What Bothers Me About an Obama Presidency - Just One Example

NashVegas

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Fri May-16-08 11:26 AM
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What Bothers Me About an Obama Presidency - Just One Example

Edited on Fri May-16-08 11:49 AM by Crisco

I fear the movement we're a part of will actually be pushed backwards.

Paul Street, Z Mag - Obama has lent his support to the aptly named Hamilton Project, formed by corporate-neoliberal Citigroup chair Robert Rubin and other Wall Street Democrats to counter populist rebellion against corporatist tendencies within the Democratic Party. . . Obama was recently hailed as a Hamiltonian believer in limited government and free trade by Republican New York Times columnist David Brooks, who praises Obama for having "a mentality formed by globalization, not the SDS." . . .
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Says "everything is on the table" with Social Security.
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At worst, Obama will be one more fox placed in the chicken coop of democracy by the corporations and their outsourced workers in the media and politics. At best, he will rebel against his upbringing and offer America something new and better. Most likely, however, is that he will serve as a deeply frustrating transition between what should never have happened and what needs to be done - stabilizing our national dysfunctions as they continue to await proper and necessary treatment.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_12339.cfm

We are on the brink of a populist uprising - and along comes this new uniter (or so we're told) who makes a point of telling Democratic donors they should put their money in his hands and eschew donating to outside interest groups.

Congress yesterday passed a farm bill that further corporatizes our food supply by subsidizing the largest farmers of all. This is significant because food activism has become the most effective populist push since divestiture in apartheid South Africa. If anything, it's even larger than that movement was.

Two years ago, The Economist noted the trend in a story called "Food Politics":

HAS the supermarket trolley dethroned the ballot box? Voter turnout in most developed countries has fallen in recent decades, but sales of organic, Fairtrade and local food�each with its own political agenda�are growing fast. Such food allows shoppers to express their political opinions, from concern for the environment to support for poor farmers, every time they buy groceries. And shoppers are jumping at the opportunity, says Marion Nestle, a nutritionist at New York University and the author of �Food Politics� (2002) and �What to Eat� (2006). �What I hear as I talk to people is this phenomenal sense of despair about their inability to do anything about climate change, or the disparity between rich and poor,� she says. �But when they go into a grocery store they can do something�they can make decisions about what they are buying and send a very clear message.�

Those in the food-activism movement agree. �It definitely has a positive effect,� says Ian Bretman of Fairtrade Labelling Organisations (FLO) International, the Fairtrade umbrella group. Before the advent of ethical and organic labels, he notes, the usual way to express political views using food was to impose boycotts. But such labels make a political act out of consumption, rather than non-consumption�which is far more likely to produce results, he suggests.

And of course Michael Pollan weighed in on the Farm Bill mechanics last autumn:

A new politics has sprouted up around the farm bill, traditionally a parochial piece of legislation thrashed out in private between the various agricultural interests (wheat growers versus corn growers; meatpackers versus ranchers) without a whole lot of input or attention from mere eaters.

Not this year. The eaters have spoken, much to the consternation of farm-state legislators who have fought hard � and at least so far with success � to preserve the status quo.

Americans have begun to ask why the farm bill is subsidizing high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils at a time when rates of diabetes and obesity among children are soaring, or why the farm bill is underwriting factory farming (with subsidized grain) when feedlot wastes are polluting the countryside and, all too often, the meat supply. For the first time, the public health community has raised its voice in support of overturning farm policies that subsidize precisely the wrong kind of calories (added fat and added sugar), helping to make Twinkies cheaper than carrots and Coca-Cola competitive with water.

All three of the senators who are presidential candidates were absent from the vote on what the NYT called a "disgraceful" bill. The one who spoke out against it? McCain. Go figure.

NYT: The bill is an inglorious piece of work tailored to the needs of big agriculture and championed by not only the usual bipartisan farm state legislators but also the Democratic leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Every five years we get a new farm bill, and each time we are reminded that even reformers like Ms. Pelosi cannot resist the blandishments and power of the farmers.

And it's the second time since 2001 a bill has passed that's veto-proof.