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Will President Barack Obama be our savior in this time of crisis, an agent of true change? Or
he just be the new, less-buffoonish hired executive for USA, Inc., employed by the wealthy elites to run the corrupt money system, to keep saving banks and big investors at the expense of us working stiffs,
and to further empower the corporations that serve as the elites' mechanism of control and wealth accumulation?
We're gathering clues to the answer by keeping an eye on Obama's main cabinet appointments. On the "fix the financial crisis" front, the cabinet news so far isn't good:
- He's announced that
Lawrence Summers
will lead the National Economic Council, thus giving a top economic-advisor position to someone who was instrumental in the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1998, a move that set the stage for the current financial mess.
- He will appoint as Treasury Secretary
Mr. Timothy Geithner, who is currently chairman of the New York Fed, a man who has been in the inner circles of the cabal that is in the process of injecting massive amounts of future taxpayer wealth to the private banking cartel—8+ trillion
at last count.
- He's chosen Rahm Emanuel to be his Chief of Staff. In Emanuel's 2008 bid to be re-elected to the House of Representatives, he was the House candidate who received the
most contributions
from hedge funds, private equity firms and the large securities/investment industry.
So, what we have here is essentially a new team of financial fixers that can seamlessly take the baton from the old group of financial fixers because, surprise!, they're all from the same alma mater—the school of "save Wall Street, screw Main Street."
Will Obama's appointments in areas not related to the financial crisis turn out to be better? Maybe, but given the enormity of the meltdown mess, they may not really matter much (i.e. if we don't reverse course sharply on the chosen banking solutions, we're headed for a train wreck).
But just for talking purposes, here are some people who might have ended up as part of a Grinning Planet cabinet:
- Energy Secretary — Robert Hirsch, one of the few Beltway insiders who truly understands the dangers of Peak Oil and the inadequacy of our current energy strategy.
- Head, Environmental Protection Agency — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a staunch defender of clean air, water, land, and food; someone who has fought tooth and claw against the regulatory rollbacks of the last 8 years.
- Agriculture Secretary — Michael Pollan, a food wonk and author of numerous books on what's wrong with our food system, a guy who could truly reform USDA, which has become a front group for Big Ag.
- Head, Consumer Protection Agency — Ralph Nader, perhaps the most important protector of consumer and citizen rights that has ever walked the planet.
- Commerce Secretary — Katherine Austin Fitts, a former federal executive who understands the importance of reversing the globalization trend and moving us toward localized economies.
If Obama surrounds himself with more of the "usual suspects" from former administrations and the corporate-government revolving door, the future will yield more of the same ugliness the past is throwing at us now. We need fresh faces with a proven track record of serving the public good instead of private wealth.
Finally, if Obama truly wants to put us on a new path, he will have to show that crime does not pay. That means he will need to start a broad campaign of investigation and prosecution for the criminal activities that are now euphemistically called "the financial crisis," "the bailout," and "Federal Reserve policy." We must clean house, and that means jailing the kleptocrats and their minions—and recovering the trillions they are in the process of stealing from us.
We're watching, Barack.
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Dear President-Elect Obama...
The most important thing you can do, beginning now, even before you take office, is to start being honest with the American people—honest about the anti-regulation, free-market "casino finance" capitalism that has led us to this financial crisis, a black hole that will continue sucking in as much taxpayer money as we foolishly throw into it; honest about the impossibility of solving our energy crisis with supply-side solutions, particularly when it comes to liquid fuels; honest about the need for Americans to abandon the debt-ridden consumerist culture they have adopted and return to more meaningful values, including saving for the future, valuing community and local economies, and having respect for the environment that sustains us.
The last person to display such honesty was Jimmy Carter. We foolishly rejected his sane energy-policy plea and instead cheered his bellicose Carter Doctrine, a license to pursue wars for oil, an activity in which every subsequent president engaged.
Dishonest politicians have been pursuing disastrous policies for too long, lying to Americans, coddling us into a state of dependence on governments and corporations rather than on self-sufficiency and community cooperation . It's time to tell the American people the truth about the problems we face, and that no amount of Paulson magic or empirical power projection is going to fix it. Then maybe we can move on to real solutions.
-- Grinning Planet
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