Monday, February 09, 2009
the perils of negotiating with yourself
Is is too soon to suggest that the President Obama has already proven himself to be an abject failure? He celebrates a bipartisan compromise in the Senate that eviscerates his economic program, falling back upon the true and true method of declaring a victory where none exists in the hope that most people will be temporarily deceived. Or, maybe, he really does care more about everyone in the DC power elite getting along than he does about whether the rest of us have jobs.What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses?
A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished.
Even if the original Obama plan — around $800 billion in stimulus, with a substantial fraction of that total given over to ineffective tax cuts — had been enacted, it wouldn’t have been enough to fill the looming hole in the U.S. economy, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will amount to $2.9 trillion over the next three years.
Labels: Barack Obama, Credit Crunch, Global Recession, Neoliberalism, Sub-Proletarianization of America
