Monthly Archives: February 2009

In today’s Washington Post, ultra-conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer writes that Obama wants to make the U.S. like Europe. Some Americans like me who actually live in Europe don’t think that is necessarily a bad idea.

I think I have already made this point ad nauseum, but I will repeat myself: throughout continental Europe, health care is free and universal and there is no noticeable difference in quality to that in the U.S. Meanwhile, public transportation and infrastructure is very noticeably superior in Europe and crime rates are much lower. And imagine, with fewer vacation days and labor strikes, American workers are actually on par with their French counterparts in terms of productivity. Continue reading →

Recently, I have been making the argument that the U.S. should be defined more by government intervention than by truly free market capitalism. Since Reagan in the 1980s, in spite of the propaganda to the contrary, we have seen a consistent and significant increase in deficit spending and in the government’s share of GDP (i.e., more, not less, government participation in the economy). Thus, it seems completely absurd to hear Republicans suddenly complain that the Obama administration is somehow bringing back “big government”.

Maybe Obama’s promise to provide universal health care significantly alters the rhetoric of the role of government in society. Some conservatives may call that type of government intervention — spending tax payer dollars on services that go to tax payers — socialism, but then how would they describe the previous thirty years of government intervention? The government intervention in Iraq, equaling the cost of the stimulus; defense spending disproportionate to that of the rest of the world, without a convincing military victory since World War II; deregulation of financial services, health care, and industry that does not benefit the consumer or the free market but only the banks, HMOs, and oil companies; and policies that subsidize and perpetuate mega farms and uncompetitive mining and automobile companies at the environmental and health expense of citizens. When the government, be it at the helm of Bush or Obama, passes bailouts and stimulus packages that protect the mismanaged from the free market, that is not socialism. It is more like national corporatism, a.k.a. fascism.

Even the moral hazard argument has been applied with a clear bias. When people have been unable to meet their mortgages, there has been a tendency to say tough luck, caveat emptor. You were stupid and the government’s role isn’t to help the stupid. But when Wall Street can’t meet its obligations, it is still considered highly qualified, sophisticated, and its livelihood essential. Simon Johnson describes the banking industry as an oligarchy comparable to those in emerging markets. Ironically, the U.S. is bailing out the oligarchy with the exact opposite remedy we have always proscribed to failing economies. So then where do these bailouts and stimuli leave the U.S. on the political spectrum? Closer to socialism or fascism?

I just read this article about how a man kills his wife by cutting her head off. The title of the article is “Muslim TV exec accused of beheading his wife”. Maybe I could understand if this article were written say in the Spanish press where the nationality or religion of a crime suspect (when not Spanish) is considered newsworthy as if criminality and ethnicity were intimately related. But in the American press, political correctness and journalistic integrity long ago recognized the racist pitfalls in defining suspects by their race, religion or ethnicity.

Nevertheless, a man kills his wife and he happens to be Muslim, so there is the presumption that Islam is the culprit. Isn’t it funny how the political correctness of the American media and society would never have allowed anyone to bring up the man’s race or religion were he Jewish, Christian, Black, or Hispanic?  It would not be considered newsworthy, but Islamophobia is so strong that no one complains and everyone is eager to draw conclusions. Meanwhile men are killing there wives all the time throughout the world. In Spain, it is actually a big problem, but no one is claiming there is a Spanish tradition of honor killing.

I love my country. I love the fact that we are a nation based on a political ideology of separation of powers and separation of church and state. I love our notions of equal protection and due process, and the uniqueness of our civil rights movement. I love that we are a nation of immigrants and have no official language. You won’t find that anywhere else in the world.

But just as you won’t find a Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, or George Soros flourishing elsewhere in the world, the United States is due for a serious wake up call; it is falling behind. The best example of this are the ridiculous accusations of “socialism” by America’s conservatives as a last ditch effort to dissimulate their own lack of ideas and deflate Obama’s optimistic bubble.

Let’s look at the facts. Republicans have nothing left but fear-mongering, falling back on the 1980s Reagan anti-communism rhetoric to call Obama’s stimulus plan socialism. Ironically, just as the Republicans have deified Reagan as capitalism’s heroic slayer of communism, the majority of the world now views American capitalism as the principle culprit in the global economic crisis. America has become the easy scapegoat.  Here’s how the story goes: when we’re not bombing the world to fuel our SUVs at home, we’re bullying countries to open their markets to American goods and services and to liberalize their banking systems. They followed suit, got burned, and now have to pay the price for a failed economic policy.

As I have already mentioned, free market capitalism has never been honestly practiced in the U.S. Rather, our government has consistently intervened, through corporate tax breaks, licenses and permits, deregulation and military action, in favor of large companies at the cost of taxpayers and the free market. So what are the Republicans proposing now? More of the same. As Paul Krugman writes in The New York Times:

But it’s now clear that the [Republican] party’s commitment to deep voodoo — enforced, in part, by pressure groups that stand ready to run primary challengers against heretics — is as strong as ever. In both the House and the Senate, the vast majority of Republicans rallied behind the idea that the appropriate response to the abject failure of the Bush administration’s tax cuts is more Bush-style tax cuts.

It’s time that we had an honest conversation, and by honest I am mean free of the brainwashed anxiety about socialism and bread lines. It’s time to face the fact that we have fallen behind the rest of the world. How much better are we than other developed nations? Continue reading →

My recent conspicuous absence was due to having spent the past few days in Dubai, UAE where I went to get a feel for the place and visit my friend, Deema (who has been there now for close to two years).

Dubai is, without a doubt, a very strange place indeed. In particular, it is incredibly difficult to describe. It feels like a series of exists on an interstate highway cluttered by construction sites and flanked by the desert on one side and five star beach resorts on the other. While the artificial taste of it all (not to mention the plague of detour signs everywhere) may not make you want to stay, the traditional Arab hospitality and welcoming nature of the Emirati people — something that Western Islamophobe propaganda has hoped to destroy –ultimately shines through, making Dubai a beacon for regional pride and a showcase for respectful multicultural coexistence.