On Sunday (2/13/11), the Washington Post had an odd piece about Obama’s budget proposal–starting with the odd headline, “Obama to Propose Spending Cuts in Budget Plan Aimed at Countering Conservatives.” Republicans have been stressing spending cuts, so Obama is “countering” that with… spending cuts? Huh.
The piece tries to argue that these calls for austerity are merely the political system reacting to the will of the voters, particularly self-described independents:
Obama is sending a similar message, but to a different constituency: the independent voters who abandoned Democrats in droves last year and who are crucial to the president’s 2012 reelection prospects. This bloc shares the tea party’s alarm over the $14 trillion national debt but takes a more nuanced view of how to achieve fiscal balance.
As Dean Baker points out, the idea that voters in 2010–independents or otherwise–were sounding an alarm about the debt isn’t supported by the evidence (though it’s long been touted in the corporate media as the leading message of the midterms). But the point of some of the articles about the Obama budget is that it doesn’t go far enough. Today’s Post (2/14/11), for instance, has an article headlined “Obama Spending Plan Criticized for Avoiding Deficit Commission’s Major Proposals”–a pretty clear sign that the budget critics worth listening to are the ones who want deeper spending cuts.
Unrelated to budgeting, the Sunday Post piece describes Republican ideas on education spending cuts that would
wipe out two decades of education initiatives by pulling nearly $5 billion from the Education Department, including funds for math and science and the popular Teach for America program, which puts well-trained teachers in needy schools.
The point of Teach for America is actually more like the opposite–sending novice teachers to go into “needy” districts for two-year stints in the classroom, it operates under the premise that children are well-served by educators who are not “well-trained.”
Good article by Roger Hickey appearing on Huffington Post (2/20/11):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roger-hickey/obama-now-owns-a-deficit_b_470293.html
After appointing the Simpson-Bowles “We’ve-never-met-a-domestic-program-we-ever-liked-unless-it-benefited-Big-Business-the-NAM-and/or-the-US-Chamber-of-Commerce-and-then-only-when-their-lobbyists-wrote-the-legislation-for-us” National Commission — Obama bin Laden decided that even their proposals didn’t go far enough.
Granted, Obama had a little help. It took the new Congress less than two months to rally the power of incumbency to tell him exactly that.
Rather than fight them, Obama side-steps his own commission, then acquiesces to some convoluted “higher moral authority” (greed) by way of an executive order. It’s the coward’s way out.
Mr. Hickey:
“On Thursday President Obama signed an executive order creating a National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
This deficit commission is based on an idea promoted by two Senators, Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), which would have required the Congress to vote on their budget-cutting recommendations in a “fast-track,” undemocratic up-or-down vote with no amendments and little opportunity for debate.
Warning of the dangers of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus charged that the Conrad-Gregg legislative version of the deficit commission “painted a big red target on Social Security and Medicare. That’s what this commission is all about. It’s a big roll of the dice for Social Security and Medicare.” [end quote.]
No doubt the House and very probably the Senate will hold open voting sessions on major legislation until 3 or 4 AM just so they can get the fast track “up or down” voting quorum they need.
George W. Bush represented the “haves and have mores” — but everybody knew that from day one. Barack Obama basically represents “his ego.” Obama’s election was heralded as a “revolution for color neutral politics” in America. The social change resulting from that milestone has been nil.
Obama is all about class — not social progress. No wonder so much money poured into his campaign coffers when he ran in the 2008 primaries and the general election. The reason: America’s icon for social change and minority representation — at its highest levels — can be bought for next to nothing.
Spending a few billion dollars on an American presidential election is the bargain of the century. Especially since it sanctions all the heavy-handed efforts that the upper one-tenth of one per cent of US society forces on the other 99+% of the populace to control a $20+ trillion dollar economy. Now that I think about it: “next to nothing” is an understatement. It’s really just another an asset bubble.
And I never even got to the wars in South Asia. With the American Empire in free fall, expect more budget cutting to finance more killing and brutal repression in the face of rising Arab nationalism and any associated struggles for independence.
I would like to see another Deficit Commission consisting of 18 people who have never earned more than $75,000 a year. I think they would come up with different suggestions for reducing the deficit.
About Teach For America, it does not sound like it is putting well-trained teachers in needy schools, instead it puts green teachers in needy schools. Here are excerpts about the organization:
Teach for America actively recruits at the most prestigious colleges around the country looking for young people who want to make a difference. Often, these college graduates do not having teaching degrees and are not necessarily looking at teaching as a career. The organization takes the energy of recent graduates who are eager to be leaders, and channels that energy to the pursuit of education for all.
A recent study finding, however, only compared TFA teachers with other under-certified teachers and not with fully certified teachers in Houston’s public schools. Since TFA teachers generally have alternative certification, some critics believe that they are actually hurting students more than helping them. One recent study from Arizona State University by Ildiko Laczko-Kerr and David Berliner looked at the effects of Teach for America in the Phoenix Public Schools. Their results showed that
[S]tudents of Teach for America teachers did not perform significantly different from students of other under-certified teachers and students of certified teachers out-performed students of teachers who were under-certified. [S]tudents of under-certified teachers make about 20% less academic growth per year than do students of teachers with regular certification. (Laczko-Kerr & Berliner 2002, 33)
Critics of Teach for America say that this program is not fixing the problems but merely providing a band-aid approach to an already limping system. TFA teachers often feel resentment within their schools from other teachers, and they often do not get the support they need from the districts they work in or the TFA support networks. Other critics feel strongly that the eight-week training session at the Teach for America
Institute does not give teachers adequate time to prepare for these difficult classroom situations and cannot possibly replace the student-teaching requirement placed on traditionally-certified teachers (Ibid., 7).
Sadly, President Obama has become an opportunist instead of becoming a good leader, though I am still on his side, I am sorry that he starts from a position of spending cuts to begin the negotiation, he has bought into the deficit hysteria and austerity madness. He should have said no cuts to anything as a start, and go from there, taking on reductions in the military budget, the oil and gas subsidies, agriculture subsidies, outsourcing incentives just as a start, instead he raises the military budget by 22 billion dollars at the starting gate. WTF?????
There are 500 billionaires in North America, most of which are in the US.
The tax cuts for 2011 on the top 2% was a mistake, the best way to help the ones who have the least money is to give them money. The rich can afford to get up off of a few percentage points of their cash, and not even feel any consequences from having done so. To give all the millionaires and billionaires 100’s of 1000’s of dollars and put it on the deficit imagining that the rich are going to create jobs with it, and whose payment on the debt will be paid for by all the taxpayers, and then turn around and demand spending cuts to programs for the middle class and the poor, children and women, to decrease the debt is insane. The 100s of 1000s of dollars that go to the rich, who are not hurting and then to take away from those who are hurting is just not right. Talk about wealth redistribution, yes, redistribution upward.
A millionaire could spend 3,600 dollars an hour(86,400 dollars a day) and it would take almost 12 days before he goes broke, whereas the regular person is unable to accumulate much more than a hundred dollars a day(4.00 an hour per 24 hours).
Remember 1 million is 11.7 days of seconds;1 billion is 31.7 years of seconds; 1 trillion is 31,700 years of seconds. To spend the entire net worth of the US, at a rate of 1 dollar per second(86,400 dollars a day per 24 hours), it would take 1.7 quintillion years before spending it all. That’s 1.7 X 10 to the 18th power.
And if the total net worth of the US was divided evenly among the 310,000,000 people, each would have 177,000 dollars(in which you could spend 486 dollars a day, or 3,400 dollars per week, or 13,600 dollars per month).
Oops!!! Big error previous post, to spend the entire net worth of the US it would be 1.7 million years to spend it all, not 1.7 quintillion years. I mistakenly multiplied 54.6 trillion times 31,700, instead of 54.6 times 31,700. sorry.
Raymond
The net worth of this country has been spent.It took a few short years.Not 1 .7 million.We are broke.Flat busted.It is now the IOU OF THE USA.Creative math is fun.So is monopoly and fake money.
Obusha is a FRAUD. A Trojan horse. Wake up, people! He has been since day one. IGNORE the rhetoric and watch what he DOES. This man is to the right of BUSH, and it’s only the US propaganda machine deliberately framing and spinning everything (lying) that makes it seem otherwise. Folks, we have been HAD. Wake the heck up, everyone!
The Democrats were “shellacked” last year not because “independents” were upset with the deficit Those so-called independents are the very same people — young, “progressive”, poor, “minority”, and aging white liberal baby boomers — who mobilized for Obama in ’08 in the hope and belief that he was a true “transformative” leader in the mold of FDR. They believed that he would usher in real and meaningful “change” — a new New Deal for working people. His immediate and constant betrayal of that mandate soured those voters, young and old, against him. Obama deliberately misinterpreted the ’10 losses as a denouncement of “liberal” ideology and acceptance of “conservativism.” He refuses to accept that people took him at his word: He argues that they really did not want FDR but a kinder/gentler Reaganism, a’la, Bill Clinton. The result was a repudiation of him and his “go along to get along” approach and those selfsame “independents” simply opted out and stayed home. He appears happier now than ever, now that he is in his element as chief concillator and compromiser….a luke warm version of himself. He further believes, though, that the troops can and will be rallied again as ’12 approaches. Expect the same type and style of rhetoric that we saw in ’07/’8 to get revved up soon.
Herb the independents just voted the other way.They tend to move like a pendulum.I usually respect their vote but in the last election they simply vote against Bush(I know,I know he wasn’t running)REmember the polls/They disagreed with most all of Obama’s policies but liked him.INdependants are not now or ever will be followers of FDR and his make a hole dig a hole NEw deal that lengthened the depression.AS far as how do they feel about Obama.THey feel that the conservatives were right all along. Oops!
independents are not monolithic. [nor are they all centrists or moderates]
in 08, obama won the independents in most states he won [losing them in va and nc while winning the states] and lost them is most states he lost [winning them in az, of all places. ]
overall he won indi voters 52-48, a bit below his margin of victory: 53-47
the reason the democrats lost in 10, lower voter turnout: the base stayed home.