Should a Car Company be an Instrument and Guarantor of Social Welfare?

Steve Fraser, a visiting professor at New York University and the author of Wall Street: America's Dream Palace is unimpressed with Obama's council of advisers. He contrasts them with FDR's cabinet and can't find a Frances Perkins for the 21st Century. Fraser is critical of the timidity that characterizes Obama's political style and suggests that we should be thinking seriously about socializing the world economy- Henry Ford's idea of making an auto-company responsible for social welfare seems to have been a tragic mistake (I'm personally not all that enamoured with the idea of robbing Peter to pay Paul (the Big 3) so that Paul can continue producing crap that nobody wants or needs. What we have here is a crisis of over-accumulation par excellence. The answer is not increased consumption- its cold hard deflation. The problem is not (contra the advice of corporatists posing as neo-Keynesians) that there are not a enough car buyers, the problem is that there are simply too many cars. The answer is not propping up the corrupt pillars of Corporate America- how to get out of a recession? TAX THE RICH. Those who got rich pumping all that hot air into the economy should now be "asked" (the gun to the head is just a sweetener) to bailout the workers and the environment that they've gotten rich off degrading.

A ray of light? The LA Times suggests that perhaps Fraser spoke too soon, and that Rep Hilda Solis may be that 21st Century Perkins. If the LAT are to be trusted Obama may have appointed his first Cabinet Secretary that could be considered a friend to Labor and the Environment (I don't think that a CommSec that made his name by selling NAFTA to House Dems should be considered a friend of Labor or the Environment - regardless of how much election year pandering he might have done in 2008). The question now becomes what role will Solis and her bureaucracy play within the Matrix of the Master Bureaucracy?

The Resiliency of Empire

Sooner or later vague platitudes about "ending" the "war" will have to give way to concrete policy. What exactly does the Hedger in Chief have in mind for Iraq policy?

Patrick Cockburn on the recent SOFA with Iraq:

On November 27 the Iraqi parliament voted by a large majority in favor of a security agreement with the US under which the 150,000 American troops in Iraq will withdraw from cities, towns and villages by June 30, 2009 and from all of Iraq by December 31, 2011...

The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), signed after eight months of rancorous negotiations, is categorical and unconditional. America’s bid to act as the world’s only super-power and to establish quasi-colonial control of Iraq, an attempt which began with the invasion of 2003, has ended in failure.

Gareth Porter reports on the Obama administration's effort to defy the expressed will of the Iraqi people:

U.S. military leaders and Pentagon officials have made it clear through public statements and deliberately leaked stories in recent weeks that they plan to violate a central provision of the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement requiring the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities by mid-2009 by reclassifying combat troops as support troops... Obama's decision to keep Gates, who was known to be opposed to Obama's withdrawal timetable, as defense secretary confirmed the belief of the Pentagon leadership that Obama would not resist the military effort to push back against his Iraq withdrawal plan.

According to SecDef Gates, there is bipartisan congressional support for "a long-term residual presence" of as many as 40,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and such a presence for "decades" has been the standard practice following "major U.S. military operations" since the beginning of the Cold War.

Will think for Money.

The basic concerns of critical pedagogy include:

*all education is inherently political and all pedagogy must be aware of this condition
* a social and educational vision of justice and equality should ground all education
* issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and physical ability are all important domains of oppression and critical anti-hegemonic action.
* the alleviation of oppression and human suffering is a key dimension of educational purpose
* schools must not hurt students--good schools don't blame students for their failures or strip students of the knowledges they bring to the classroom
* all positions including critical pedagogy itself must be problematized and questioned
* the professionalism of teachers must be respected and part of the role of any educator involves becoming a scholar and a researcher
* education must both promote emancipatory change and the cultivation of the intellect--these goals should never be in conflict, they should be synergistic
* the politics of knowledge and issues of epistemology are central to understanding the way power operates in educational institutions to perpetuate privilege and to subjugate the marginalized--"validated" scientific knowledge can often be used as a basis of oppression as it is produced without an appreciation of how dominant power and culture shape it.
* education often reflects the interests and needs of new modes of colonialism and empire. Such dynamics must be exposed, understood, and acted upon as part of critical transformative praxis.

I suppose if none of that works we could simple privatize education and let the market decide. I hear that after Madoff made off with all that money he's looking for a new line of work (after Kashkari is done carrying all that cash to his bankster freinds perhaps he could helpout as well). As EdSec/ basketball hero Duncan says: "I don't run 600 schools, I manage a portfolio of 600 education stocks." That is a brilliant apprach- when all else fails appeal to the infallible logic of the market.

A Long Strange Trip...

What a long strange trip its been: From Reverend Jeremiah Wright to Mega-Pastor Rick Warren...
the road to power winds through some rather strange allies... Yes, "we worship and awesome God in the blue states too"- and where better to worship His Awesomeness than good 'ol Saddleback Church in Orange County, CA.

Is our children learning?

Despite all expectations to the contrary Obama did not ultimately nominate education professor Bill Ayers as Secretary of Education. He chose instead to nominate fellow member of the Chicago Machine Arne Duncan.

Henry Giroux, a leading proponent of "critical pedagogy" is unimpressed with the selection.

Giroux's recent The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex (2007):

The Mysterious General Jones

Who is General Jones? Why is there so little reporting on this figure? Why did Chevron and Boeing want him on their Boards of Directors? Why did the Chamber of Commerce want him as CEO and President of its Institute for 21st Century Energy? Why does Obama want him as his "National Security Advisor"?

In a similar vein, who called upon W. to let him know that Rummy had become a major liability to the Empire's image and that it was time to bring in a "grown-up" to head the Pentagon. Obviously, on a metaphoric level it was Daddy Bush. But how exactly was that decision made and by whom? I suspect that it was the same network that "reached out" to Obama to let him know that it might be a good idea to keep Gates on for the long-haul. I think this is where we'll find the Shadow State -- the Deep State. This is where we find the structural continuities animating US policy. We have a ruling class that dominates the state apparatus, and controls its bureaucratic inner-workings. The 30%-40% of Americans who participate in America's periodic elec-shams choose from among candidates selected by the ruling class.

There is a pernicious myth that surrounds the "power of the presidency." The presidency has increasingly become an object of veneration in our postmoderrn celebrity culture. Obama feeds, and feeds on, this myth when he declares: "Understand where the vision for change comes from, first and foremost, it comes from me. That's my job, to provide a vision in terms of where we are going and to make sure, then, that my team is implementing."

President's, particularly attractive ones, help sell copies of People Magazine, but they also operate within severely constrained institutional confines. We don't have an "imperial presidency" in practice. Only in symbol. The All Powerful Presidency is a useful myth for the shadow network of forces that actually controls the bureaucracy. We have Government by (anonymous, unelected) Committee hiding behind a figurehead.

















Amy Goodman on why having a Chevron Exec serving as "National Security Adviser" is not a good idea; and Steve Weissman on the dangers of Jones' brand of "Kool-Aid."

The Wages of Naivete

In Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) Michel-Rolph Trouillot observes: "Naivete is often an excuse for those who exercise power. For those upon whom that power is exercised, naivete is always a mistake." (xix)

I wonder which is the NYT: pretending not to know to avoid culpability (a kind of limited liability journalism) or victim of its own want for knowledge.

Which ever the case, NYT op-ed columnist Roger Cohen thinks that Madame Secretary should take Ehud Olmert's advice and show a little "tough-love" for Israel when it undermines any prospect of a peace-process. Why a US SecSt should take advice from a corrupt, and discredited former Likudnik (besides tradition) is beside the point. The fact is that when Olmert pleads:

We must reach an agreement with the Palestinians, meaning a withdrawal from nearly all, if not all, of the territories. Some percentage of these territories would remain in our hands, but we must give the Palestinians the same percentage elsewhere — without this, there will be no peace.

he only demonstrates his own irrelevance- and the NYT commits criminal naivete by suggesting that Hillary would entertain such drivel for even one moment. The NYT should know by now that Hillary demonstrated her "National Security" and "Foreign Policy" credentials when she entered the race for NY Senate the same way virtually all politicians have since Vietnam: by inserting Israel as a counter-metaphor to American weakness and decline (See McAllister, Epic Encounters, "the good fight"). (This is AKA prostrating oneself before AIPAC.) And so Hillary will again seek to demonstrate her - and America's - "credibility" (you know that wonderful thing that brought us Vietnam...) by standing with Netanyahu and "our great Israeli ally" in the Global War on Terrorism.

American Empire is doomed. How many scarce resources will the new adminstration exhaust trying to put humpty-dumpty back together again? Early indications are: way too many.

Naivete is a luxury that we can't afford/ crime we can't excuse at this point.