[Marxism] Obama's team of zombies

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

(A breach is definitely opening to the left among liberal supporters of 
Obama. This could have been written by Ralph Nader.)

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/02/07/sirota/print.html

Obama's team of zombies
Even under the new president, Washington is the same one-party town it 
always has been -- controlled not by Democrats or Republicans, but by 
thieves.

By David Sirota
Feb. 07, 2009

Only weeks ago, the political world was buzzing about a "team of 
rivals." America was told that finally, after years of yes men running 
the government, we were getting a president who would follow Abraham 
Lincoln’s lead, fill his administration with varying viewpoints, and 
glean empirically sound policy from the clash of ideas. Little did we 
know that "team of rivals" was what George Orwell calls "newspeak": an 
empty slogan "claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the 
plain facts."

Obama's national security team, for instance, includes not a single Iraq 
war opponent. The president has not only retained George W. Bush's 
defense secretary, Robert Gates, but also 150 other Bush Pentagon 
appointees. The only "rivalry" is between those who back increasing the 
already bloated defense budget by an absurd amount and those who aim to 
boost it by a ludicrous amount.

Of course, that lockstep uniformity pales in comparison to the White 
House's economic team -- a squad of corporate lackeys disguised as 
public servants.

At the top is Lawrence Summers, the director of Obama's National 
Economic Council. As Bill Clinton's treasury secretary in the late 
1990s, Summers worked with his deputy, Tim Geithner (now Obama's 
treasury secretary), and Clinton aide Rahm Emanuel (now Obama's chief of 
staff) to champion job-killing trade deals and deregulation that Obama 
Commerce Secretary Judd Gregg helped shepherd through Congress as a 
Republican senator. Now, this pinstriped band of brothers is proposing a 
"cash for trash" scheme that would force the public to guarantee the 
financial industry's bad loans. It's another ploy "to hand taxpayer 
dollars to the banks through a variety of complex mechanisms," says 
economist Dean Baker -- and noticeably absent is anything even 
resembling a "rival" voice inside the White House.

That's not an oversight. From former federal officials like Robert Reich 
and Brooksley Born, to Nobel Prize-winning economists like Joseph 
Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, to business leaders like Leo Hindery, there's 
no shortage of qualified experts who have challenged market 
fundamentalism. But they have been barred from an administration focused 
on ideological purity.

In Hindery's case, the blacklisting was explicit. Despite this venture 
capitalist establishing a well-respected think tank and serving as a top 
economic advisor to Obama's campaign, the Politico reports that "Obama's 
aides appear never to have taken his bid (for an administration post) 
seriously." Why? Because he "set himself up in opposition" to Wall 
Street's agenda.

The anecdote highlights how, regardless of election hoopla, Washington 
is the same one-party town it always has been -- controlled not by 
Democrats or Republicans, but by Kleptocrats (i.e., thieves). Their ties 
to money make them the undead zombies in the slash-and-burn horror flick 
that is American politics: No matter how many times their discredited 
theologies are stabbed, torched and shot down by verifiable failure, 
their careers cannot be killed. Somehow, these political immortals are 
allowed to mindlessly lunge forward, never answering to rivals -- even 
if that rival is the president himself.

Remember, while Obama said he wants to slash "billions of dollars in 
wasteful spending" at the Pentagon, his national security team is 
demanding a $40 billion increase in defense spending (evidently, the 
"ludicrous" faction got its way). Obama also said he wants to crack down 
on the financial industry, strengthen laws encouraging the government to 
purchase American goods, and transform trade policy. Yet, his economic 
team is not just promising to support more bank bailouts, but also to 
weaken "Buy America" statutes and make sure new legislation "doesn't 
signal a change in our overall stance on trade," according to the 
president’s spokesman.

Indeed, if an authentic “rivalry” was going to erupt, it would have been 
between Obama's promises and his team of zombies. Unfortunately, the 
latter seems to have won before the competition even started.

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