President Obama's State of the Union Speech: WTF ?
by Dave Lindorff
I never expected to find myself agreeing with Sarah Palin, but I’ve got
to admit that the woman nailed it regarding President Barack Obama’s
State of the Union Address. Asked to comment on it, she said it had a
lot of “WTF moments.”
That’s exactly what I found myself thinking as I read through it!
We’ve “broken the back” of the recession? WTF? The official
unemployment rate is still 9.4%, and even that is down slightly from a
9.8% high only because so many people have given up trying to find a job
and have left the workforce, taking early retirement or just staying
home.
And the real unemployment rate--the one that counts those who
have given up but would work if there were actually jobs to be had, and
those who have grasped at part time work just to survive--is still at
between 19% and 22%, depending on how you’re counting.
Who’s Obama
kidding: Us or himself?
We need to “out-educate” the rest of the world? WTF? All across the
country, school districts are laying off teachers. In New York City,
the country’s largest school district, the world’s richest mayor,
$18-billionaire Michael Bloomberg, recently hired corporate hack,
Cathleen P. Black, a former magazine publisher who has no educational
experience or training, but who does have a reputation for whacking
employee lists, as his new school chancellor, and has put out the word
that teachers in New York, including those who have earned tenure
through years of dedicated work, that their jobs are on the line because
of a lack of money.
In Philadelphia, another or the country’s largest
districts, principals have been warned to prepare for 20-30% budget cuts
next school year--this in a district where 40 kids to a classroom the
norm, and where kids still study from dog-eared history and science
textbooks dating to the 1970s and ‘80s. Obama also talked about the
need to focus education on science, math and technology. WTF? What about
foreign languages? What about history and political science? What about
the arts?
If he had actually checked what happens in China--a country
he warned was outdoing us in educating its kids--he’d have discovered
that music and art are key parts of every kids’s education, and that
kids start learning foreign languages when they are little--not in high
school. Same in most countries like Korea, Taiwan or Germany, all of
which are eating our lunch in global economic competition.
Oh, and that $10,000 one-time college tuition tax credit you called
for? WTF? Most state colleges have raised their tuitions by more than
that over four years just in the past year, thanks to the budget crunch
they’re all facing because of declining tax revenues from the continuing
recession you say we “broke the back” of.
We’re going to “break our dependence on foreign fuels” by switching
to biofuels and by “putting half a million electric vehicles on the
road”? WTF? Everyone with an ounce of knowledge knows that biofuels
are a fraud, requiring nearly as much energy input--usually from natural
gas--to produce as they create. And as for electric cars, they depend
upon generated electricity which is produced either by imported oil, or
by burning maximally dirty coal. This is not change we can believe in,
or even want. And while we’re at it, “clean coal”? WTF? Sounds like dry
water, fat-free lard or courageous politican.
The tax code is rigged by corporate lobbyists you say? WTF? Then
why did you just hire GE’s CEO and Chairman Jeffrey Immelt as your jobs
czar--a guy who’s company has not only not paid any corporate tax for
the last five profitable years, but has actually had a negative tax rate
averaging 14% per year (10.1% in 2009)? Immelt managed to get the
government to take our tax money and ship it to him by the trainload as
credits, even though his company, one of the largest in the world, is
highly profitable. Oh, and he’s been closing GE’s American factories at a
prodigious rate and shipping the jobs to China and India and other
cheap-labor countries.
You signed trade agreements with South Korea, India and China, and
plan to sign more with Panama and Costa Rica, in order to boost jobs in
the US? WTF? These agreements, like the ones before, notably NAFTA,
demonstrably destroy American jobs.
He said we’re going to cut Medicare and Medicaid. WTF? The huge
Baby Boom population is just heading into retirement age, with the first
Boomers just now reaching 65 and eligibility for Medicaid, and you
think you’re going to cut the program? Over my (our) dead F bodies! Just
try it Barry! That’s a fantasy. You think those mobs in Cairo look
scary? Wait until you try and cut Medicare! The streets of Washington
will be jammed with people armed with walkers and canes.
But my biggest WTF moment came when Obama came to the deficit. He
has bought into the Republican argument that something has to be done
right now to stem America’s decades-long bleeding of red ink, and to do
that, he proposed freezing the “domestic” budget for five years at the
2008 level. WTF!!!
First of all, that’s sure to push this foundering economy right back
into a deeper recession. Already, state and local governments, having
burned through the federal cash they got in 2009, are starting massive
layoffs of public employees--including teachers--which will have a
tsunami effect on further slumping demand and killing off business
recovery and private hiring. This will make that situation even worse.
But the real joke is that by using the code word “domestic,” the
president was exempting the military. Oh sure, the White House
previously announced it is “cutting” $78 billion in Pentagon spending
over the next five years, but in a budget that is about $1 trillion a
year, counting debt for prior wars, veterans’ benefits, and intelligence
agencies, $16 billion a year is pocket change--not even close to the
annual rate of inflation. Besides, it’s all BS, since Obama is certain
to turn around and ask for more supplemental budget requests from
Congress to fund the endless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and--the way
things are going--in Pakistan, Yemen, Iran, maybe Egypt, and who knows
where else?
WTF?
You cannot hope to restore the US economy to health, and to repair
our shameful education system, our decrepit infrastructure, and our
country’s position in the world, unless you confront the rampant
militarism that has gripped and bankrupted the nation since the end of
WWII.
We’re “shaping a world that favors peace and prosperity?” WTF!!!
America is the biggest threat to peace and prosperity in the world
today. And by the way, the insurrections that are spreading across the
Middle East are against regimes that the US has been propping up with
military weapons and training for decades. It’s all coming undone now
and you’re talking about our great military successes?
Sarah Palin had it right: WTF?
