Obama and peeved progressives

Boston Globe ^ | 12/24/08 | Jeff Jacoby

[MartinaMisc]

CAN YOU HEAR the grumbling over in what Howard Dean used to call "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party?" The tolerance-and-diversity crowd is upset with Barack Obama; it seems the president-elect has been bringing people into his circle who don't agree with them on every single issue.

The consternation on the left began with the naming of Obama's national security team - Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, Robert Gates to continue as secretary of defense, and retired four-star General James Jones as national security adviser. "Barack Obama's Kettle of Hawks," they were promptly dubbed in the Guardian by the left-wing journalist Jeremy Scahill, "with a proven track record of support for the Iraq war [and] militaristic interventionism." How could Obama possibly keep his campaign promise "to end the mindset that got us into war," asked the The Nation, when none of his top foreign policy/national security picks had opposed the war?

There was even more distress in progressive precincts after Obama's economic team was announced. Lawrence Summers, who will chair the National Economic Council, "opposed regulating the newfangled financial instruments that greased the way to the subprime meltdown," wrote David Corn, the Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones magazine, in a column for the Washington Post. Obama's choice for Treasury secretary, New York Fed president Timothy Geithner, "helped oversee the financial system as it collapsed." Both of them, lamented Corn, are close to Robert Rubin, "a director of bailed-out Citigroup and a poster boy for . . . Big Finance."

[Red_Devil 232]

PROGRESSIVE PARTY PLATFORM    1924

PROGRAM OF PUBLIC SERVICE

In that faith we present our program of public service:

1. The use of the power of the federal government to crush private monopoly, not to foster it.
2. Unqualified enforcement of the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech, press, and assemblage.
3. Public ownership of the nation's water power and creation of a public super-power system. Strict public control and permanent conservation of all natural resources, including coal, iron, and other ores, oil, and timber lands in the interest of the people. Promotion of public works in times of business depression.
4. Retention of surtax on swollen incomes, restoration of the tax on excess profits, taxation of stock dividends, profits undistributed to evade taxes, rapidly progressive taxes on large estates and inheritances, and repeal of excessive tariff duties, especially on trust-controlled necessities of life and of nuisance taxes on consumption, to relieve the people of the present unjust burden of taxation and compel those who profited by the war to pay their share of the war's cost, and to provide the funds for adjusted compensation solemnly pledged to the veterans of the World War.
5. Reconstruction of the federal reserve and federal farm loan systems to provide for direct public control of the nation's money and credit to make it available on fair terms to all, and national and state legislation to permit and promote cooperative banking.
6. Adequate laws to guarantee to farmers and industrial workers the right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing for the maintenance or improvement of their standard of life.
7. Creation of a government marketing corporation to provide a direct route between farm producer and city consumer and to assure farmers fair prices for their products, and protect consumers from the profiteers in foodstuffs and other necessaries of life. Legislation to control the meat-packing industry.
8. Protection and aid of cooperative enterprises by national and state legislation.
9. Common international action to effect the economic recovery of the world from the effects of the World War.
10. Repeal of the Cummins-Esch law. Public ownership of railroads, with democratic operation, and with definite safeguards against bureaucratic control.
11. Abolition of the tyranny and usurpation of the courts, including the practice of nullifying legislation in conflict with the political, social or economic theories of the judges. Abolition of injunctions in labor disputes and of the power to punish for contempt without trial by jury. Election of all federal judges without party designation for limited terms.
12. Prompt ratification of the child labor amendment and subsequent enactment of a federal law to protect children in industry. Removal of legal discriminations against women by measures not prejudicial to legislation necessary for the protection and for the advancement of social welfare.
13. A deep waterway from the great lakes to the sea.

     

14. We denounce the mercenary system of degraded foreign policy under recent administrations in the interests of financial imperialists, oil monopolists and international bankers, which has at times degraded our State Department from its high service as a strong and kindly intermediary of defenseless governments to a trading outpost for those interests and concession seekers engaged in the exploitation of weaker nations, as contrary to the will of the American people, destructive of domestic development and provocative of war. We favor an active foreign policy to bring about a revision of the Versailles treaty in accordance with the terms of the armistice, and to promote firm treaty agreements with all nations to outlaw wars, drastically reduce land, air and naval armaments and guarantee public referendum on peace and war.

[Paige]

Anti Capitalist - Socialist ...

[Straight8]

It wasn’t that long ago the libs were greeting every W appointment with “same old, same old”. Irony is sweet.

[goldstategop]

The Left is waking up to discovering its blind support for Obama has left it with a very nasty hangover. That comes from supporting an empty suit for the nation's highest office. Its just a pure schadenfreude Christmas thrill for conservatives who have had little to celebrate this year.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[chainsaw]

four-star General James Jones as national security adviser.

The affirmative action general, RINO Powell, was expecting that appointment.

After all he single handedly shot down Sarah. </sarcasm>

[randita]

The left was enraged at Clinton as well for signing the balanced budget and reforming welfare. So what. When push came to shove, they were in his back pocket, just like they’ll be in Obama’s.