Tag: Failed Government

When FDR famously said that we need only fear “fear itself,” he was only partly right. The greater danger in modern American politics turns out to be political cowardice. For while we are all susceptible to fear, it is the coward, the person who is unreasonably and excessively afraid who poses the greatest danger in challenging times.

Barak Obama is a coward. His cowardice is evident in the clear record of fearful inaction that is now too long and consistent to explain away as 11-dimensional chess moves:

1. Obama’s cowardly deference to the anti-gay bigots (More DADT)

2. Obama’s cowardly capitulation to the Military-Industrial-Complex (“There is no peace dividend”)

3. Obama’s cowardly subservience to Goldman Sachs and the rest of the gangster financial industry (Trillions in future taxpayer liability to pay astronomical Wall Street salaries and bonuses)

4. Obama’s cowardly protection of the coverage-denying medical insurance industry. (The “public option” will emerge as a mangled and inadequate program so feeble that it will continue the dominance of the insurance companies and provide only token relief to the underinsured.)

But Obama’s greatest and most pernicious act of cowardice is his abject failure to restore belief in the competence and authority of government. Ronald Reagan’s infamous acts of civic vandalism (“Government is the problem”) will not be undone by Barak Obama, because Obama is too cowardly to challenge the ideological legacy of the Gipper. Vast new government-directed employment programs are the only hope for reversing the steady growth of joblessness in America. Only vigorous Federal programs aimed at energy independence and rebuilding national transportation infrastructure can put millions of American’s back to work. But Barak Obama is afraid to do what FDR did: make the US Government a primary engine for the revitalization of America.

Obama is a coward, and America will pay a heavy price for his failure to confront our great economic problems with the necessary courage.

Last night, 1-02-009, on the PBS News Hour they held a discussion with “Frontline” correspondent and filmmaker June Cross who describes her documentary “The Old Man and the Storm” which will air on PBS’s “Frontline” on Jan. 6th, New Orleans: Three Years After Katrina.

This is a timely documentary more than three years after Katrina and especially as to the way the Government has been handling that compared to the extremely quick bailouts of the financial institutions in the present economic collapse and at other times when the corporate elite demanded their political friends come to their aid. There are three short video’s at the ‘Frontline’ site that I’m embedding below, the third one touches on just that, especially as to the promises made by the President bush and other Government Officials and to the rapidly failing ‘free market’ ‘trickle down’ economic policy of the GOP.

I haven’t put together a video to song in awhile, than I came across “Lock Them Up”

The song in video is by ‘Nam Veteran Pat Scanlon brother member of Vietnam Veterans Against The War and Veterans For Peace.