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I’m highly critical of President Obama’s record.  But in fairness, I ought to acknowledge the President’s achievements.   These achievements are real, even though some of them have to be qualified with an asterisk (*).

• President Obama’s economic stimulus program has apparently helped the economic recovery along.  (*The current economic recovery has been weaker than most post-World War Two recoveries, and it will take a long time to get back to pre-recession conditions, which were none too good to begin with.  Nevertheless, the Obama stimulus program was enacted over Republican resistance to doing anything at all, so the President deserves some credit.)
• President Obama stuck to his promised timetable for withdrawing combat troops from Iraq. (*Non-combat troops and armed U.S. contractors remain in Iraq, and the Obama administration probably would have kept combat troops in Iraq if the Iraqi government had agreed to give them extraterritorial privilege.  Nevertheless, the President did what he promised to do, and he deserves credit.)
• The new Defense Department budget calls for a reduction in force and a slowdown in growth in military spending, a necessary step to bring overall federal spending under control.  (*Spending will remain above pre-9/11 levels, and spending will increase on Special Forces and unmanned weapons, thereby increasing the President’s power to wage secret wars.  Nevertheless, this is a politically difficult action.)
• The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit to uphold the right of private citizens to make video recordings of police in the performance of their duties.  As Radley Balko wrote on The Agitator, this is a big deal.  Video evidence is usually the only evidence of police abuse of power except the unsupported word of the victim.  Now, the initiative for this may have come more from Attorney-General Eric Holder than from the President himself, but Obama still deserves credit.  No asterisk here.

Click on Pentagon budget set to shrink next year for the Washington Post’s report on President Obama’s proposed military budget.

Click on DOJ Urges Federal Court to Protect the Right to Record Police for background on this lawsuit.

The Obama administration also deserves credit for the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy toward gays in the military, and for compiling and distributing objective data to physicians on the effectiveness of different forms of medical treatment.  None of this, however, outweighs President Obama’s record on war, civil liberties and pandering to Wall Street.

Click on President Obama and his liberal critics for my case against President Obama.

The chart at the top of this post shows that the decline in U.S. jobs has stopped since President Obama took office.  On the other hand, the recovery in jobs is not enough to regain what has been lost and keep up with population growth.   And the charts below show that the current economic recovery has been weaker than average in all respects except exports and corporate profits.

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In the normal course of events, recessions are followed by recoveries.  I’m not smart enough to say how much the current recovery, or its strength or weakness, is due to the President and Congress, and how much is due to the swings of the economic cycle.   I think the best way to stimulate the economy is for the government to invest in things that the country needs anyway, such as repair and replacement of the nation’s deteriorating physical infrastructure, scientific and technical research and maintenance of governmental services on the state and local levels.   President Obama deserves some credit for attempting to do this to a modest extent, against the opposition of Republicans in Congress.

Note:  I originally began this post which I realized couldn’t possibly be correct.  So I deleted it, and combined with post with a post with more correct (or at least more plausible) information.

Click on Regulations Protect Us for an explanation (sort of) of this sign on Radley Balko’s The Agitator web log.

Human beings are amazing.

Hat tip to Stellar Interesting.

I’m not sure that the casual Internet user fully appreciates the true Internet “golden age” we are experiencing right now.  I mean consider it – we can access information, from any country, about any subject, at any time – with a few strokes of the keyboard.  If that’s not monumental to you, then you don’t fully appreciate the greatest thing to happen to mankind, perhaps ever.  It’s true and completely free, almost instant, multi-source, discussed – knowledge.

Perhaps never has a population been so connected and so empowered.  We no longer have to accept what the media or our own government tells us.  We have instant access to blogs and websites coming from multiple perspectives (even the perspective of the “enemy”) that can paint almost a crystal clear picture of the world that we live in.  You can be more culturally knowledgeable in an evening in your living room than most of mankind was in their entire lives.  This is true power.

Revolutions can be formed, fueled, and organized in moments.  Underfunded and disperse – ideas have power like never before.  All because of this network we have created that spans the earth.  Yet, we think that shopping on Amazon.com or checking our email is the real gift the Internet has provided us.  Don’t let your apathy fool you into believing the Internet and its users aren’t more important than that.  The information we have at our fingertips, no matter how we use it, is power – and Governments all over the world know it.

It’s about control.  How long do you really think this modern day wild west is going to last?  Do you honestly believe that no one is going to try to control the most powerful invention ever created?  How long do you really think you will be able to freely access websites that promote anti-government or even terroristic ideas?  How long do you think sites that offer free music and movie downloads will be able to run?  What about those sites that appose the Government or suggest that we overthrow it?  Will those last?  It won’t be long before the Government says it should be controlled – all to “protect Americans” from things like terrorism and child pornography.

via BlogTruth.

Although the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Internet Privacy Act are now on hold, John C. Dvorak, a columnist in PC Magazine, thinks it is only a matter of time before the United States government imposes the same controls over the Internet that the Chinese and Iranian governments have.

Instead of the free global Internet as we know it, John Dvorak says, the world will come to be divided into regulated national Internets.

In the future, all sites will be subject to immediate takedown orders. You can count on it.  You can just see this trend moving forward with very little resistance.  Nobody, especially in the U.S., wants to face the political implications of any of this.  We just trust our officials to an extreme.  …

Watch over the next few years as the idea of a national Internet evolves from a tool used to suppress opposition to a good idea whose time has come.  Yes, this will be sold as a great new idea.

It will be the way we can protect ourselves from alien sites that recruit homegrown terrorists and bomb makers.  It will stop offshore piracy web sites from ruining our movie and record industry.  It will block international child pornography rings from making [in]roads into our nation.  It will keep al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan from easily communicating with terrorist cells in the U.S., probably preventing another 9/11.  It’s a clear winner.

It will also have other benefits.  It will protect the nation from spying Chinese eyes.  It might prevent the cyber war that everyone is fretting about.  If it is a closed system, then any attack has to take place from within and that’s easier to catch.  I’m telling you, I can explain for days why this is a great idea.  I’m almost convincing myself.

I can assure you that it will take very little effort to convince Congress and the public that a national Internet in the U.S. is brilliant.  Then, see what happens next. Complete government control.  You won’t like it, but it will be too late.

via PCMag.com.

Based on the intensity of the U.S. government’s responses to various uses and abuses of the Internet, the real concern is less terrorism or child pornography or even intellectual property than to put a stop to organizations such as WikiLeaks, which threaten government power by undermining the power of secrecy.  The U.S. government and its allies have succeeded in effectively shutting down WikiLeaks, which is now putting all its efforts into fund-raising to overcome the government-organized financial blockade.  Obviously they want to prevent WikiLeaks from being revived or imitated.

Sometimes I hope to live long enough to be proved wrong about things like this.  Other times I’m glad I probably won’t live long enough to be proved right.

Click on WikiLeaks for updates on that organization’s status.

Click on Why SOPA Is Dangerous for a computer programmer’s analysis of the Stop Internet Piracy Act.

]]> http://philebersole.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/the-golden-age-of-the-internet/feed/ 0 philebersole caution censorship-h http://philebersole.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/on-the-internet-nobody-knows/ http://philebersole.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/on-the-internet-nobody-knows/#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:26:12 +0000 philebersole http://philebersole.wordpress.com/?p=20371 ]]>

This is the second anniversary of this web log.  I owe it to my friend David Damico, who pointed how that web hosting services such as WordPress are free, and that no technical knowledge is needed to start a web log.  If I had realized that before, I would have started a web log years ago.

The father of the today’s food stamp program was George McGovern, a liberal Democratic Senator from South Dakota who is remembered for running for President in 1972 in opposition to the Vietnam War, and being defeated in a landslide by Richard M. Nixon.  He and Senator Robert Dole, a conservative Republican Senator from Kansas, co-sponsored the Food Stamp Act of 1977, which establishes the food stamp program in its present form.

An experimental food stamp program existed during the Great Depression, and a food stamp program was revived during the Great Society era.  First the government gave away surplus food, such as cheese.  Then there was a program for poor people to buy their own food, using government stamps that could be bought for less than the face value.  The problem with that was that some Americans were too poor to afford food stamps.  Even with food stamps, malnutrition and even starvation existed in the United States.  This was addressed  by Senator McGovern’s and Dole’s bill, which gave the food stamps to any eligible family.   This is an achievement to be proud of.

I remember back in the 1990s when Newt Gingrich talked about “McGovernite” morality.  He and McGovern, make an interesting contrast.  George McGovern served his country bravely in wartime, married and was faithful to his college sweetheart, never took drugs and was respected even by his political opponents.  Newt Gingrich avoided military service, cheated on at least two of his three wives and was despised even by his political allies.  But Gingrich had the audacity to set himself up as an arbiter of morality, and there were people who took him seriously.

Click on Newt Gingrich’s Dodgy Attack on Food Stamps for comment from Business Week.

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Newt Gingrich on a number of occasions has called President Barack Obama the “food stamp President.”  An interesting choice of words.  Not the “unemployment President” or the “foreclosure President,” but the “food stamp President.”  Does he mean to imply that it matters less that so many people are unable to find work, and have lost their homes, than that there is a program to make sure poor people get enough to eat?  He said President Obama has “put” people on food stamps, but Obama didn’t write the law.  Would Gingrich have him refuse to administer the law as written?

Juan Williams, among others, asked Gingrich if he wasn’t appealing to a negative stereotype of black people.  Gingrich’s reply was that he would be happy to appear before the NAACP and lecture the delegates on why hard work is better than food stamps.

A few facts:

• More whites than blacks receive food stamps.
• Nearly half of those who get food stamps have jobs, and still are poor.
• Most black people have jobs.
• Jobs are not to be had for the asking (to put it mildly).

The expression “dog whistles” refers to coded words that are understood by a small group but unnoticed by the general public.  When President George W. Bush referred to the Supreme Court being wrong on the Dred Scott pro-slavery decision, members of the Right to Life movement understood him to be alluding to the Roe vs. Wade anti-abortion decision, since they frequently compare the two.

Newt Gingrich’s remarks can’t be called “dog whistles.”  Their appeal to racially prejudiced white people is not hidden or subtle.  It could not be more plain and obvious.

Many conservative Republicans seriously wonder why so few African Americans leave what they call the “Democratic plantation.” But then a lot of them probably think that the average NAACP convention delegate needs to be lectured on the desirability of hard work.

Newt Gingrich also thinks there is a serious problem with overpaid janitors.  In my biased opinion, the average janitor contributes more to the well-being of the American people than Newt Gingrich ever has.

Click on Newt and the Food Stamp President for comment from The Economist.

Click on Real Racists Do Real Things and On Looking Like a Ghetto Crackhead for Ta-Nehisi Coates’ comments.

Click on Slowpoke Comics archive for more cartoons.

via American Extremists.

Andrew Sullivan wrote a much discussed article for Newsweek defending President Obama from criticism by the “unhinged” right and the “purist” left.   He said the conservative critics who claim he is some sort of radical socialist are out of touch with reality, while liberal critics ask too much.  President Obama has accomplished as much as can reasonably be expected, Sullivan said; his critics from the left are like little children complaining because Santa Claus didn’t give them everything on their Christmas lists.  But for me, more fundamental things are at stake.

President Obama threatens the Constitution and the principle of the rule of law by asserting the authority to sign death warrants, to imprison people without trial or without charging them with a crime, to spy on American citizens without warrants and to make it a crime to reveal the government’s abuse of power, as well as committing acts of war on his own authority.  He has committed the nation to endless wars that can only result in endless suffering and endless enemies.  He has propped up a corrupt financial oligarchy rather than to try to reform it.

To my mind, none of these issues ought to divide liberals and conservatives.  Both should defend basic constitutional rights.  At different times in American history, both have opposed foreign interventions.  Principled liberals and principled conservatives should both oppose use of government funds to protect big Wall Street firms from the consequences to their constituencies.

But in fact, the majority of self-identified liberals and the majority of self-identified conservatives are anti-Constitution, anti-peace and pro-Wall Street.  That is why I have a good word for anybody, liberal, conservative or libertarian, to takes a stand against the country’s slide into authoritarianism, militarism and kleptocracy.

These are not questions of whether President Obama has been fair to various constituencies.  They are questions of the continuation of the United States as a free, democratic, sovereign and prosperous nation.  If my fears are wrong, show me how and why they are wrong.  If my fears are not wrong, it is a mistake to pin any hopes on Obama.

True, President Obama is on roughly the same path as his predecessor, main rivals and likely successors.  Since everybody in authority is doing the same bad thing, the problem is systemic and it is futile to blame it on a single individual.  What makes Obama worse than Dick Cheney or Newt Gingrich is that he appealed to the hope and idealism of young people that constructive change could be accomplished through the political process.  That hope has been dashed, and it will be a long time before it is recreated.

Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic asked Andrew Sullivan a pertinent question.

How would you have reacted in 2008 if any Republican ran promising to do the following?

(1) Codify indefinite detention into law; (2) draw up a secret kill list of people, including American citizens, to assassinate without due process; (3) proceed with warrantless spying on American citizens; (4) prosecute Bush-era whistleblowers for violating state secrets; (5) reinterpret the War Powers Resolution such that entering a war of choice without a Congressional declaration is permissible; (6) enter and prosecute such a war; (7) institutionalize naked scanners and intrusive full body pat-downs in major American airports; (8) oversee a planned expansion of TSA so that its agents are already beginning to patrol American highways, train stations, and bus depots; (9) wage an undeclared drone war on numerous Muslim countries that delegates to the CIA the final call about some strikes that put civilians in jeopardy; (10) invoke the state-secrets privilege to dismiss lawsuits brought by civil-liberties organizations on dubious technicalities rather than litigating them on the merits; (11) preside over federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries; (12) attempt to negotiate an extension of American troops in Iraq beyond 2011 (an effort that thankfully failed); (14) reauthorize the Patriot Act; (13) and select an economic team mostly made up of former and future financial executives from Wall Street firms that played major roles in the financial crisis.

via Politics – The Atlantic.

Glenn Greenwald wrote for Salon that an honest case for reelecting President Obama would go something like this.

Yes, I’m willing to continue to have Muslim children slaughtered by covert drones and cluster bombs, and America’s minorities imprisoned by the hundreds of thousands for no good reason, and the CIA able to run rampant with no checks or transparency, and privacy eroded further by the unchecked Surveillance State, and American citizens targeted by the President for assassination with no due process, and whistleblowers threatened with life imprisonment for “espionage,” and the Fed able to dole out trillions to bankers in secret, and a substantially higher risk of war with Iran (fought by the U.S. or by Israel with U.S. support) in exchange for less severe cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs, the preservation of the Education and Energy Departments, more stringent environmental regulations, broader health care coverage, defense of reproductive rights for women, stronger enforcement of civil rights for America’s minorities, a President with no associations with racist views in a newsletter, and a more progressive Supreme Court.

via Glenn Greenwald – Salon.

When Barack Obama was running for office, I was struck by the modesty of his proposals in The Audacity of Hope.  I didn’t expect major economic and social change.  To obey the law and the Constitution, to withdraw from failed military interventions and to prosecute criminals would have been enough, but evidently it was too much.

Andrew Sullivan said liberals fail to realize that President Obama is playing a “long game.”  They should trust Obama’s wisdom, he said.   I agree that Obama is an extremely talented and astute politician, and he is indeed playing a long game.  I question, however, whether he is playing the same game that Sullivan thinks he is.

President Obama has managed to maneuver the Democrats into putting Social Security and Medicare on the table as bargaining chips for modest tax increases on millionaires and billionaires – an objective that could have been accomplished by simply allowing the Bush tax cuts to lapse.   It is an act of political genius to make cutting Social Security and Medicare seem to be the moderate liberal positions.

I don’t see that there is a liberal vs. conservative position on prosecuting financial fraud, any more than there would be a liberal vs. conservative position on prosecuting pickpockets or burglars.  Financial fraud was an important factor in the banking crisis which sparked the recession.  Yet the Obama administration not only refuses to investigate, it tries to discourage state attorneys-general from investigating and prosecuting.

There is no political gain for him in either stance.  The only explanation is that he is a right-winger by conviction.

During the Bush administration, Andrew Sullivan was admirable in his fight against torture.  Of all the crimes against humanity, this is the worst, because it aims to destroy the human spirit rather than the body.  Sullivan credits President Obama with abolishing torture.  What Obama has done is to abolish torture at certain locations, such as Guantanamo Bay, and to state that torture is no longer officially sanctioned.  But there are places such as the Bagram center in Afghanistan where people are taken, and no journalist or human rights organization is permitted to look.  The treatment of Bradley Manning while he was at Quantico would have been called torture if it had been done by Iran or North Korea to an American serviceman.

During the campaign Barack Obama advocated a public option for health insurance, as a moderate alternative to the single=payer system advocated by Hillary Clinton.  Once in office, he didn’t even try to sponsor such a plan.  Instead he conferred with representatives of the health insurance and pharmaceutical interests, and bought their neutrality by promising no public option and no controls on drug prices.  The Affordable Care Act, which was enacted, is a system of compulsory private insurance.  It goes fully into effect in 2014.  Maybe it will be of net benefit, maybe not.

The third major achievement cited by Sullivan is repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  This was a good accomplishment, and Sullivan was right to credit Obama’s cautious approach with smoothing the way.  Okay, there’s one accomplishment that doesn’t require an asterisk (*) after it.  We have created one new right, the right of gay people to serve in the military, while wiping out historic rights such as habeas corpus and trial by jury that go back to Magna Carta.  This is not a good tradeoff.  It is not a necessary tradeoff.

Click on How Obama’s Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics for Andrew Sullivan’s complete article.

Click on Why Focus on Obama’s Dumbest Critics for Conor Friedersdorf’s complete critique.

Click on Obama’s Long Game, Ctd for Sullivan’s answer.

Click on Why the ‘We’re at War’ Defense of Obama Is Unpersuasive for Friedersdorf’s last word.

Click to view

The Deliberate Observer passed this on from Reflections in a Cloudy Mirror.