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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (762926)	1/10/2014 6:41:23 AM
From: average joe	1 Recommendation Recommended By FJB Respond to of 1574079

Koan would like to play Robin Hood with other people's money. Koan does not just want you to pay his gambling debts he wants you to subsidize his gambling habit.

To: koan who wrote (762926)	1/10/2014 9:51:30 AM
From: Blasher	1 Recommendation Recommended By TideGlider Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574079

and here I thought you wanted "fairness". It seems like things are only "fair" to you if you and "the needy" are on the receiving end. And who decides who gives and how much? It seems that your way is totally UNfair to me.

To: koan who wrote (762926)	1/10/2014 12:21:45 PM
From: Broken_Clock	1 Recommendation Recommended By Blasher Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574079

We need to take some money from the haves and give it to the have nots-lol! Obama is going to take more from the poor and give to the haves. Wake up koan. Open your eyes. ========== WEEKEND EDITION JANUARY 10-12, 2014 counterpunch.org Deregulation, Privatization, and Cheap Labor Obama’s Corporate Plantations by MIKE WHITNEY The man who promised to restore hope and bring change to America, has announced a plan to open five corporate plantations in the United States. On Thursday, President Barack Obama, whose policies have resulted in the greatest number of public sector job losses in US History (Public sector jobs have declined by 718,000 jobs since Obama took office.) announced the opening of five “Promise Zones” located in San Antonio, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, southeastern Kentucky, and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. According to an article in USA Today: “Under the proposed Promise Zones, the federal government plans to partner with local governments and businesses to provide tax incentives and grants to help combat poverty.” (“ Obama to name 5 ‘Promise Zones’ for assistance“, USA Today) Combatting poverty’ has nothing to do with it. Obama plans to shower the nation’s biggest corporations–which recorded record profits in the last year and are presently sitting on more than $1.3 trillion in cash–with more lavish subsidies and tax breaks while providing an endless source of cheap slave labor to boost future earnings. The president believes that the wealth generated in these profit zones, er, promise zones will trickle down to the area’s residents, even though–as the Christian Science Monitor notes–”it can be hard to tell whether a program’s benefits reach the poorest people, rather than flowing largely into the hands of the business owners who get the tax credits.” Here’s more from USA Today: “Obama said his administration plans “to partner with 20 of the hardest-hit towns in America to get these communities back on their feet. We’ll work with local leaders to target resources at public safety, and education, and housing.” (USA Today) Translation: The Obama administration is committed to assisting the corporate oligarchy whenever possible even if it means further eviscerating the rapidly-diminishing US middle class and reducing millions of hard-working Americans to grinding third world poverty. Deregulation will allow corporations to privatize policing, education and any other lucrative public resource or service. According to the New York Times: “White House officials said the Promise Zones initiative would not provide new money, rather it would be aimed at providing the local governments and agencies “aid in cutting through red tape to get access to existing resources.” No new money?? How do you like that? So, the man that helped push through the multi-trillion dollar Wall Street bailouts is not going to give one red cent to the nation’s poorest and most needy people. Instead, he is going to do whatever he can to eliminate the rules that keep voracious corporations from feeding at the public trough. Conservative Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — “praised the proposed Promise Zone for Eastern Kentucky saying: “I wrote a letter last year supporting this designation because this region has suffered enormous economic hardship over the last several years,” McConnell said in a statement.” Mitch McConnell likes Obama’s plan. That says it all, doesn’t it? Plantations were a familiar feature of the antebellum South, but were abandoned following the Civil War. Now a new generation of corporate kleptocrats want to revive the tradition. They think that weakening consumer demand and persistent stagnation can only be overcome by skirting vital labor protections and shifting more of the cost of production onto workers. Obama’s promise zones provide a way for big business to slip the chains of “onerous” regulations and restore, what many CEO’s believe to be, the Natural Order, that is, a Darwinian, dog-eat-dog world where only the strongest and most cunning survive. This is a world in which Obama has done quite well, although he’s had to distance himself from his political base and throw friends under the bus (Jeremiah Wright) in his relentless climb to the top. Even so, selling out has never been an issue for Obama. Special economic zones are not a new idea, in fact, they’ve been tried in the UK, Australia and other places where the global bank cartel exerts its grip. In Tokyo, last month, right-wing PM, Shinzo Abe announced the launching of his own “Special Economic Zones”. Here’s a short summary of Abe’s plan from an article in the Japan Times: “Special zones aimed at spurring corporate investment through deregulation and tax incentives are to be created in Tokyo as well as Osaka and central Aichi Prefecture….Other deregulation steps to debut in such zones will let private firms operate public schools, let experts without teaching licenses teach classes, expand the scope of treatment that can be administered by non-Japanese doctors and nurses, facilitate the use of foreign drugs and increase the number of hospital beds.” (Japan Times) Sound familiar? Deregulation, privatization, and cheap labor; the toxic coctail that has vaporized the US middle class and wiped out a good portion of the developing world. Obama calls these promise zones. We think corporate plantations is a more fitting moniker.

To: koan who wrote (762926)	1/10/2014 12:32:50 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574079

Read beyond the headlines koan. counterpunch.org The U.S. and South African Connection The Budget Deal and Neoliberals by AMAJU BARAKA It was a fitting historical coincidence that during the same week President Obama was in South Africa to pay tribute to Nelson Mandela, whose Presidency ushered in the South African turn to neoliberalism, a budget deal was brokered by the republicans and democrats that reflected the continued bipartisan commitment to neoliberal policies in the U.S. Hammered out behind closed doors and presented as a done deal to the House of Representatives, the agreement reflected the agenda and demands of the corporate and financial oligarchy that Congressional representatives do what they were sent to Washington to do – ensure that economic and social policies conform to their interests and priorities. Voted on and passed by the House without debate, questions from the public or opportunity for adjustments, the Senate dutifully followed, quickly passing the agreement that was then signed into law by President Obama from his holiday vacation retreat. When the details of the deal began to emerged, it became obvious that the agreement was yet another frontal assault on the working class and the poor that has characterized state policies over the last three decades. For the millions of people knocked to their knees by the economic crisis created by the robber barons of finance capital, the neoliberal fiscal priorities of the budget obliterated any hope that they would get relief from the insecurities and fears of living in an economy that seems aligned against them. Not only was there no plan to use the power of the state to create or stimulate jobs, but the Christmas gift to the 1.3 million long-term unemployed left out of the deal was the elimination of their unemployment benefits on December 28. The deal does not raise real revenue by closing tax loopholes for wealthy. It does not restore food stamps cuts for the 47 million receiving this assistance or cuts to Medicare and other vital public services like special education programs, Head Start and nearly $2 billion slashed from housing aid. And because the deal lacks mechanisms for raising revenues, it places the burden for funding the deal squarely on the backs of working people by requiring federal workers to take another hit on their wages and benefits. This hit to federal workers is in addition to the increase in taxes that all workers experienced in January 2013 when the payroll tax cut was rescinded while the $4 trillion in Bush tax cuts for the wealthy were allowed to continue for another decade. Furthermore, while poll after poll demonstrated that the public was no longer in favor of costly military adventures around the world and wanted to see a reduction in military expenditures, Congressional representatives still increased military spending by $20 billion. This is neoliberal democracy at its best – no discussion, no debate, vote and leave town after setting policies that continue the deliberate and massive transfer of wealth from America’s working people to the financial and corporate oligarchy. Obama, the quintessential neoliberal technocrat, calls these kinds of agreements “compromises.” But Obama’s calls for compromise have always really been a call for class surrender and abrogating the right to resist. His demagoguery masterfully obscures the class interests of the bipartisan elite agenda that underpin legislative agreements and the fact that the interests of working people and the poor are the interests usually compromised in those agreements. His success as the “commander-in-chief” of demobilization has meant that a broad-based movement to oppose the neoliberal agenda never developed beyond the attempt by the Occupy Wall Street movement. And even though the Occupy movement was repressed by the coordinated efforts of Obama’ Department of Homeland Security, Obama escaped direct criticism. Tragically however, Obama’s success at defusing political opposition has come at a particularly high price for African Americans whose plight as a result of the capitalist implosion of 2008 normally would have generated intense political opposition. African Americans have experienced Depression-level deprivations with astronomical youth unemployment ranging from 40-60 percent in some urban areas and a real adult unemployment rate of more 25 percent. Single African American women with children who have lost eligibility for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) make up the fastest growing population of the homeless. The older, largely African American urban centers like Newark, New Jersey, the South Side of Chicago and Cleveland are in crisis as a result of the disappearance of jobs, state and local level austerity plans and gentrification policies that are displacing the poor from urban cores across the country. In Detroit, the majority African American government and public sector workforce was taken over by a white Republican governor who imposed state control over the city and forced it into bankruptcy with the likely loss of pensions and health care for the population of largely African American retirees. But despite these economic and social realities, the Obama effect – the reluctance to demand anything from the Obama administration – has meant that African Americans have not mobilized to secure through progressive social legislation any relief from the unending assaults on their ability to live a dignified life free from fear and social insecurity. The deteriorating situation for poor and working-class people in the U.S. parallels that in South Africa, which in turn demonstrates the unfortunate similarities between Obama and Nelson Mandela. It is widely understood that no individual except Mandela could have provided the political cover for the ANC to shift from a movement espousing the radical redistribution of economic resources and power from the white minority to the black majority, to a movement that essentially embraced neoliberal policies that would maintain white domination in every aspect of South African life. And no one but the person of Nelson Mandela could have defused broad-based opposition to the ANC’s turn to neoliberalism during his presidency that saw black unemployment go from 16 percent to over 30 percent; average household income of the black population falling 19 percent and 50 percent of black South Africans earning just 9.7 percent of national income while the richest 20% of the white minority earned 65 percent. In the U.S., Barack Obama did not usher in neoliberalism. The foundation for the U.S. turn to neoliberalism began in the 1970s under President Carter and was accelerated by the policies of Ronald Reagan in the ‘80s. Therefore, the role that Barack Obama would assume was not to institute neoliberalism but to give it a palatable face. He would be the front man in the effort to stabilize the capitalist crisis in 2008 brought on by unfettered neoliberalism. Similar to the script handed to Mandela and the ANC, Obama’s role, however, was global. He was perfectly cast to adroitly dress up retrograde neoliberal economic, political and military policies on a global scale. For the masters of international capital, the pigmentation of the skin is of little concern when it comes to their interests and is why they finally forced the recalcitrant Afrikaners to the negotiating table. What mattered in South Africa in the 90s as it does in the U.S. today is a relatively stable environment in which state power is used to realize the interests of national and international capital. Toward that end, outside of the racial paranoia of the neo-fascist tea-party fringe in the U.S., the black face of Nelson Mandela in the 1990s or Barack Obama today, is not seen as a threat but an advantage, especially when those black faces in high places are committed to policies that will ensure the hegemony of the global capitalist, imperialist, patriarchal, white supremacist minority. Ajamu Baraka a long-time human rights activist and organizer is an editor and contributing columnist for Black Agenda Report. He is currently an Associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. He can be reached at: www. Ajamubaraka.com