Obama's three Big Mistakes

Ok, so I must first say that I still like Obama as a leader. He has done great things in all areas. Of course for the environment he is right on track: giving scientists and environmentalists a place at the table in decision making and taking their advice; allowing the EPA to declare greenhouses gasses hazardous giving them regulatory control over them; setting aside vast natural areas. In the military he has ended the stop loss program, increased funding for veterans health care, took a stand against torture, ordered Guantanamo closed.

And I must say he is doing what he said he would do. I guess I was hoping he would be more progressive than that.

And I must say that if we want him to be more progressive we need to put the pressure on! Heat the streets! He has pressure from the top, we need to stand up and be heard as well!

I see him failing to produce CHANGE in three of the most important areas: health care, the economy, and war. Small changes in the above areas yes! Compared to Bush even big changes. But he has not produced fundamental change in the way America does its business. Many may think that is good, an American president should do business the American way. But it is so obvious that in all three of those areas the fundamentals of the American way are failing. They are utter failures. Our military policy creates more enemies, our economic policy creates more poverty, and our health care system makes people sick. I was HOPING Obama was smart enough to see these things but so far he seems to be acting on the advice from all the wrong people.

I will briefly explain what I mean in these three cases.

1) Health Care:
Obama had 150 "experts" on health care hold a summit on our health care system. He had no one invited who supported a single payer system, even though a single payer system is arguably the most inexpensive way to provide health care to everyone and is also in some poles
the most popular solution among Americans. I think it is clearly the best solution but even if you disagree it deserves a spot at the table. Obama, under pressure, did end up with two single payer advocates at his meeting.

Interestingly enough when he was a state senator he said single payer was the best solution to our health care problem and could articulate why. So why his change? He seems unwilling or unable to address the root cause of the health care problem in this country, the insurance companies. It make no sense to have middle men inserting themselves between patients and medicine with the sole purpose of making a profit. They are there to suck money out of the system, as much as they can. Now making a living is one thing and there is still perhaps a place for some sort of insurance companies. But when the CEOs and such are making millions or even billions in profit there is something wrong.

If you don't think it is wrong then think of it this way. If it turns out health care is too expensive for people or for employers or for the taxpayers (whoever pays for it) and we need to figure out how to make it less expensive does it not make sense to stop people from extracting billions of dollars from the system? It is as if we have a bucket of water with a giant hole in it. We all now realize that there is not enough water in our bucket but we refuse to fix the hole because the hole thinks it has a right to exist. (and the hole is giving much of the water it steals to the politicians who make the decisions)

A single payer system would save people money, companies money, and the government money. It would reduce the profits of the insurance companies. It would also reduce the profits from the pharmaceutical companies that also make billions in profit.

Of course one of the arguments is that if pharmaceutical companies can't make tons of money then they won't do the research for new drugs. This is a sham since the research is done often with government money by scientists who are probably rarely driven by money (they aren't getting the CEO's pay). It is the classic American way - nationalize the losses (research and cost of health care) and privatize the profits (concentrated in the top 1%)

I would say we need to go one step further and reevaluate health care for profit in the first place. If any industry should be nonprofit driven shouldn't it be providing health care for people? Now of course nonprofit can still provide a good living wage for the providers, hell pay the top doctors and CEOs half a million dollars, but let's be reasonable! Or pay off their medical school debt and then pay them a normal good salary. Or start with new doctors by giving them free medical school so they don't have the bruden of debt and then have them work for a reasonable salary, like the rest of us. Stop allowing people (the top 1% who don't need it) to suck off billions in profit while others (who do need it) are not able to afford health care.

so fundamental change number one that Obama is missing: a single payer health care system that provides affordable health care for EVERYONE, takes the burden of health care costs off employers (something the business community should be behind!), and actually saves the government money in the end by having a healthier more productive group of citizens who can contribute more to the country and spend less time in emergency rooms, while at the same time providing a competitive innovative environment in which doctors and nurses can thrive and medical advances are made and celebrated.

2) The economy

Some of the same problems as with health care, in fact the same problem. We all want goods and services, why do we have people inserting themselves in the middle and extracting billions in profit? It makes no sense. It is out of control. Just look at the CEO pay and bonuses for the failed banks. These banks lost more money than any companies in the history of the world and yet the people in charge got BONUSES! In fact these people and their system have caused a global economic collapse possibly like never seen before.

Obama is missing his opportunity for real change here too. Instead of real change he is pumping tax payer money into the broken system. Banks are getting bigger not smaller. The bucket is so full of holes that it holds no water. Obama is trying to just pour the water faster into the bucket, maybe from a different angle, but the results are going to be the same - a lot of wasted water! Even if he pours fast enough to keep the bucket filled, the amount of water he needs is mind boggling, and when he stops pouring the holes are still there. Why not ditch the bucket and give the water directly to the people who are waiting for water from the bucket?

Ditch these banks that are sucking off the money, get rid of the mismanaging middle men and then use the money to give the loans and things that we say the banks need to do. Force the CEOs to renegotiate their contracts (or just fire them) like we force the union workers in the auto industry to do. It is insane.

So the bigger picture is this. Obama is trying to fix the existing system. But the existing system is a failure. Nonprofit health care, try a nonprofit economy! Stick with me here.

Our profit driven capitalistic society based on neocapitalism and unregulated markets and free trade relies on constant growth. A company needs to grow, profits need to grow, production needs to grow. CEO pay grows at an exponential rate! Now it is a basic law of nature that in a closed system you cannot have continued growth forever. In the human body that is called cancer. In ecology it leads to over population and mass death. In a balloon it leads to a pop! never ending growth is not sustainable.

We have gotten away with it because we have exploited natural resources at an increasing rate without running out of them quite yet (but soon we will- fish, water, oil, trees). The system also exploits workers to maximize profits for those at the top. This is the real crime of free trade. We cannot see the exploitation if it takes place on the other side of the world. We all have products made by children, slaves, and desperate people, that's a fact.

So what about a nonprofit system of 'capitalism' where companies made things and provided services and people could chose which ones they want but the goal of the companies was to provide a good living wage for its employees, make a great living wage for the boss or entrepreneur who made it happen, and to be sustainable so it can continue to operate without hurting its ability to do the same thing some time in the future.

Pay a living wage and stop letting the top 1% from extracting billions from the system!

This could be called democratic socialism. It makes perfect sense. Use resources in a nation to benefit everyone in while having a truly democratic system of governing. Rather than having a system like we do where the top 1% get 90% of the money from the nations resources and maintain control of the government while a large percentage of the population do not even have a comfortable life.

Fundamental change Obama is missing number 2:
Addressing the real problems with our modern American form of capitalistic exploitation which redistributes wealth up to the top 1% at an ever increasing rate, making it impossible to be sustainable in the long term, guaranteeing more collapses and failures in the future. It cannot work forever so why not fix it now!

3) War

Obama has failed miserably here in my mind but he has not done anything differently than he said he would.

He talked so much shit against Bush's wars that he sounded like an anti-war candidate. Compared to Bush,Cheney, and McCain he is an anti war candidate I guess, at least he is only expanding old wars rather than starting new ones. But he is not the peace candidate, never was. Too bad! That may be his downfall in the end, who knows.

So what I think he is missing is the chance to show the world that WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER. At least not the answer to terrorism. Killing people (millions) , bombing weddings, destroying towns and cities, and occupying countries that do not belong to us does not decrease terrorism in the world! Besides the fact that we are now the cause of much of the terror, our actions are the perfect recruiting tool for terrorists. We are increasing the hatred with every bomb we drop, every child we kill, every drone that terrorises a territory in which we don't belong.

Obama missed his chance to say, these were Bush's wars. These wars were the brainchilds of the right wing neocon hawks. They are war mongers, war criminals, and should never hold any public office again. He missed his chance to show the world a different way. He should have discredited the whole premise of the war on terror. Invading countries with overwhelming military force. This is a destabilizing action.

So Obama's pull out of Iraq leaves 40 or 50 thousand troops there? The terrorists will love that. Increasing the foreign occupation of Afghanistan (infamous for their hatred of foreign occupiers) spreading the war to Pakistan, to a region of tribal warrior people who cannot even be controlled by their own government who speaks their languages and knows their customs. How do we expect to control them? Change them? Make them not hate us? Oh, predator drones bombing weddings, good idea. Billions of military aid for the Pakistani army - good idea!

What I think Obama should have done: Pull out of everywhere Bush went, completely. Say sorry, Bush is an lying idiot. A bungling fool. A war criminal. The people there have lived together and fought each other for 1000s of years, we do not need to add our killers to the mix. Then after pulling out, show the world the new American way to fight terrorism: Work with governments and local groups to provide people in areas of concern with things they want. In Pakistan do the locals really want us to kill all the Taliban? No, the Taliban are their brothers, sons, dads, neighbors. Do they want us to bring them democracy, McDonald's, and Disneyland? I doubt it but if that is what they ask for then we can help them get it, through peaceful means. We did not have to bomb South Africa to help end the terrorist Apartheid system.

The people in Pakistan and elsewhere would probably love to have schools (read Three Cups of Tea if you think not!), water, medical clinics, solar power, whatever. Help them get it. To say we could not do this is ridiculous. If we put as much effort into giving away solar panels and schools as we do into developing and deploying state of the art warfare we could. And who would argue that the chances of terrorists wanting to go to the trouble to bomb us would be greater if we helped people rather than if we hurt people.

You can do an experiment: walk down the street. Give some people gifts and smiles, give others punches and snarls, now which ones act violently back at you? Simple isn't it.

Now people will argue that the Taliban do awful things (to women for example) or Saddam tortured and killed people. Well our wars have not fixed those problems. The people we put in Saddam's place: they torture and kill people. In Afghanistan Hamid Karzai who we installed just passed a law legalizing rape if a man rapes his own wife (the law says it is illegal for a woman to refuse sex with her husband) So yes these governments do bad things as many throughout the world do, but war is not the way to fix the problem.

OK so some nut whack job crazy religious lunatics still want to bomb us because they are psychotic or brainwashed by religion or both, then what do we do? Well first of all if we have been friendly to the communities where these crazies live do you think they will get as much support from their communities as they do when we are invading and bombing them? Of course not. With less support they will be less successful. And for the criminal people who still do bad shit we use the international legal systems and law enforcement to go after them by cooperating with people and governments.

People will still be terrorists. Look around the US in the past couple weeks. How many Americans have walked into places and shot up other Americans? Maybe we should start bombing American cities too.

Obama also is missing an opportunity for fundamental change in the way we support our ally in war crimes Israel. Be allies, sure, but when Israel acts as a terrorist nation and invades a place like Gaza and kills thousands we need to say it is wrong. Israelis are rightly upset that rockets are fired into Israel from Gaza. Well the violent treatment has not stopped the rockets! Gaza is a prison, the people are suffering and frightened. Israel has the power. What if Israel gave Palestinians help instead of hurt, I bet there would be less rockets.

Of course all this has a deeper root problem and that is Military for profit! You had to know I would go there. But military for profit is even sicker than health care for profit. Again the top 1% are sucking off billions of dollars in profit (tax payer money) by making bombs, by having private mercenary armies. If war is your business then wouldn't you want war? Of course you would. And the sickest thing is that the people running our government (The Bush Family for instance) and making the decisions to go to war, are the same as the people profiting off the military industrial complex and have been for generations. We sell (or buy with taxpayer money and then give away) billions of dollars in weapons to countries like Pakistan, Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Colombia, etc. Why because it is profitable. We arm all sides in the Middle East.

Obama is hiring new Black Waters, increasing the military budget, expanding the war on terror. He now owns the war on terror. It is no longer Bush and Cheney's war. They started it and now Obama is continuing it. Damn him.

And he may win it, kill off Al Qaida somehow. But there is quote I love which I had painted on my van for while: "The problem with war is not with the losers, it is with the winners. For they think they have just proved that war is the answer."

so Obamas third missed opportunity for change:

Obama missed the chance to discredit war as a useful tool of foreign policy in combating terrorism, to pin the blame for these wars on the neo-cons who started them, and to show the world a better way to make the world safe and free. He also seems to have missed the chance to end the horrible inhumane unjust system of war for profit. A nonprofit military could still be strong, it could still employ lots of people with good salaries, but we would save SO MUCH MONEY by preventing the war monger 1% from extracting trillions of dollars in profit from the system and we would take away much of the motivation for those in charge (and who stand to profit) from starting wars and arming the world.

OK I now need a massage and some sleep.
No one around the give me a massage so I will just go to sleep.

peace
Danny