budget than Congress was willing to give him; the Obama administration also strongly objected to the request by Congress for more information about the status of Guantanamo and government-to-government contacts. So much for the campaign promise of more intelligence transparency.
4) The Growth of Anti-Missile Defenses - President Obama has followed the practice of prior presidents in continuing the funding of Ronald Reagan's Star Wars fantasy, which purported to destroy intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) before they reached the United States. Not only have these anti-missile missiles failed many tests, they stand as an admission that the national government has no faith in the large deterrent inventory of offensive missiles.
President Obama has also continued the George W. Bush plan to station anti-missile missiles in Eastern Europe to protect against Iran improbably launching nuclear warheads in that direction. The only change is that Obama has switched the defenses from a long-range to a short-range missile threat. This future deployment has seriously strained U.S. relations with Russia.
5) Increased Use of Drones - The best estimate of the Obama administration's use of drones is that it has quadrupled over the use of drones under Bush. Great Britain's Guardian newspaper says that the Obama White House has or is making use of drones in six countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. Missile strikes by drones would, in times before 9/11, have been considered to be acts of war. Some analysts fear that the growing popularity of drones in the world may make wars more likely because no more pilots are exposed to harm.
The next blog will continue to explore the likely consequences of an Obama second term.
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