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Today's Top News
Obama: Learn From Lincoln and Do The Right Thing
Last week, television was filled with programs marking Abraham Lincoln's birthday. (The official holiday is February 16.) We watched reports on how the civil war erupted and was almost lost by the Union side. We were reminded of how many died and were wounded in that great, national tragedy.
We were also told how Lincoln was often despondent and forced over time to take stronger measures including the Emancipation Proclamation and the abolition of Slavery, even though, at first, he waffled, compromised, and proposed less definitive measures. Somehow, events end up driving policy and as the war got worse, the president found himself doing things he initially opposed or deflected.
Ultimately, he did move against slavery, justifying freeing the slaves at first as an economic and military blow at the Confederacy. Later he called it a moral issue. His last speech calling for voting rights for some freed slaves was the trigger that sparked racist actor, John Wilkes Booth, to become an assassin.
Today, we seem to be at the beginning of a new civil war, a great economic war with fresh details trickling out every day about how bad it is, and how bad it may get. Many banks are insolvent and companies bankrupt. Millions are out of work. No one knows what will happen. Even as the Stimulus bill was passed, no one is confident it will stem the tide of economic decline. No one.
Today, there are modern Confederates called Republicans even though, in his day, that was Lincoln's party. Like the obstructionists of the old South, they have closed the door on compromise and are, in effect, seceding from the change agenda that the majority of the voters supported in the 2008 election. Rush Limbaugh's statement, "I want him to fail," speaks to and for these defenders of policies responsible for this disaster.
It's been suggested that the GOP's solidarity front was not so much about the stimulus bill as sending a message to the Obamacrats not to pursue any prosecutions connected to the Bush era. But even if Obama himself, who keeps stressing his desire to look forward not backwards, doesn't have the gumption to go after his predecessors, he may have to consider taking bolder steps on the economy to stave off the financial Armageddon many fear.
Obama knew he didn't win by a landslide or fully control Congress. He thought he could legitimize his Administration by ingratiating the center of the deal-making culture of the Washington consensus. Tarnished on the campaign as a radical and worse, he felt he had to signal to the media and his adversaries that he would play the game by its rules, "responsibly." His adversaries sneered and the media amplified their slogans.
To get up and running, he picked a Cabinet built around managers and filled key posts with political operatives. The GOP jumped on tax errors by nominees, but as David Michael Green explained in the blog, 'The Regressive Antidote,' that was not the problem:
"Much more disconcerting, with respect to those appointments, is just how small these figures are, and what records of nothingness they bring to the table. Worse still is to hear them described as the indispensable choices for these positions...In any case, what is really needed in the job right now is a heavyweight to sell some big ideas. Just watching Geithner in action, I can't help but think that he is the sheer antithesis of gravitas."
To contain likely revolts from the military and intelligence worlds, he appointed insiders who sought to reassure the rogue and not-so-rogue elements that they had nothing to fear in terms of payback for crimes committed. Call this the politics of "compromise and co-optation."
To move left, he felt he had to feint right and reach out to Republicans whose crude rejection further isolated them from all but their strident base. Frank Rich opined, "Having checked the box on attempted bipartisanship, Obama can now move in for the kill." Is this wishful thinking?
He set up his White House team on the "Team of Rivals" strategy that Lincoln used, expecting he would actually run the policy plays while the appointees implemented them. His team is new and inexperienced and just growing into their jobs. His mis-steps are clear.
So where are we? His stimulus bill passed having been stripped of some of its key programs. This prompted columnist Paul Krugman to write that "Obama's victory felt like a defeat." Everyone, right, left and center seems critical of Tim Geithner's bank proposal, which hopes to impose limits on Wall Street while helping investors make money. Team Obama is so far refusing so far to nationalize banks, an idea that is gaining steam.
Interviewed by Real News, economics writer, Robert Kuttner, says the problem is that what the Administration is proposing are conservative solutions to radical problems. He speculates Obama is realizing the limits of bipartisanship in his attempt to make his stimulus package a reality. Kuttner states that Obama's economic team is trying to utilize the same methods to resolve the economic crisis that have led to the financial meltdown. He further argues that the plan put forward by US Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, is a failure.
Obama is not a dummy. He can see what's happening. He feels a lot of pressure to produce and so, his strategy must evolve. It has to. The deteriorating situation will force him, as Lincoln's and FDR's did, to go further, to go deeper, and to try to leverage his power to be more effective. That is, if he can avoid the temptations to get more bellicose with Iran or sink into the "big muddy" of Afghanistan.
So, what can he do? To satisfy public opinion, and ease public pain, he has to go on the offensive against corporate crime and greed, perhaps with a "Blue Ribbon Commission" that can explain how this crisis evolved and come up with a plan to regulate the financial world. This has to become a topic in every school and home in America. If he wants the public to understand the need to support his programs, that public has to be educated about how this crisis happened. Our media is doing a lousy job in this regard.
Programmatically, there must be a moratorium on foreclosures because we are in a state of economic emergency. Credit card companies must be ordered to roll back interest changes, stop outrageous finance charges. Robert D. Manning, author of, ‘Credit Card Nation,' argues:
"The credit card industry is the most unregulated sector of retail banking with an economic impact that could play an even greater role during this recession. With soaring interest rates driving tens of thousands of people into bankruptcy, the current credit card industry policies enable the affluent to, in effect, get free credit because they can pay off their balance each month. This means that poorer people end up footing most of the bill.
And, with usury laws basically gone since 1978, many people are stuck paying exorbitant rates for things they bought years ago. Without limits on fees and interest rates, credit cards have been the cash cow for the consumer banking industry. Even worse, right now, is that credit card companies are restricting credit. This could turn a bad recession into a wide depression."
Adds Vinod Dar: "Excessive debt must be repaid or repudiated, willingly or involuntarily. Denial and evasion can work for years for individuals, enterprises and municipalities and decades for state and Federal governments but eventually, the consequences become manifest. There is a last day."
Tinkering with this problem is unlikely to fix it. We need a cancellation of consumer debts or some program by which individuals can do public service to pay off bills they cannot afford to pay. This issue is finally moving into the mainstream thanks to Congressional candidates like Tom Geoghegan in Illinois who is raising it. We need a new CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps] and WPA [The Works Progress Administration] to involve people in the process of economic recovery.
And we need a President, like Lincoln, that is willing to re-examine policies that are not working and dare to be great. We have abolitionist Frederick Douglass to thank for pressing Honest Abe with the understanding that "Without struggle, there can be no progress." With so many interests and industries now leaning on Obama, we need his supporters to press him to do the right thing.
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17 Comments so far
Show All2 wrongs I want righted would be, on the same day and hour, the order to bring our troops home. If we can't defend our country from our borders then it means the neocons have aided and abetted another attack on the U.S.A., and then the FBI and U.S. Marshalls going into wall street and arresting those cruds that created this disaster AND freezing all their money accounts.
Addendum:
A 3rd wrong righted, thanks to crux, the Federal Reserve act is repealed and the fed is sent packing. I think all 3 are doable in that 1 hour on the 1 day.
Danny Schechter is promoting a revisionist history of Lincoln's legacy by ignoring what was to the 19th Century one of his boldest moves: the issue of the greenback currency. To finance the war and guarantee victory for the north and the preservation of the union, Congress, with Lincoln's signature, issued government currency, bypassing private capital and the private banking system. Lincoln did not have to borrow at exorbitant interest rates. The government under its sovereign authority printed up 450 million in greenbacks.
The greenback won the Civil War, just as the continental won the Revolution.
The financial crisis we are experiencing today is purely the result of the failure of the private banking system, that corporate cartel known as the Federal Reserve. The US federal debt is owed by and large to the shareholders of this private corporation. This debt does not arise from "entitlements", that is to say, social programs that promote the general welfare, what the Republican lapdogs of the rich call "government spending". It comes from the simple fact that our government must borrow the money it needs to operate from private capital and repay it with interest. This public debt is the "entitlement" of the rich and the extremely rich, those who own and operate the Federal Reserve Banking System and live their privileged lives by means of the miracle of compound interest.
When Lincoln issued the greenbacks, non-borrowed, debt-free money, he deprived the wealthy elite of their entitlement: the interest that was to be paid to them for the use of their private capital.
Freeing the slaves was indeed a bold move, but financial slavery still exists. The bankers got rid of the greenback and eventually took complete control of the nation's financial system. We are, each of us, still slaves on a vast plantation called the US of A, owned by the rich. Every dollar we spend is a debt owed to them.
Obama can make a truly bold move as Lincoln did, and eliminate the Federal Reserve as an independent entity. There is absolutely no need for the USG to borrow money from any private source and pay interest on it. This is the way out of the financial crisis: get rid of the failed system that created it and begin to exercise the sovereign government power to create money and regulate the value thereof.
The private monetary system is broke and can't be fixed. It is a debt producing monster that must be eliminated and replaced with public financial system that creates money & credit as a public utility. Until we take back the money power from the private bankers, we will never know what it's like to be free.
Free the Slaves, Obama!
cruxpuppy:
"The private monetary system is broke and can't be fixed." Agree. You call for abolishment of Capitalism. Bravo. Now let's wait for Dummyung.
v.purto
Maybe he's suggesting Obama institute a draft and suspend habeas corpus.
Sioux Rose
CRUXPUPPY: You provide a wonderful historical explanation and "path of escape." This sounds like the ONLY sane strategy for America at this point. (What would it do to world currencies or those invested in our financial system?)
I forgot all about those greenbacks! Thank you for the reminder, it provides quite an apt analogy to the present nemesis and a potential way out of it!
v. purto
No, I am not calling for "abolishment of Capitalism". I want a level playing field where competition is fair, monopoly is illegal, and individuals can innovate, take risks, and profit from their enterprise. I want real free market conditions, which do not currently exist and have not for many years.
With a public credit system there can be many more capitalists, not a few grossly wealthy capitalists that control markets and make free enterprise impossible. Government regulation of markets is more likely to create more opportunity for all players than is corporate domination of markets by a few predatory oligarchs.
Free enterprise is necessary for free people. Money & credit should not be controlled by an elite private monopoly. We can see the consequences of that right now. We have businesses too big to fail and a collapsing financial system.
When we have democratic money & credit, we will have a more democratic capitalism.
It's practically a truism that capitalism and democracy cannot coexist, and while I agree with your call to abolish the Federal Reserve and private banking, I don't see how capitalism is going to thrive if the government owns the banks. What makes you think that freedom can only exist in a "free enterprise" system? That's an unfounded assertion, not some universal law.
We see what the so-called free market has delivered, over time--a thoroughly self-destructed economy. "Free enterprise" always devolves into something like this, some variation of robber barony ruling over the hoi polloi, resistance to unions, strikebreaking, rigid class divisions, rampant inequality, none of which rings much of "freedom." We need to cure ourselves of the superstition that capitalism was somehow given to us by God, or Nature. There are better systems that can cultivate human freedom than this failed experiment.
cruxpuppy!!! your piece is both eloquent and correct, but if Obama tries to take control of the credit mechanism, our owners will do to him what they did to Lincoln.
President Obama has achieved a huge legislative victory in his first three weeks in office. And, he did it with virtually all Republicans abandoning him. I'm sure there will be many more liberal and progressive victories to come. Obama needs to put much less stress on winning Conservative support and instead rally his liberal forces and appeal directly to the people, the way FDR did, to get his progressive programs enacted.
Please visit my Blog: "Conservatives Are America's Real Terrorists"
http://conservativesarecommunistss.blogspot.com/
I never knew that Lincoln's publicly announced support of voting sufferage for some freed slaves was what sent John Wilkes Booth over the edge. Surely Schechter can't mean that if Abe had only kept silent about voting rights, it would have been an otherwise uneventful night at Ford Theatre.
Be that as it may, I agree completely with Danny Schechter's focus upon the credit card industry issue looming on the political horizon, although for reasons other than the debt forgiveness legislative approaches he discusses.
Phase I and II of TARP, the recently enacted stimulus package, and the new Treasury Secretary's vague plans about regulatory reform all have dealt with blowback from the housing bubble. Don't forget, in addition to bundling up and dicing up mortgages into exotic, incomprehensible debt backed toxic securities, a lot of consumer credit card debt was similarly packaged up and sold by Wall Street's masters of the universe to investors here and overseas.
People on Main Street can grasp why there may be a need for the federal government to buy up or guaranteee some questionable mortgage-backed securities to shore up the housing market and prevent a catastrophic collapse of home values in your neighborhood and mine. We are talking about real families living in real houses who are paying real taxes to run real schools right here in River City where residential mortgage foreclosures are concerned.
Good luck, however, telling US taxpayers they ought to foot a bailout bill for toxic securities that Wall Street's alchemists dreamed up and palmed off on investors which were based upon sliced and diced and bundled up consumer credit card indebtedness.
What's in your wallet? Better think again.
It's going to be a real tough sell for Citigroup, NBNA, VISA, or whoever to persuade the American public that in order to get the commercial banking sector back lending again, next the public treasury should make good on the banks' credit card marketing practices and other excesses.
Let them eat their own cooking.
Bill from Saginaw
It's a shame that we cannot use this crisis to envision a new way of dealing with money. The way we frame the problem excludes any approach that is truly outside the envelope. Schechter calls for bold action, but he has no solution except writing down debt and maybe having people do public service to work off debt, New Deal public works, usury laws. He doesn't even shout: "Nationalize the banks!" He completely ignores the financial system itself and frames his entire approach in terms of unexamined assumptions.
This is not proactive thinking. This isn't even thinking. This is just a kind of passive reaction to a situation he doesn't really understand. It is not merely the build up of excess debt that must be dealt with before we can go forward again. It is the monetary system itself that creates this excessive debt. Schechter can't see the forest for the trees.
We are in the midst of a systemic failure. It is global because the private central banking system is itself global. It is a debt-creation machine and because of the mechanism of usury that drives it, it is also a pyramid scheme that ultimately concentrates all the wealth at the top and creates the deflation from hell for everybody else at the bottom.
How the hell can we fix the problem if we don't understand the causes?
Danny is a nice well meaning guy, but he's clueless. Most financial/economic commentators are because the financial system itself never comes under discussion. And that is the issue. Obama, our charismatic leader, doesn't see it, either. So Danny's in good company, and people who do understand the system and want to talk about it are howling in the wilderness, writing comments at Common Dreams!
Friends, it won't be long now. The financial overlords have screwed up in a terminal way. It's not a vast global conspiracy, it's a complete screw up! Their house of cards is coming down. The American people are going to have to start thinking "big thoughts", thoughts about what money is, what a financial system is and how it works. We will get out of the box we're in because the box will collapse around us.
But we won't get out of that disintegrating box by devising some new version of capitalism where the banks are owned by the government, mainly because the capitalists won't allow it, and they absolutely control the political process. You can't have private (so-called "free') enterprise without private banking. Not only has the financial system fallen to pieces, but the superstructure itself has collapsed--capitalism is finished. We have to think REALLY big thoughts, such as how do we replace this system with something entirely different.
"And we need a President, like Lincoln, that is willing to re-examine policies that are not working and dare to be great."
Nah, we need a President, like Nader or McKinney. They wouldn't "re-examine policies," they'd end them and drastically overhaul the system entirely. That's what we need, a phasing out of capitalism in favor of socialism. Obama's trying to fix everything while keeping capitalism intact, when capitalism itself is the problem. That's why the measures are so timid.
"Today, we seem to be at the beginning of a new civil war."
America has been in a state of civil war since the year 2000, when the Republicans stole the Presidential election.
The Repubs were almost certainly too stupid to realize what they were doing. But stealing an election is not a campaign tactic or a dirty trick. It is an act of war.
In a country with a pulse, Republicans and Democrats would be fighting in the streets right now.
This is from another article where I was replying to theiniate's question of what can we do? Anyone please input what you think.....what is the message that we want to send?
Well let me think. So far we have all agreed that mass demonstration of our grievances is needed. Many have pointed out that marching in the streets to demonstrate our grievances creates a situation that is, as was said in the Declaration of Independence, "unusual, uncomfortable and distant" If marching is the new way to petition for redress, it may not be fitting to the times nor good faith efforts that should precede them. We can write letters to our representatives, but as I have experienced as have many others, they seem to be ignored. Besides, no one is disagreeing that we have a situation that is deplorable currently in our country, it's the fix that is not forthcoming in any timely or sensible manner. That fact can be attributed in large to the corrosion in our government that did not leave with President Obama's entrance, but entrenched it's self for the next round of private protectionism. So many feel greatly aggrieved as you do initiate, but have no obvious outlet for those building grievances.
I was thinking that if we organized we could do an action that was symbolic of our desperate situation and a good faith message to our government that they must work on our behalf now.
We could send, each of us a penny to the white house, and call it "The March of Lincoln." We could create a website for it's intended message, which I think could be quite simple.
If you or someone starts this movement, I will gladly participate and do what I can to promote it.