Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Cory Booker, the Next Black Corporate Presidential Contender
14 Aug 2013
🖨️ Print Article

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

Now that his billionaire buddies have spent his way into the U.S. Senate, “Booker will immediately start running for president, staking out a position to the right of the current occupant and of Obama’s likely successor, Hillary Clinton.” Booker and his friends in the 1% take care of each other.

Cory Booker, the Next Black Corporate Presidential Contender

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

“Booker has always been a sycophant of the rich and devotee of their most reactionary causes.”

Cory Booker, the obnoxious and joyously cynical Newark, New Jersey mayor and soon-to-be U.S. senator, perfected the role of stealth Black corporatist Democratic politician years before Barack Obama was elected to national office – although he’s eight years younger than Obama. If anything, Booker has more friends in high rightwing places at this stage in his career than did Barack Obama when he was running for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, ten years ago. Obama came out gradually as a servant of the corporate class; Booker has always been a sycophant of the rich and devotee of their most reactionary causes.

While Barack Obama waited until he was president to fully display his school privatization colors, Cory Booker began his public career as an operative in the corporate-funded private school vouchers game. At the age of 33, and with only one term as a city councilman under his belt, Booker used his rich contacts in rightwing, mainly Republican circles to vastly outspend, and almost defeat, the most powerful Black politician in New Jersey, Newark mayor Sharpe James. Four years later, in 2006, after a very large Republican U.S. Attorney and now governor, Chris Christie, had put James on the path to prison, Cory Booker walked into City Hall with an army of Wall Street and Silicon Valley billionaires behind him.

Once he steps into the U.S. Senate, to serve out the remainder of the late Frank Lautenberg’s term, Booker will immediately start running for president, staking out a position to the right of the current occupant and of Obama’s likely successor, Hillary Clinton. In the last presidential race, Booker infuriated the Obama camp by coming to the defense of Bain Capital, the Wall Street investment firm where Mitt Romney made his fortune. Booker said it was “nauseating” to see all those good people in high finance held up to scorn in an election campaign.

“The filthy rich have cultivated a true-blue believer in Cory Booker.”

Nobody can say that Cory Booker doesn’t take care of his friends in the 1%. They certainly take care of him. They have bankrolled all of his electoral efforts, most recently allowing Booker to spend almost three times as much as his top Democratic senatorial opponents, combined. Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million gift to the Newark Public Schools made Booker look like an urban miracle worker – although the transaction was actually more like Booker presenting the schools as a gift to Zuckerberg and his privatizing friends. Other Silicon Valley fat cats set Booker up as head of a start-up Internet company that made Booker a millionaire, at least on paper. Now that Booker is going to Washington, the start-up is going down the tubes. But, there are plenty more self-serving deals to be made on Capitol Hill.

In the recent campaign, Booker sounded positively like an old-style Republican, badmouthing “Washington” in every other sentence.

The filthy rich have cultivated a true-blue believer in Cory Booker, the still-young man from the suburbs of New Jersey. As I wrote in the inaugural issue of the Black Commentator, in April of 2002, “At his age, Cory will be a blight on the political scene even longer than the rest of the Four Cs (colored conservatives counting cash).” I was referring to Condoleezza (Rice), Clarence (Thomas), and Colin (Powell).

He’ll likely be around even longer than his fellow Black stealth corporatist, Barack Obama.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com

 



Your browser does not support the audio element.

listen
http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20130814_gf_BOOKER.mp3

More Stories


  • Billionaire-Owned Corporations Fail Workers During Covid Crisis
    by Institute for Policy Studies
    Billionaire-Owned Corporations Fail Workers During Covid Crisis
    25 Nov 2020
    A “Delinquent Dozen” companies have vastly increased fortunes for their owners and CEOs but provided inadequate protection for their workers.
  •  GOP Tried to Re-Imprison Jalil Muntaqim
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    GOP Tried to Re-Imprison Jalil Muntaqim
    24 Nov 2020
    After 49 years as a Black Panther Party political prisoner, Jalil Muntaqim was released on parole, only to be rearrested for attempting to register to vote in his hometown of Rochester, New York.
  •  Colin Kaepernick: “Free Mumia”
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Colin Kaepernick: “Free Mumia”
    24 Nov 2020
    Abu Jamal “has had to endure this second-by-second assault on his soul for 38 years,” said banned football quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
  •  Community Control of Police = Autonomous Zone of People Power
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Community Control of Police = Autonomous Zone of People Power
    24 Nov 2020
    Pan-African Community Action organizer Netfa Freeman told a panel organized by Black psychology students at Bowie State University, in Maryland: “Community control of police is a w
  •  Reject “Thanks-Taking,” Join in National Day of Mourning
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Reject “Thanks-Taking,” Join in National Day of Mourning
    24 Nov 2020
    “Instead of celebrating genocide, the National Day of Mourning was created to destroy the Pilgrim mythology” that led to “not a nation of immigrants, but of colonizers,” said Nick Estes
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us