The Obama/GOP Consensus | Black Agenda Report
The Obama/GOP Consensus | Black Agenda Report
On the eve of President Obama’s State of the Union address, Cynthia Gordy, writer for the Blogging the Beltway column in TheRoot.com, asked the question: “Will Obama talk about black unemployment?” Of course, Gordy already knew the answer – “Hell no!” – but proceeded to discuss the horrific state of Black jobless America with someone who actually cared, Christian Weller, from the Center for American Progress. Ms. Gordy ended the piece on a plaintive note. “Here’s hoping Obama will at least have a more elaborate plan to truly lift up all communities,” she wrote. What a strange and deeply sad relationship exists between many Black Americans and the brown-skinned corporate politician in the White House. After two years, there is no longer any expectation of reciprocity, only a muted hope and prayer that Obama would behave decently.
He didn’t. In announcing a five-year freeze on domestic spending, Obama enters a new phase of aggressive – rather than furtive – collaboration with the GOP. To ensure that catastrophe cannot be avoided for the tens of millions battered and set adrift by the two (lesser and greater) recessions of the 21st century, Obama will join with Republicans to prevent the domestic arms of government from coming to the people’s aid, by freezing finances. With whole communities in a state of economic dislocation, Obama burns the rescue boats and poisons the water, all the while promising that the necessary budgetary savings will not be achieved “on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens” – as if Wall Street’s bankers will shield the helpless with their well-bonused bodies.
The First Black President had nothing new or promising of substance to offer anyone who is not rich, just repackaged items from his dismally disappointing past. No dollar signs to give meaning to the president’s mystical and misleading rhetoric on jobs, which will somehow be made to appear through a uniquely American process of “innovation” and “self-invention” inaccessible to lesser peoples.
On the eve of President Obama’s State of the Union address, Cynthia Gordy, writer for the Blogging the Beltway column in TheRoot.com, asked the question: “Will Obama talk about black unemployment?” Of course, Gordy already knew the answer – “Hell no!” – but proceeded to discuss the horrific state of Black jobless America with someone who actually cared, Christian Weller, from the Center for American Progress. Ms. Gordy ended the piece on a plaintive note. “Here’s hoping Obama will at least have a more elaborate plan to truly lift up all communities,” she wrote. What a strange and deeply sad relationship exists between many Black Americans and the brown-skinned corporate politician in the White House. After two years, there is no longer any expectation of reciprocity, only a muted hope and prayer that Obama would behave decently.
He didn’t. In announcing a five-year freeze on domestic spending, Obama enters a new phase of aggressive – rather than furtive – collaboration with the GOP. To ensure that catastrophe cannot be avoided for the tens of millions battered and set adrift by the two (lesser and greater) recessions of the 21st century, Obama will join with Republicans to prevent the domestic arms of government from coming to the people’s aid, by freezing finances. With whole communities in a state of economic dislocation, Obama burns the rescue boats and poisons the water, all the while promising that the necessary budgetary savings will not be achieved “on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens” – as if Wall Street’s bankers will shield the helpless with their well-bonused bodies.
The First Black President had nothing new or promising of substance to offer anyone who is not rich, just repackaged items from his dismally disappointing past. No dollar signs to give meaning to the president’s mystical and misleading rhetoric on jobs, which will somehow be made to appear through a uniquely American process of “innovation” and “self-invention” inaccessible to lesser peoples.
posted by Jay at
9:37 PM
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