Seeing tougher race, allies ask Obama to make 'hope' specific
“I particularly hope he strengthens his economic message — even Senator Obama can speak more clearly and specifically about the kitchen-table, bread-and-butter issues like high energy costs,” said Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio. “It’s fine to tell people about hope and change, but you have to have plenty of concrete, pragmatic ideas that bring hope and change to life.”
Or, in the blunter words of Gov. Phil Bredesen, Democrat of Tennessee: “Instead of giving big speeches at big stadiums, he needs to give straight-up 10-word answers to people at Wal-Mart about how he would improve their lives.”
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/17/america/17elect.php
But Barack Obama HAS given the best answer he can: "Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080630/klein
Demonstrating that this is no mere spring fling, he has appointed 37-year-old Jason Furman to head his economic policy team. Furman is one of Wal-Mart's most prominent defenders, anointing the company a "progressive success story." On the campaign trail, Obama blasted Clinton for sitting on the Wal-Mart board and pledged, "I won't shop there." For Furman, however, it's Wal-Mart's critics who are the real threat: the "efforts to get Wal-Mart to raise its wages and benefits" are creating "collateral damage" that is "way too enormous and damaging to working people and the economy more broadly for me to sit by idly and sing 'Kum-Ba-Ya' in the interests of progressive harmony."
Governor Phil Bredesen of Tennessee wants Obama to give "straight-up 10-word answers to people at Wal-Mart". Well, he has: "...efforts to get Wal-Mart to raise its wages and benefits" are creating "collateral damage" that is "way too enormous and damaging to working people and the economy..."
"The market has gotten out of balance," he says, and it most certainly has. Many trace this profound imbalance back to the ideas of Milton Friedman, who launched a counterrevolution against the New Deal from his perch at the University of Chicago economics department. And here there are more problems, because Obama--who taught law at the University of Chicago for a decade--is thoroughly embedded in the mind-set known as the Chicago School.
If the Chilean experience under the influence of the Chicago Boys is any indication of what the average American can expect:
http://uprisingradio.org/home/?p=1013
Pinochet’s economic “miracle,” entailed doubling the poverty rate in Chile from 20% to 40%! Chile’s current poverty level is about 19% after successive center-left governments. In 1970, the year of Allende’s election, the poverty level was roughly the same as it is now! Some miracle.
Perhaps, even more troubling is the article’s pronouncement that the Chicago Boys were key to economic recovery. The article presents its information as if the Chicago Boys saved the day from Pinochet’s mismanagement during the 1970’s. The Chicago Boys were active and responsible for Chile’s economic woes and didn’t suddenly appear to “save the day,” for Chile’s “economic miracle.” The young U.S. educated technocrats were responsible for economic mismanagement, although, one would be at a loss for trying to conclude such from the AP article.
Furthermore, Noam Chomsky, the celebrated linguist and political activist, was in Temuco, Chile last October and noted what the mainstream media fails to in assessing Chile’s present day economy; the contributions of Chile’s state-owned copper company Codelco:
“Chile has succeeded in surviving economically, but those documenting that success don't like to attribute the existence of Codelco, which contradicts the norms of neo-liberalism, as a crucial factor in the country's development. Codelco provides a phenomenal amount of fiscal income, much more than any privately owned company. What the private corporations contribute to the copper industry is a seventh of what Codelco produces."
Here is a general indicator of the present poverty levels in the United States:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
So the question that begs answering is, are Americans willing to increase poverty levels within the country, considering that: "Overall, the U.S. ranks 12th on the Human Poverty Index." ? And further more, which Americans will 'step up to the plate' on this issue? Is it those self-same "people at Wal-Mart", in the words of the esteemed Governor Bresden?
Stumble It!