A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
Wall Street is “feverishly preparing to destroy the financial integrity of local and state governments, much as speculative capital has ravaged member states of the European Union.” Rather than resist this grand assault, President Obama and other top Democrats pave the way for it with their attacks on unions and the public sector.
Obama Uses Bully Pulpit Against Own Constituents
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“Obama uses his bully pulpit to tell the people that unions and public workers are the enemies of society.”
A perfect storm is brewing, whipped up by Wall Street, that threatens the most fundamental interests of Black people, workers in the private and public sectors, the unemployed and the residents of cities – that is, the core constituencies of the Democratic Party. But don’t expect the Democrats to be of much help, because the fact is that Party leadership is busy trying to drown its own electoral base, like kittens in a bag. This only sounds counterintuitive if one fails to understand that, although minorities, the poor, workers, union members and urban dwellers may be the people that vote the most for Democrats, Wall Street is increasingly the Party’s financial patron – and the sugar-daddy with the cash usually gets what he wants.
What Wall Street wants – and what it is purchasing from Democratic leadership – is the means to utterly eliminate meaningful opposition to rule of money. For this purpose, they are feverishly preparing to destroy the financial integrity of local and state governments, much as speculative capital has ravaged member states of the European Union. In the resulting panic, public unions – the biggest political barrier to corporate rule – will be reduced to impotent shells, if not decertified, outright. With the unions decimated and Democratic constituents in despair, finance capital will feast on the bones of the public sector in a bacchanal of privatization.
President Obama has taken the lead in dismantling the Democratic coalition assembled by President Franklin Roosevelt, in the 1930s. In two short years in office, he has gone for the jugular, targeting unionized teachers as the villains of education, thus setting the stage for massive corporate penetration of public schools through charterization. Obama played the same scapegoating game with federal employees, blaming them for budget deficits and imposing a wage freeze.
“With the unions decimated and Democratic constituents in despair, finance capital will feast on the bones of the public sector in a bacchanal of privatization.”
American presidents are said to have the biggest “bully pulpit” in the world. Obama uses his bully pulpit to tell the people that unions and public workers are the enemies of society. As a Black Democrat, he's much more convincing than the Republicans – which is what makes him so valuable to the moneyed classes.
Next, the public is softened up to the idea that local and state government will go bankrupt, and that the problem is public employee pensions. In steps the Democrat Richard Daley, outgoing mayor of Chicago, who says employee pensions, which are huge government obligations, should be allowed to go bankrupt.
Daley was just playing the stalking horse for the hedge funds and other financial Dukes of Disaster who have been using derivatives to make bets on which cities and states will default on their obligations – just as they have been doing with the smaller nations of Europe. Creating a public hysteria ups the ante and also hides the fact that it is Wall Street that is creating the crisis, through its financial dealings and its purchasing of Democratic politicians. The banker-inspired hysteria creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of social, economic and political destruction. And one of the messengers of the evil-minded prophesying is Barack Obama.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, to to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
This week’s featured author is Nick Nesbitt. Nesbitt is Professor of French and Italian at Princeton University. His book is The Price of Slavery: Capitalism and Revolution in the Caribbean.
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