Obama’s Misguided Agenda

Doing the Business of DC's Elites
by DEAN BAKER


The debate around the budget is getting ever further removed from reality. As every budget expert knows, the reason that we have seen large budget deficits in the last five years is that the economy plunged following the collapse of the housing bubble. This collapse cost us more than $600 billion in annual construction demand and more than $500 billion in annual consumption demand.

This lost demand gave us large deficits because it led to plunging tax collections and more spending on programs like unemployment insurance. We deliberately raised deficits by roughly $300 billion annually in 2009 and 2010 with the stimulus package.

These deficits were supporting the economy, making up for the loss of private sector demand. They took the deficit from a very modest 1.2 percent of GDP in 2007 to a peak of more than 9 percent of GDP in 2009.

Unfortunately, rather than deal with the reality – that we need deficits to sustain demand in a context where the private sector will not do it – the politicians in Washington have gotten hysterical. This is like complaining about our use of water when the school is on fire with the kids still inside.

In spite of the hysterics coming out of Washington, the interest burden of the debt is near a post-war low. Even if no further cuts are made, it is not projected to get back to its early 1990s level for more than a decade.

In this context, it is unfortunate that President Obama has proposed a budget that has substantial cuts to Social Security. The vast majority of seniors are already struggling. The proposed cuts would be a reduction in their income of more than 2 percent. By contrast, his tax increase last fall cut the after-tax income of the typical wealthy household by less than 0.6 percent.

The budget should be focused on expanding the economy and creating jobs, ideally through more spending in infrastructure, education and research. It should also include funding for state and local governments to reverse layoffs and cutbacks that have slowed growth and raised unemployment.

Unfortunately, President Obama has accepted the agenda of the Washington elite, putting cuts to Social Security and Medicare at the center of his budget and offering little that will help to speed the growth of the economy and create jobs.

News is Scripted

Corporate-Driven Report Exemplifies Failed Thinking on US Education

Tuesday, March 20, 2012 by The Washington Post
Condi Rice-Joel Klein report: Not the new A Nation at Risk

by Valerie Strauss

A new report being officially released today — by a Council of Foreign Relations task force chaired by Joel Klein and Condoleezza Rice — seems to want very much to be seen as the new A Nation at Risk, the seminal 1983 report that warned that America’s future was threatened by a “rising tide of mediocrity” in the country’s public schools.

It’s a pale imitation.

The U.S. Education Reform and National Security report, to be sure, has some similar language and themes of a Nation at Risk. It says (over and over) that America’s national security is threatened because America’s public schools aren’t adequately preparing young people to “fill the ranks of the Foreign Service, the intelligence community, and the armed forces” (or diplomats, spies and soldiers).

But it takes a very different view of the public education system than the authors of A Nation at Risk, who sought to find ways to improve public schools and treat the system as a civic institution. The new report seems to look at public schools as if they are the bad guys that need to be put out of business, with a new business taking over, funded with public dollars.

A Nation at Risk made some basic recommendations, which included improving the curriculum, raising expectations for all children and improving the teaching force.

The Klein-Rice report makes three broad recommendations to fix the stated problem.

It calls for:

• expanding the Common Core State Standard initiative to include subjects beyond math and English Language Arts;
• an expansion of charter schools and vouchers
• an annual “national security readiness audit” that would look at how schools are addressing the country’s needs through increased foreign language programs, technology curriculum and more.

The report cites lots of statistics that paint public schools in the worst possible light, and continues the trend of comparing America’s educational system with that of high-achieving countries — but doesn’t note that these countries generally don’t do the kinds of things these reformers endorse. Its recommendations would lead to further privatization of public schools and even more emphasis on standardized testing.

Any reader of this blog may recall a post I recently did where I spelled out what the report would say well before it came out. I was pretty much on target. How did I know? The president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard N. Haass, chose Klein and Rice to be the co-chairs, according to Anya Schmemann, the council’s task force program director. And he most certainly knew what kind of report he would get.

Klein was chancellor of of New York City public schools for eight years, running it under the general notion that public education should be run like a business. He closed schools, pushed the expansion of charter schools and launched other initiatives before resigning in 2010 after it was revealed that the standardized test scores that he kept pointing to as proof of the success of his reforms were based on exams that got increasingly easy for students to take. Now he works for Rupert Murdoch.

When one member of the commission suggested that people with dissenting views be brought before the panel to present other ideas, and Diane Ravitch’s name came up, Klein vetoed it, members of the panel said. Ravitch is the leading voice against the test-based accountability movement and “school choice,” but Klein, who has long had tense relations with the education historian, didn’t want the panel to hear from her.

Rice was secretary of state under president George W. Bush. She has expressed her admiration for Bush’s key education initiative No Child Left Behind, which ushered in the current era of high-stakes testing but has now been called a failure by both Republicans and Democrats.
And talk about stacking the deck! The task force had 30 members, including a long list of people who support the kind of reform Klein implemented in New York. They include Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America; Margaret Spellings, former secretary of education; Jonah M. Edelman of Stand for Children, and Richard Barth of the KIPP Foundation. There were some members with differing perspectives, including Stanford University’s Linda Darling-Hammond and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, but they were in the small minority.

Here’s the complete list of committee members. Five of the members have astericks by their names, indicating that they wrote dissents to the report.

Carole Artigiani*, Global Kids, Inc; Craig R. Barrett, Intel Corporation; Richard Barth, KIPP Foundation; Edith L. Bartley, United Negro College Fund; Gaston Caperton, The College Board; Linda Darling-Hammond*, Stanford University; Jonah M. Edelman, Stand for Children; Roland Fryer Jr., Harvard University; Ann M. Fudge; Ellen V. Futter*, American Museum of Natural History; Preston M. Geren, Sid W. Richardson Foundation; Louis V. Gerstner Jr.; Allan E. Goodman, Institute of International Education; Frederick M. Hess, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research; Shirley Ann Jackson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Joel I. Klein, News Corporation; Wendy Kopp, Teach For America; Jeffrey T. Leeds, Leeds Equity Partners, LLC; Julia Levy, Culture Craver; Michael L. Lomax, United Negro College Fund; Eduardo J.Padrón, Miami Dade College; Matthew F. Pottinger, China Six LLC; Laurene Powell Jobs, Emerson Collective; Condoleezza Rice, Stanford University; Benno C. Schmidt, Avenues: The World School; Stanley S. Shuman, Allen& Company LLC; Leigh Morris Sloane, Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs; Margaret Spellings, Margaret Spellings and Company, Stephen M. Walt*, Harvard Kennedy School; Randi Weingarten*, American Federation of Teachers.

Obama's Economist Pick Seen as Sign of New Agenda

Tuesday, December 28, 2010 by Associated Press


HONOLULU - Among the first announcements President Barack Obama will make upon returning from his Hawaiian vacation is his choice for top economic adviser, a decision that could signal a new direction for the administration as it struggles to jumpstart the economy and wrestle down unemployment.

With the unemployment rate at (9.8) percent, the private sector struggling to maintain steady growth and the public ranking the economy as the top concern, Obama's handling of the issue over the coming months is certain to play a central role in his reelection bid. The question is, with whom will he entrust to help shape (and sell) his economic vision?

It's far more than a personnel move. The replacement for the outgoing director of the National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers, will have a guiding hand in nearly every economic decision the Obama administration makes, and the president's choice is being closely watched for signs of where he wants to take his economic agenda in the second half of his term.

Will he tap the business world with a figure such as Roger Altman, an investment banker and Clinton administration alumnus who might carry too much baggage from his association with Wall Street? Will he turn to academia instead, calling on a scholar such Yale President Richard Levin? Or will he go with deeply experienced insiders such as deficit hawk Gene Sperling at the Treasury Department or Jason Furman, the council's deputy director?

With the unemployment rate at 9.8 percent, the private sector struggling to maintain steady growth and the public ranking the economy as the top concern, Obama's handling of the issue over the coming months is certain to play a central role in his reelection bid.

The selection process for the council post has dragged on for months. Summers announced his resignation in September, and many in the administration knew well before then that he planned to return to Harvard University after serving two years at the White House.

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said he expects Obama to make an announcement in early January, and blamed any delay on the frenzied legislative session that consumed the White House through the end of the year.

The administration's thinking on how to fill the job has evolved since Summers announced his resignation. The initial view - both inside and outside the White House - was that Obama should name a business leader to the post, in an attempt to give the private sector a greater voice in the administration and ease the perception that the president is anti-business.

But the administration now believes the relationship between Obama and the business community has started to thaw. For example, both sides praised each other following Obama's meeting with CEOs earlier this month. The White House has grown more willing to find another prominent job for a private sector appointee while leaving the council post to an economic heavyweight who can coordinate the advice Obama is receiving from throughout the administration.

"To get a business person in there, it seems like an odd place," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. "And if he does need someone from business, I don't think he would want someone from Wall Street."

It's that Wall Street connection that's been a knock against one of the leading candidates for the job, Altman, founder of Evercore Partners. Altman does have government experience, though, having served as deputy treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton.

Sperling, another top contender, has also dabbled in Wall Street, advising Goldman Sachs and other financial firms, although he's most well-known for his work in the Clinton and Obama administrations, including his current post as counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Sperling helped craft the 1993 Deficit Reduction Act, and his appointment could show Obama is serious about his pledge to address the mounting debt and deficit next year.

Levin, who as president of Yale shares Summers' academic pedigree, is likely to favor stepped up Wall Street regulation. Furman is also said to be in the running for a promotion from the deputy's job.

Both Sperling and Furman would bring an insider's knowledge of the Obama White House and the president's economic policies to the job, attributes that may not necessarily be to their benefit. Critics have accused Obama's economic advisers of not fully grasping the depths of the crisis, and the team's prediction that the president's massive stimulus bill would keep unemployment below 8 percent has caused headaches within the administration.

Selecting an outsider to fill the top economic job would help Obama counter the notion that he's too insular and unwilling to accept advice from outside the administration. He filled two other high-profile vacancies on his economic team this year from within the administration, replacing Budget Director Peter Orszag with State Department official Jacob Lew, and Council of Economic Advisers chair Christina Romer with Austan Goolsbee, who was serving as a member of the council.

"They should be looking to take things in a new direction," Baker said. "I don't think more of the same is the answer."

Beyond the economic qualifications of the candidates he's considering, the president is also believed to be looking for a council director who can serve as both a good manager and a team player. For all of Summers' intellectual heft, he brought along a healthy ego and an often prickly temperament. Rumors swirled of conflict among Summers, Orszag and Romer, a rarity in a White House run by a president with little patience for drama.

Bring the Troops Home, Bust the Banksters, Democratize the Economy

A Winning Message
Tuesday, September 14, 2010 by The Nation
by John Nichols

Baraboo, WI - Decrying the excesses of big banks and Wall Street speculators, the Rev. Jesse Jackson told more than 7,000 cheering progressives at a county fairgrounds in rural Wisconsin Saturday that: "There is a contest for the soul of America."

Urged on by the crowd that had gathered for Fighting Bob Fest, the annual progressive chautauqua on the Sauk County Fairgrounds in this central Wisconsin community, the civil rights leader and two-time presidential candidate declared that America would have to choose between being of a country where a tiny elite controls the vast majority of wealth or one where the great mass of Americans have a chance to survive and thrive.

"We cannot subsidize bankers and leave people homeless on the streets of America," Jackson said. "It's time for a change!"

"We will fight back!" chanted the crowd, which packed the grandstand and field for one of the largest Bob Fest gatherings in the nine-year history of the event.

For Democratic strategists who worry about an "enthusiasm gap" in this year's mid-term election season, Jackson offered the antedote. His adamant address had thousands of people -- many of them from rural and smalltown Wisconsin-on their feet and cheering. And this year's Fighting Bob Fest drew more than twice as many people as a highly publicized and expensively promoted "Tea Party" event-which featured television personalies, "Joe the Plumber" and Congressman Paul Ryan, R-Janesville-held the same day in Racine, Wisconsin.

The enthusiastic response for Jackson's populist speech offered a reminder that there is no enthusiasm gap. There's a message gap.

When the message is muscular, the enthusiasm is there.

Jackson wasn't the only one drawing cheers on a day that heard rousing speeches from former Texas Secretary of Agriculture Jim Hightower, Congressman David Obey, Congresswomen Tammy Baldwin and Gwen Moore, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett and other prominent speakers from Wisconsin and across the nation.

A Saturday that began with overcast skies and scattered rain showers ended with bright sunshine and a rollicking, old-school rallying of the progressive faithful in the tradition of Robert M. La Follette, the Wisconsin governor, senator and 1924 presidential candidate for whom the festival is named.

Jackson, who was honored with a lifetime achievement award by festival organizers, hailed the progressive movement led by La Follette, which campaigned for economic and social justice at home while opposing empire building abroad.

Sounding antiwar themes that were very much in the La Follette tradition, Jackson called for bringing US troops home and reallocating resources from fighting wars abroad to fighting unemployment at home.

"We want for America what we provide for Iraq and Afghanistan," said Jackson. "We want jobs for Chicago...jobs for Milwaukee...jobs for Sauk County."

Sounding economic justice themes that repeatedly brought the crowd to its feet, Jackson warned that: "We've globalized capital without globalizing human rights, without globalizing workers' rights, women's rights, children's rights. Let's democratize our economy!