President Barack Obama talks about his plan to deal with economic issues recently. His words mostly deal with the middle class and have a Grand Bargain tone. Barack Obama is willing to slash corporate taxes. President Barack Obama talked about this agenda in an Amazon fulfillment center in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He wanted to slash corporate taxes and hand out billions of dollars in corporate subsidies in the name of strengthen the middle class. He wants to cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent rate for manufacturers. He also wants the government to partner with the private sector as a means to invest in infrastructure, social services, and education (some extremists want to advance privatization and spending cuts for education). The White House continued to advance this agenda of slashing corporate taxes. He talks about helping the middle class, but her offer nothing on radical solutions of helping the poor. This is a common theme by the White House. “Reversing this trend” of deepening inequality “must be Washington’s highest priority,” Obama said. “It’s certainly mine.” We have been in four and a half years of his Presidency. We know that many of Obama's economic programs are about policies that gave a greater share of the wealth of society to the financial oligarchy. This oligarchy dominates political and economic life in the USA. So, President Barack Obama has a jobs program that mentions federal expenditures for infrastructure development, which is fine. The issue is that it is tied to massive tax breaks for corporations and this spending is tied to tax breaks and subsidies for businesses. The whole deal mixes legitimate policies with reactionary portions (that the big banks and corporations love). When the White House rejects even a bailout explicitly to Detroit, then we have an issue here. This represents de facto support for the gutting of the retirement benefits of 20,000 Detroit workers and the sell-off of the city’s assets. We witness the cutting of wages by corporate interests. In 2009, there was the restructuring of Chrysler and General Motors. There was the 50 percent wage cut on new hires on the precondition for providing bailout funds to the auto makers. There is the growth of low wage production at GM and Chrysler reverberating across the USA manufacturing and dragged wages down for the entire auto industry. Even a Volkswagen assembly plant in Chattanooga, located in the same lot as the Amazon fulfillment center that Obama visited, has experienced a situation. At the VW factory, new assembly workers are hired at $12 per hour, among the lowest wages for auto assembly work anywhere in the country. This is the reality behind Obama’s boast in his speech that “we saved the auto industry thanks to GM and the UAW working together to bring jobs back to America.” Now, this economic regressive agenda existed long before President Barack Obama was elected President. Many locations even in some Amazon's fulfillment centers have been known for poverty wages and exploitative working conditions. Many workers in America are paid low wages. Some are temporary contracted in labor agencies and are forced to endure extreme heat and cold. This routinely prevented them from speaking to each other (some are threatened with termination on a daily basis). On September 18, 2011, Pennsylvania’s Allentown Morning Call reported that workers at a local Amazon warehouse were forced to work long shifts with no air conditioners or water breaks in temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. They were, according to the report, threatened with dismissal if they complained. Amazon refused to open loading dock doors for ventilation, citing the need to prevent workers from stealing. The firm kept a fleet of ambulances in the parking lot to take workers to the hospital after they suffered from heat-related illness or injury. The Financial Times reported in February that workers “might walk between seven and 15 miles” each day, and “must walk through a set of airport-style security scanners to prove they are not stealing anything” at the end of their shift and after a 30-minute lunch break. The report noted that “a very large number” of workers are fired “frequently and with little warning or explanation.” Moreover, workers are given cheap, ill-fitting boots and told to apply Vaseline to their feet if blisters become unbearable. The Seattle Times on April 3, 2012 said that Amazon workers were threatened and some in cases fired for reporting workplace injuries to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The White House wants to send billions of dollars to corporations via tax cuts and giveaways while rolling back social spending. He wants to reduce spending to programs that Barack Obama feels are unnecessary. Our deficits are falling in fast rates now. Obama wants privatization of public resources. This will allow more business control over air traffic control, public schools, public utilities, etc. The White House wants corporations to deal with the workers with impoverished areas of the country like Chattanooga, which is controversial to say the least. So, there are strengths and weakness (like giving corporations public money to move operations into high unemployment areas where workers can be forced to accept poverty level wages) of his plan. I will admit that the Republicans are worst since they offer no counter proposal. They have threatened to shut down the government and view President Barack Obama's centrist economic plan as near socialist, which is silly. GOP obstructionism has been used in a disgraceful fashion indeed.
We know the ex-Mayor Richard Daley's legacy. He has been an enemy to the black communities and many other communities in the city of Chicago. He is notorious for his previous fight with the Chicago Teachers Union fight. Many of Daley's political collaborators were hauled off to prison for illegal dealings at City Hall. There was the Hired Truck Scandal that cost the city $40 million. That was a year where city trucks were paid not to work. It sent nearly 50 human beings to prison including the mayor's patronage chief Robert Sorich. That investigation stopped short of implicating him or the mayor himself. The Daley administration had corruption in it since its first days in office. He presided over a legal system in Chicago where innocent men were given death sentences, tortured, etc. Some believe that these actions were done with the knowledge of state and local prosecutors. Jon Burge, the police commander that oversaw this torture of more than 200 men and forced false confessions that sent many innocent men to death row, was finally found guilty of lying about torture earlier in the summer of 2010. Daley still denies any knowledge of the torture that transpired under Burge and denies being aware of information about the ongoing torture by Burge given to him while he was Cook Country's State's Attorney. While Daley has always pled ignorance to any wrongdoing or illegal acts that have occurred at City Hall since he took office, he's never been shy about using whatever means are necessary to get what he wants. In March 2003, without providing notice to people in Chicago or even the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Daley decided to shut down Meigs Field Airport, located on the city's lakefront just outside downtown. Daley wanted this action by using demolition crew in the dead of night to carve two large Xs into the airport's single runway. This act angered Chicagoans, the FAA, and pilots who found the airport no longer operational. Millions of dollars of a budget shortfall came about. Richard Daley is known to have a tight relationship with big business at the expense of the standard of living with Chicago. He believes in privatizing government services. He privatized many entities from Skyway Bridge that leads into Indiana to schools including public housing. He sold parking meters and even public parks to the highest bidder. In December 2008, Mayor Daley announced the $1.15 billion, 75-year lease of the parking meters to Chicago Parking Meters, LLC, a newly created entity managed by Morgan Stanley. Soon afterwards, it became public that the real value of the meters was somewhere around $5 billion. Even Renaissance 2010 and Plan for Transformation has gentrified neighborhoods instead of helping poor and African American Chicagoans who live on the South Side. Richard Daley is known for neoliberalism and compromise with Wall Street. His political machine allowed human beings to ally with his demands when he was mayor of Chicago. Then Mayor Richard Daley successfully moved to stamp out was widely supported by rank and file citizens, community-based organizations, and labor unions in his city's black, Latino, and working-class wards. According to a poll conducted by Lake Research Partners, 84 percent of the city's residents and 90 percent of its black residents supported the "big box" Living Wage bill. Richard Daley is against a real living wage. We need a living wage system without labor exploitation, and without gender discrimination. We need real justice in the world. Similar actions are continuing under the new Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
There has been an ideological war in the GOP. It is Chris Christie and Rep. John King disagreeing with Senator Rand Paul's views. Rand Paul accuses Chris Christie of exploiting 9/11 and the endless war on terror as an excuse to strip constitutional rights and fleecing the American people (in his mind). This is an interesting debate in the GOP. There is the national security Republicans vs. the civil libertarian, anti-war Republicans. The future heart and soul of the Republicans is unknown, but we see this debate now. Rep. King of New York said that Rand Paul went too far by defending former NSA analyst Edward Snowden. Regardless of the truth behind Snowden, he should not be unfairly killed at all. Edward was given temporary asylum by Russia for one year recently. King is wrong to defend the NSA warrantless wiretap program. The abuse of the national security surveillance state is in epidemic levels. The police brutality in the world is definitely in epidemic levels as well. “I thought it was absolutely disgraceful that so many Republicans voted to defund the NSA program, which has done so much to protect our country,” said King. “This is an isolationist streak that’s in our party. It goes totally against the party of Eisenhower, and Reagan, Bush. I mean, we are a party of national defense. We’re a party who did so much to protect the country over the last 12 years.” The reality is that real folks never advocate isolationism. We just disagree with imperialism, unjust wars, and economic exploitation by foreign banks even. We have the right to defend human rights and many legitimate constitutional principles. I will never endorse a foreign policy filled with drone strikes, filled with funding terroristic rebels, or filled with Guantanamo Bay having harsh interrogation techniques inflicted on human beings (many of whom are not high level terrorists at all). I have looked at both sides and here are my views on this issue. Rand Paul is more accurate on foreign policy matters including the NSA issue than Rep. King, who is a blatant neo-conservative type of man. Yet, all of them are wrong on other issues indeed. Rand Paul is still incorrect to ally with the Tea Party movement. The Tea Party has been known to advance radical reactionary politics in the United States. Much religious intolerance, racism, bigotry, militarism, anti-immigrant chauvism, and some corporate Republican backing has infiltrated much of the Tea Party movement. Rand Paul and many of his allies are in love with laissez faire capitalism. Some of them even want to bash the Occupy Wall Street movement in a foul way when OWS has been unjustly monitored by the FBI for years. The reactionaries are known for blaming the poor for their own suffering completely. They refuse to expose Wall Street corruption. That is why I do not agree with destroying all of Social Security. I do not agree with eliminating all funding to the Federal Department of Education. Not all regulations are evil and having a fair wage is not evil in my eyes. We need to have workers' living standards and being against discrimination. Real unions have fought historically to defend job safety and workers' rights. That is why we need real taxes on the rich and corporations, so revenues can be generated as a means to assist workers including the poor. As for New Jersey receiving emergency money from the federal government to help rebuild the state, I have no issue with that. Rand Paul is wrong on that issue. Therefore, the truth is real. We need human civil liberties, but we also have the right to maintain the social safety net as well. Now, it is our responsibility to be for the human people indeed.
Kirsten is right on this. You can be assimilated all you want to Western society and they can still brutalize us whether we wear suits or Nike. The truth is that we should individually help our families and communities. Collectively, we should battle and defeat the evil system of white supremacy. Moral growth alone is not enough. There is nothing wrong with ethics and moral development. Yet, we need institutions changed. We need imperialism gone. We need unjust laws overthrown and we need opportunities given to minorities and the poor, so they can have a chance to exist with a better life. Bill O'Reilly is a liar, an adulterer, a constant profane user, and he disrespected a 9/11 victim's family member. He has no right to lecture anyone in the African American community at all. Bill supports torture in foreign policy, yet he wants to talk about the immorality of violence. You are supposed to be judged on what you do not on how you dress. Also, we as black people should love our black African heritage. We should not feel the need to mimic Eurocentric culture as a means to be free. We are made free by loving and expressing our Africanness. I will never confirm to a beasty system that brutalizes our men, our women, and even our children. I will never confirm to a system that will never address income inequality and I will never confirm to a society that loves to hate justice for all people. Our concern is to be made for the growth including the development our people irrespective of the views of racists. I do not need the respect of a racist. We have the right to execute self-determination not assimilation to white supremacist thinking. See, a black person is not a sellout for expressing intellectual curiosity or expressing legitimate, eclectic tastes. A black person is a sellout if they harbor hatred for their own people in an evil way or they blame their own people totally for the white supremacist system harming our people (or if they view white humans as superior to themselves in any way). I rather be revolutionary than respectable to white reactionaries that stereotypes black people all day and every day.
This is a complex situation. Mugabe is not perfect, but even Wikileaks documented information about how American and British interests want to control commercial interests in Zimbabwe. Some have accused Tsvangirai of collaborating with Western imperialism. There are still many sanctions against Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe does not host to AFRICOM (or the imperialist military unit of the West inside of Africa). There needs to be independent leadership in Zimbabwe outside of neoliberal activists and the old guard. In other words, I feel that Mugabe or Tsvangirai should not be the future leaders of Zimbabwe, but a new, independent leader that doesn't bow before Western neoliberal interests. Each sentence that I have written I stand by. Zimbabwe has a well known history in the Motherland of Africa. The Motherland or Mama Africa is very beautiful like always.. Even US Ambassador to Zimbabwe Mr. David Bruce Wharton admitted that the sanctions have harmed the Zimbabwe economy to a certain extent. The West has a known history of economically exploiting Africa especially since the days of the Maafa. I will not agree with many policies of the West at all. Many in West love imperialism corporate exploitation, drone strikes in multiple nations, and other evils. Some Westerners (among every color & background) have a superiority complex and view trade as a bargaining chip to have unconditional justification to execute imperialism the world over. There is nothing wrong with fair trade, but not unfair trade. AFRICOM has been a militarized, neo-imperialist operation in Africa for many years. Scholars have documented this reality. Legitimate criticisms have come against ARFICOM indeed. So, to assume that those Western corporate interests are some great Saviors is fantasy. They exist to make profit and to have control. Just because companies want to dominate, doesn't give governments the right to execute unjust wars, to execute bad trade policies, or to try to have neo imperialism in Africa at all or any area of the world. Even NAFTA harmed Mexico and America. I did not know America was God. Sorry, America is not God. Just because white supremacy exists, doesn't mean that DeBeers and other entities have the right to rape African resources, to harm workers' rights, and to go out and claim they are the superior saviors of the world. Also, I realize the history of sanctions in the world. My fundamental point is that independent leadership should exist in Zimbabwe other than Mugabe and the neoliberal activist Tsvangirai. Nothing more or nothing less. It is not a secret that the MDC-1 Party is stooge for neoliberal policies (as documented by Thom Hartmann and others). A 2010 leaked cable, published by WikiLeaks[iv], revealed that Tsvangirai collaborated with President Obama and the US establishment against the interests of Zimbabwe and the people. The document[v] “showed that he [Tsvangirai] had had been privately urging Washington to maintain sanctions against Harare, while taking the opposite position in public.” Earlier this month, the Zimbabwe Herald reported that: "...MDC-T has reportedly invited three Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents to attend its policy conference set for [Friday May 17, 2013] as part of last ditch efforts to formulate an appealing election manifesto…the Herald is reliably informed that the three CIA agents were also behind MDC-T’s security policy document titled ‘Policy Discussion Papers – Security Sector Cluster..." Many areas like Singapore, Finland, etc. have universal health care and universal education while we don't in the USA. Real first world status is about those things not neo-feudalism or an economic system that enslaved my ancestors at all (which resulted in the growth of economic inequality in the world). Also, we have lax health care and other lax infrastructure, but some of us want to lecture other nations on development processes. America needs investments in infrastructure indeed. Even the President is right on that point. Not even Botswana has a totally free market system. It has investments along with oversight in its functions. I respect Botswana’s growth and that is a very great development indeed. Many Western puppets in Africa have existed for a long time, so this concern by numerous Africans is not made out of historical inaccuracy or ignorance at all. African people have a great deal of intellectual potency to evaluate history and the dynamics of political affairs for years and centuries. So, I stick my fundamental position that independent leadership should arise in Zimbabwe other than Mugabe and that slick politician Tsvangirai. I choose African self-determination over imperialism every day of the week.
By Timothy
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