Why Putin hates Obama

Introduction and rankings

No relationship of world leaders of the 21st century reaches the sheer scale of the animosity and importance between President Vladimir Putin and President Barack Obama. The reasons are vast, Putin has cultivated a cult of personality over the last 18 years and used religion to cement his power, Obama on the other hand was raised Unitarian Universalist and goes to a liberal Christian church, mentioning God in his speeches from time to time, but keeps his faith very personal. Putin has overseen a gross reduction of rights for LGBT people in Russia while Obama decided to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court and overturned Don't Ask Don't Tell. The Supreme Court Justices he appointed decided that gay marriage would be the law of the land.

Russia and the United States are very different political cultures. My favorite index for ranking democracies is the Democracy Index because it has the most variables which are calculated from a wide variety of experts around the world. When it comes to the Democracy Index, America under Obama started at 8.22/10, and ended in 2016 with a score of 7.98/10. The main reason for this decline is Functioning of Government and Political Participation. I suspect this mostly has to do with Congress who refused to work with Obama on even the most fundamental and basic of all duties such as passing a budget. The image this sent the American people hurt our nation dearly, and the Republicans will hopefully pay this year for their behavior. Russia on the other hand has a score of 3.17/10, scoring poorly on every metric. America is ranked as a flawed democracy (which is from 6-8) and Russia is ranked as Authoritarian. We can get back up to a full democracy, but is going to take hard work.

Political experts in the United States are generally fairly certain that our votes are counted accurately. Political experts in Russia know the system is rigged. This is reflected in our Democracy Index scores.

Importance compared to other major International Relations

The relationship between the United States and Russia matters a lot, America has the second largest economy in the world (behind China due to the growth of their economy), and Russia has the 6th largest. The three between us are India, Japan, and Germany. China is our 3rd largest trading partner, India is a military ally of the United States, a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, Japan is a Major Non-NATO ally, and Germany is a member of NATO.

During the Obama administration, both China and the United States worked hard to keep our relationship friendly despite major disputes and ideological differences. China has even cooperated with the United States some on North Korea, though not as much as we would like. Despite the United States officially once recognizing the Republic of China as the rightful government of all of China the People's Republic of China and the United States are as friendly as possible. This is while China has an authoritarian rating with the Democracy Index and is ranked 176/180 on the Freedom of the Press Index, which keeps us from being closer. China also maintains fairly friendly relations with Russia. The American-Chinese relationship is exceedingly complex, and deserves an article of its own.

Russia is the largest country the United States has major diplomatic challenges with.

Differences in human rights in detail

When it comes to human rights this is where the differences between the United States come into full focus. The United States has some real challenges with the spying on Americans and our allies without their knowledge under the PATRIOT ACT, police brutality, and racism, which Russia has as well. But still, when a journalist is arrested in America it makes headlines, and in Russia it is practically normal. America is ranked as a satisfactory situation under the Press Freedom Index, Russia is ranked as a difficult situation. I can write publicly on Twitter that I think Trump is a total traitor who deserves to be arrested. His own staff while being in court can openly say that Trump told them to do illegal things, and that is not why they will be in jail for the rest of their lives, it will be because they actually did such things. It also significantly degrades Trump's legitimacy and political power. This never happens in Russia. The case of Edward Snowden is unusual, particularly that he fled the country. Chelsea Manning was pardoned for a crime of releasing classified documents by the same administration which prosecuted her. America is very different from Russia. Obama is the polar opposite of Putin.

When it comes to gay rights, America's highest court legalized gay marriage nationwide while gay men in Chechnya are being slaughtered.

There are prison camps in Russia where North Koreans are held, and the United States has the largest prison population in the world. This is probably the biggest similarity between the United States and Russia. This is however differs wildly state by state, ranging from less than 200 per 100,000 inhabitants in Maine to over 900 per 100,000 in Louisiana. This is partly due to Federalism. This again deserves a series of articles by itself, it is a huge, wildly complex, and important topic.

There is one other index which I find comes close to the diversity of the Democracy Index, and that is the Social Progress Index. This also measures across a wide variety of factors and then averages them all together (with weighting) to get a clearer picture of how every country in the world is doing compared to every other. The USA does fairly well as the 18th country in the world with a score of 86.43 out of 100. We fall the most when it comes to the Tolerance and Inclusion dimension (which should surprise no one), and our Health and Wellness score is 75/100 (which again, should surprise no one). Russia is ranked 67th in the world, with a score of 67.17 out of 100. They are worst at personal rights and tolerance and inclusion. Both the USA and Russia do best at nutrition and access to basic medical care. This also is not surprising given the massive food surplus in the world today.

The important difference between the Social Progress Index and Democracy Index is that they are focusing on measuring different things. The Democracy Index is focused only on the freedom of the people, it is not based on economic data at all. Social Progress Index takes into account freedom, but also general material well being.

With such large differences between our human rights across most metrics it is no wonder the United States and Russia have a strained relationship.

Foreign Relationships

When President Obama was in office, he had a foreign policy which was focused on expanding American influence in the world, building relationships with former adversaries, and building strong trading relationships to reduce the probability of war in the future. He and Secretary Clinton traveled to almost every country in the world.

Secretary Clinton Travel Map 

President Obama Travel Map

War on Terror

Iraq was one of the most important relationships of his presidency since we were in a vicious war in the beginning of his term. He gave Iraq strict deadlines in which to get their country functional upon entering office, which allowed us to significantly draw down our presence there, and forcing the government to be more responsible than they were in the 2000s. It is still one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and the rise of ISIS has put the country under an immense amount of pressure. We still have troops in Iraq and until there is significant nation building in the country that is unlikely to change.

In regards to Afghanistan, the war still has not ended as of 2018. President Obama significantly reduced the number of American troops in Afghanistan, but we have a continued presence. Afghanistan needs significant nation building, with institutions such as education since their literacy rate is only 38.2%, the government needs to make it easier to do business in the country, and the presence of Islamic radicals in Helmand province is an ongoing threat. Afghanistan has all of the factors to increase the probability of terrorism which need to be targeted. President Obama succeeded in taking out Osama bin Laden, but many pieces of nation building still need to occur.

The War on Terror is not going to end any time soon.

Middle East and Iran

The Middle East was a major source of tension between President Obama and Putin. With the growing Arab Spring, the possibility of Syria moving towards a democratic government would have removed Russia's only Mediterranean military port, significantly reducing Russian influence in the region, leaving America with strong allies in practically every other country on the coast. This was unacceptable to Putin's realpolitik policy, and instead of trying to keep Syria as an ally under a change of dictatorship made the decision to support Assad as much as possible for as long as possible. We ended up then with a proxy war against the three great powers of the Middle East. One is the United States of course, who supports the rebels, Putin of course supports Assad, and Saudi Arabian plutocrats support ISIS according to a memo sent by Secretary Clinton to President Obama.  The war continue to move on, and this will be continued in the section on Trump's Presidency.

Iran is the other major conflict between Putin and Obama in the Islamic World. After the Shah was overthrown in 1979, the United States had very poor relations with the Iranian government until the zenith of President Obama's term. After years of economic isolation from two the of the world's largest economies, the President and the European Union went to Iran to get them to accept international nuclear inspectors and stop building a nuclear bomb. This deal succeeded, Iran signed, and sanctions were lifted. This was a major blow to both Saudi Arabia and to Russia. Iran and Syria had been Russia's two major allies in the region after the fall of Saddam Hussein (who had support of the Soviets for decades) and they had both been isolated from the United States. Bringing them both to a place where they can cooperate with both Russia and the United States would mean that Russia wouldn't be their sole military partner.

Losing both allies in the Middle East would have made Russian military power in the region diminish significantly. While the United States has a mixed record on our alliances, we have major democracies like Canada, all of the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Australia, etc. etc., we also have allies like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Israel, and more with problematic human rights accords, who maintain power through force.

Russia has no such allies. There is no country in the world which has a strong democracy and a strong economy which has a military alliance with Russia. In this way, the closest alliances of both countries mirror that of their closest partner. America's most important alliances are all democracies, Russia's are all dictatorships, and the list is short. The list of countries which have significantly closer relations to Russia than the United States are Belarus, Syria, Iran, Kazakhstan, North Korea, and Uzbekistan. None of these countries are full democracies, and are all seriously corrupt. They all maintain power by crushing all dissent with an iron fist. This strategy does work in the short term, because Russia has military alliances with all of them, but they survive by keeping the people down. As soon as the people of these countries have a voice, it usually ends up like a deja vu from 1989-1991 once again, and they choose to not be friendly with their former overlord.

For Putin this has a major historical and geographical dimension. Despite having a low GDP per capita, and no good port access, Russia was one of two dominant powers in the world for half of the 20th century. After the people got a voice across Eastern Europe that is no longer the case. The crash has been incredible, and Putin is seeing his iron fist policy merely push countries further into the European Union. Ironically, the growth of the European Union might not have been so fast in the 2000s if Putin hadn't scared them all away. But Realpolitik is the only lens which he can see the world through. He fully believes there cannot be mutual gains. On top of this problem, Russia has a terrible economy based on natural resources despite having a highly educated population. Despite a literacy rate of almost 100%, Russia is a lower middle income country with their only good port being Vladivostok, a rather small city as far from the capital as possible on the Sea of Japan. Murmansk is iced in for half the year, ships from St. Petersburg has to go through Danish (NATO) waters to go anywhere, and Sochi is not very small and any ships have to go through the Strait of Hormuz (NATO) to get to the Mediterranean, where almost every country on the northern shore is once again a member of NATO. Watching the former colonies of his country ally themselves with the United States and choose to not be allied with Russia at all is a sign of the further fall of Russia into geopolitical obscurity.

Obama's making peace with Iran, further projecting American geopolitical influence right into the heart of what used to be solid Russian territory is a throwback to the end of the USSR when Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan countered the Soviet expansion with the Mujahideen (Taliban), which was the beginning of the end for Communism. Losing not just all of Eastern Europe but also their only two allies in the Middle East, with no prospects for new alliances anywhere in the world makes Putin scared. This is the main reason he retaliated in 2015-2016.

Europe

President Obama had high approval ratings in Western Europe for his entire presidency. He supported the European Union, and worked on building the TTIP with the European Union. The TTIP was complicated in a lot of different ways, and is worth another article. I personally feel like the TTIP wasn't a true Free Trade Agreement and was more about extending copyright and patent terms in the European Union to be the length they are in the United States, among other problems. The European Union was a major partner in the Iran agreement, and Obama supported the accession to the European Union of numerous Eastern European states.

President Obama refused to criticize Britain for leaving the European Union, but instead stated they will both remain close partners of the United States for a long time to come.

The closeness of President Obama and the European Union is most clearly shown with the Iran nuclear deal, which is probably his most important foreign policy achievement.

This is the biggest reason I believe Putin hated Obama out of everything else. Putin is a nationalist and sees Eastern Europe as solely part of the Russian sphere of influence. Under the Bush and Obama administrations, Russian influence in Eastern Europe has waned significantly as the majority of the population in country after country vote to join the European Union. The only countries in Eastern Europe which are not member states of the European Union or currently in the membership process are Kosovo, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Russia. Belarus is a member of Russia's Union State, and have been under the dictator Lukashenko since 1994. If Ukraine had succeeded in joining the European Union, the Russian sphere of influence would have collapsed. In response to the seemingly unavoidable collapse of the Soviet sphere of influence Putin invaded Ukraine, and bolstered the brutal regime of Assad.

But here is where Putin has been sowing the seeds of his own destruction, just as communism did: as soon as the people of any country Russia has had a strong alliance with get a voice, they always choose to move towards the American sphere of influence. American influence is strong not because we are holding a gun to the heads of our allies, but because we have strong relationships beyond military. We trade with our partners in every type of good, we have cultural exchanges for students, we help build most of our allies with institutions which grow their economies. The Marshall Plan worked because it built Europe up, giving them all strong democracies which have stood the test of time. Yes, we have strong military alliances, but when a country decides they don't want to participate in a war we have started, we don't cut them out. That is why the 21st century is the second American century in a row. President Obama made this a guarantee by building our relationships in Europe to be the strongest the world has ever known.

East Asia

While maintaining close relations with the European Union, President Obama also moved what he called America's "pivot to Asia". This included increasing economic and military ties with almost every country in the region. This is yet one more region of the world where economies gained increased access to one of the largest economies in the world, further cornering the Russian sphere in Putin's eyes.

Americas

There is only one country in the Americas which Russia has a strong alliance with which is not at complete risk from internal problems, and that is Cuba. The travel ban of the United States only pushed Cuba closer into Russia's grip and prevented the people from having the necessary tools to gain things such as a free press which they had lacked. American tourism and tourism to the United States is probably the biggest foreign policy tool the United States has, because when intellectual Americans travel around the world we can talk about the truth of what it is like in the United States, increasing American power abroad. Eliminating the travel ban was going to push Cuba back in to America's sphere of influence and doom the communist government in the long term if that had been allowed to continue. Given the brutality of Castro, it is highly unlikely that the Cuban people would freely choose to go back to the Russian sphere of influence.

Magnitsky Act

On top of everything else, President Obama signed the Magnitsky Act with bipartisan approval. Sergei Magnitsky had been investigating corruption in Russia for over a few years and had been arrested, being (definitely wrongly) accused of committing fraud himself. He was beaten in the prison he was being held in while he suffered from cancer, for which he received no treatment. He died in 2009. Bill Browder went to Congress to get support and convinced Senators John McCain (R - AZ) and Benjamin Cardin (D - MD) to cosponsor it, after which it passed easily.

Putin's response

Perhaps the most amazing thing of all, is that after the very successful foreign policy of President Barack Obama, the next candidate would be his Secretary of State, who fostered strong relationships with over 100 countries across the world, building strong economic and military ties with as many as possible. It was known by about 2015 that she would run, and Putin knew that if President Clinton served her term that it would just mean stronger alliances for America, and Russian influence at the point of a gun would decline. More travel between the US and Cuba, closer ties with the EU, the Balkan states, Ukraine, and the Caucuses. Perhaps worse of all is if America had been able to bring peace between the Armenians, Turks, and Azeri governments that would give America political dominance in the Caucuses. To make matters worse, American sanctions in response to Russian persecution of journalists with the Magnitsky Act

Putin saw the writing on the wall and he recruited the richest American billionaire who he had close ties with, the reality TV star Donald Trump. At least one meeting is known about, which he had on 9 June 2016 with Natalia Veselnitskaya with his top campaign staff. It is hard to believe it is the only one which occured given his long standing business relations which stretch all the way back since 1986 with the Kremlin and Russian Plutocrats. Trump is very malleable, and by using advertising on Facebook and Google, which are fairly apolitical organizations and really just give people what they want to see, was able to get Donald Trump to become the Republican nominee and narrowly win the Electoral College through election manipulation. I suspect the corruption between the Republican Party and United Russia goes far deeper, though I have no proof yet. Getting voter disenfranchisement laws and manipulating the vote in key states in the Midwest worked and got his man into the White House.

Everything Trump has done thus far has been to increase Russian influence. He insults our allies to weaken our bonds, threatens NAFTA which binds us to our neighbors, and is working to stop American military support of Western Europe. The European Union could probably win a war against Russia given their superior economy and larger population, but with the United States as well the war would be over within a year with an absolute victory over Moscow and the overthrowing of the Russian government. American influence turns a fair fight into a slaughter.

By reducing our commitment to investing in renewable energy it further weakens the European Union who are dependent on Russia for natural gas which is what fuels the Russian economy. An oil future is a Putin future. Removing us from the Paris Agreement further achieves this aim.

Stoking the fire of our relationship with Palestine puts Israel at risk, threatening American influence in the Middle East, and is done so haphazardly to not make any new friends.

The trade war with China leaves China with only Russia, ending their standing as the middle power between Russia and the United States. All which needs to happen now is a revamping of the military alliance of China and Russia and Russia is back on the world stage as a major player, South Korea is crushed and Japan has no chance in a Russo-Chinese invasion in revenge for the Rape of Nanking and Invasion of Manchuria. American influence in East Asia would be gone with the invasion of Taiwan in such an incident.

As soon as Trump became President he ended the tough talk on taking out ISIS by ending American support of Syria's rebels, giving Putin control over Syria.

His ending of the Nuclear Accord of Iran thrusts Iran back into the Russian sphere of influence. A Russo-Iranian military alliance will project power into Iraq, reversing the oil war Bush started.

I'm not quite sure how his deal with North Korea benefits Russia, that might be the one thing he has done which actually does benefit the United States.

In conclusion, so many of Trump's actions play right into the hands of Vladimir Putin, while one of these actions would not be enough to make me suspect that Trump is a pawn of Vladimir Putin the combination of his decisions regarding China, Israel/Palestine, Syria, and all of Europe all serve to increase Russian influence in those regions to the detriment of America and the people who live there. On top of this, there is proof that Russia bought online ads to support Trump and we know for a fact that high ranking Russian officials were in Trump Tower before the election.

This is too much to be a coincidence. I have absolutely no doubt that Trump was hired by Putin to undo all of the gains President Obama made to increase American diplomatic power which Trump has been doing for almost 2 years now.

Trump must be removed as soon as possible. A lot of people will die if he is not impeached.

References

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections
• Democracy Index, eiu.com
• Wikipedia for statistics, maps, and membership lists of IOs.
• Years of studying the topic, and this is just a blog post.
• Social Progress Index: https://www.socialprogressindex.com/
• IPSOS Ranking of Presidents: https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/2017-01/Obama_and_Trump_Slides.pdf
• White House announcement on Brexit: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2016/06/24/president-obama-uk-decision-leave-european-union
• https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/connections-trump-putin-russia-ties-chart-flynn-page-manafort-sessions-214868

President Barack Obama

Today is a sad day for the world as the last full day of the Presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. Over the last 8 years I have graduated high school and college, and at 24 years old he has been president for a full third of my life. I have supported him through most of his Presidency, and have seen him make great changes for our country. He hasn't succeeded in all of his goals as President, but he has succeeded in health care which Democrats have been trying to get passed since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. No matter what happens tomorrow, he will always be remembered for being a great man and a great president. When it comes to his work on gay rights, women's rights, and so many other social issues he stands out among Presidents for his good soul. I am grateful to live today in a country with an unemployment rate under 5%. I wish more of his proposals, such as expanding AMTRAK, and reducing college tuition had passed 6 and 7 years ago, but more than anything else I am glad as a disabled person that he fought for my right to have health care. No President is perfect, and there have certainly been times when I have wished you were more progressive, but all in all I think you did a fine job.

I love you President Obama, please stay in the public life, our country needs you. First Lady Michelle Obama, you are a brilliant lawyer with a heart as good as your husbands. I hope that you run for the Senate and continue your political legacy because it is obvious that you were heavily involved in helping your husband throughout these last 8 years make the right decisions through counsel. No person could ever face the bulk of challenges President Obama has faced alone. I believe our country needs you in office as soon as possible.

Open letter to President Obama about Standing Rock

The current attacks on Standing Rock Protests are being shot at by the Army Corps of Engineers right now. This is a violation of the rights of the Standing Rock Sioux and allies. The construction of the pipeline across native land which was illegally stolen from the Standing Rock is a violation of their treaty rights and our constitution. Treaties signed under the United States are laws under our constitution Article 1, and the Army Corps of Engineers is being improper in their current action. Our constitution and the courts exist for a reason, to prevent massacres which are happening right now. Please use your action to block the Dakota Access pipeline to the best of your ability right now and save the lands of these people. I know that you were raised UU like me and I frequently see you refer to the values your mother raised you with. What would she and your grandmother say today if they saw you stand idle as the rights of Native People are being infringed by the Army Corps of Engineers. I know that our church has come out in opposition to the current actions against Standing Rock protesters and that you know better. You have the power to stop them. Do it.

Obama's roots

The hatred against Obama makes sense, not only was his father born in Africa, but his mother was born in a UU family and he attended religious education at the UU church in Honolulu. He is the antithesis of everything the Republican Party stands against. His roots are in one of the two religions (the other being Quakers) which has fought the hardest against their dogma, and it is reflected in his speeches. The values which he was raised with are embedded deeply in the decisions and political platform he has ran on his entire political life over the last 20 years. While Carter was from the South and started the NSA, and Clinton (another Southern boy) destroyed food stamps and deregulated the banks, Obama on the other hands succeeded in health care reform, put back significant regulation on the banks, and on every issue besides surveillance has been extremely liberal. He is the most liberal president since Johnson by a wide margin, and has his roots in the two things Republicans hate most, hippies and Africans. He is the only president in the last 45 years (as of 2015) who has had any desire to move us towards those goals and if he had been able to get his party behind him on the most important issues would have destroyed the Republican Party’s Nixonite ideology more than any other political leader in the last half century.

In 1961 the UUA was formed and President Obama was born. President Obama turned out to be the first truly liberal president in exactly 40 years after President Johnson left office and the only President since Johnson to expand our human rights legislation. He started live in the UU church and those values have never left him. You can take the person out of a UU church, but you can’t take the UU values out of that person. We are so lucky as a country to have him as a President.

Obama's record

We have two and a half years left until President Obama will retire... and he has had a mixed presidency. He can repair his presidency and is starting to by speaking his mind. I am convinced that President Obama has been doing what President Clinton did during his presidency (according to Locked in the Cabinet by Robert Reich) where he has been listening to his advisors who are telling him to move to the right to capture votes, which hasn't worked once in the last 21 years the Democrats have been trying the strategy, and Elizabeth Warren has diverted from the strategy and is now the most popular politician in the country. So, how would I rank Obama today and how can he make his presidency count?

There are some problems:

1. His hunting Edward Snowden (who is a whistleblower) is unconstitutional. He should immediately grant Edward Snowden a pardon.
2. He has not stood against the vast bulk surveillance of the NSA which is unconstitutional. 

There are some issues he has struggled with:

1. The Affordable Care Act was not as strong as it could have been and could/should have been implemented 4 years ago, not this last January.

There are some major successes:

1. The Affordable Care Act increases competition between insurance companies by allowing people to switch more frequently (which reduces prices) and increases the ability to purchase medications at lower prices.
2. Congress has increased taxes on the wealthy while he is president which he signed into law and his party actually passed. I am not certain whether he could have vetoed this bill because he cannot veto budgets.
3. His environmental policy is flawless. After years of people speculating on Keystone XL he has stood his ground and he halted petroleum exploration in the Arctic.
4. The so-called "bailout" of the automotive industry was paid back in full, and we still have a large automotive industry with new management which is profitable.
5. He raised the minimum wage for federal government employees and contractors. Source

He has been blocked on some initiatives:

1. He passed an executive order to put all prisoners at Guantanamo Bay on trial on 22 January 2009, but this was overturned on 27 January 2009. Text of order and details
2. Immigration reform stalled in the Senate since he entered office and there is no chance of it getting passed a Republican controlled House.

Finally, when looking at President Obama's record we must take into account the response of Congress to all likely initiatives which means that we need to keep this reality in our analysis. With the resistance to his every action, it explains why the approval rating of Congress is 30 points below the President, showing people somewhere know where the real problem lies on why so many of these issues have stalled.

I stand with my President, he is a true progressive. I stand with Denny Heck and Elizabeth Warren as well.

I stand against the Democrats who try to appear liberal but are just in corporate hands which include Pelosi, Reid, Sanders, Murray, Cantwell, and most members of the Democratic Party.

A true progressive is not determined by his membership in a caucus but his voting record.

The State of the Union 2014

I liked President Obama's speech. He listed several proposals that will help our economy, including paying government employees enough so they don't qualify for welfare.

• His idea for a myRA is an excellent idea because it will make it so all people have access to a retirement plan, and will present competition to traditional IRA plans the way the Public Option was intended in the beginning.
• Working towards employers paying employees enough to live on is what we need, it will save states money to invest in education and make sure every American has the opportunity to succeed. Hopefully the tax code can be modified to work like the one I have already posted which would reward companies for paying employees a living wage and eliminating the deduction for employees who are paid below a reasonable living wage which should be more than just the bare essentials for someone working 40 hours a week.
• He mentioned solar power briefly, and extending tax credits to increase the amount of families who use solar power in the lower 48 and Hawaii will make a large dent on our greenhouse gas emissions and create thousands of private sector construction jobs.
• He talked about trade promotion authority which is of course the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Increasing trade with China and making it so we have strong ties with the Pacific Rim is a good idea, but the Trans-Pacific Partnership has a number of very bad provisions when it comes to copyright and patents which will have impacts on everything from music to literature to agriculture that will be negative for the vast majority of people from what I can find out. I will to make a post on this with a counter-proposal soon on the problematic parts. It also does nothing for tourism around the Pacific rim which is one major problem I have with all of our free trade agreements.
• His policy on Iran is very important. By using his veto pen (ideally) he can have more or less full power when it comes to Iran and negotiating with Iran to increase trade and bring them closer to the US and Europe as their President has stated he wants. Given how the last election was not fraudulent (and Ahmadinejad's last election was clearly fraught with corruption) it is clear where the Iranian people stand on this.
• Investment in Preschool which I am very glad to hear.
• Immigration was touched on and hopefully we can get important immigration reform passed to end the immigration problems that were started by George W. Bush of the severe limitations on work visas that clearly don't work.

When it comes to Representative McMorris-Rodgers speech I thought it was acid to the ears. I participated in debate for four years in high school and have done some judging since, and I have heard better arguments from 14 year olds. It was disconnected, and she keeps talking about how Republicans have better plans than Obama which she fails to elaborate on, and keeps rattling on about her children and how proud she is. She can be a proud parent, and good for her, but an official response speech is not the time to talk about your children, it's the time to present your counterproposals in a critical election year (because the question of whether any significant progress done by Obama for the remainder of his Presidency will be determined on November 4th in the Congressional elections, making this election, like all elections, extremely important). If the Republicans fail to present plans as the Response Speech has traditionally been used than the Democrats should start partying today because it will be a large uphill battle for the Republicans, so I think the Democrats can win the next election because the Republicans are just too crazy and incomprehensible to be taken seriously.

The response from the left I saw has been mixed. A lot of people I have seen have immediately grasped on to say that his speech has not been enough. Robert Reich claims on his facebook wall that Obama didn't show spine, and I couldn't disagree more. He stood up for 4 very important very liberal policies that have a chance to pass, and are first steps. No one should take this as the last step, and after a number of problems with the budget from the Republicans we need to recover ground to where we used to be. A lot of people on the left are taking his most progressive speech and immediately bashing it for being a compromise to the Republicans when the speech had the most similarities to the values he was taught as a child (given his Unitarian Universalist upbringing, "And we do them because we believe in the inherent dignity and equality of every human being, regardless of race or religion, creed or sexual orientation." is extraordinarily similar UU's first principle) I have heard from him since he became President. When people on the left shoot him for finally showing some skin in his speeches they are shooting themselves in the foot and losing credibility. It was a good speech and has a lot of potential to start moving towards an even better speech next year when the Democrats will be in control and they can make serious change like happened when President Johnson was President. I take this speech as a rallying call for this November's elections in some ways because he is starting to up the talk which is the first step to making real change.

Fairness

First it was the existence of a German style health care system,then it was Benghazi, then it was the insurance exchange not working. 

The corporate media has been trying to get Obama on every little thing that didn't go just right, as long as it doesn't benefit their owners. None of them are looking at the real failures of the Obama administration, giving up the public option and other downright concessions regarding his most important bill, signing the NDAA of 2011 which is plain embarrassing, because each of these benefit the companies that donate to politicians campaigns and almost certainly have stakes in the private corporate media. They would put it as "holding the presidents feet to the fire."

What is really interesting also is that when it came to his predecessors decisions to invade Iraq, our the bill of rights on hold via the Patriot Act, the similar problems with Medicare part D's rollout, give the banks money they will never have to pay back, appoint extremely biased judges that have ruled that there is no limit to how much a corporation can donate to campaigns if they form a Super PAC hitch undermines our democracy and creates conflicts of interest for our elected officials, there was very little to none of this call for "accountability" when our bill of rights was put on hold.

It is so obvious to me how biased the media is and where their interests truly lie. There are problems they should be reporting, but since they serve their interest they get little to no screen time.

1. President Obama has made a number of concessions too soon, with the ACA, NDAA of 2011, and with a large exception of the fiscal cliff disaster (the disaster wasn't the debt, it was the closure of many government services that had a noticeable impact on our economy) has given a lot of ground to the republicans and got nothing in return, like how Clinton held the office (led is too strong of a word) back in the 1990s.

2. The Democrats have not made serious efforts to repeal the PATRIOT ACT, give justice to the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other military prisons, give justice to immigrants being held in TSA prisons across the country, reform our immigration laws so we can have enough farm workers come here legally, repeal citizens united and implement mandatory public financing for political campaigns which will help destroy conflicts of interest and is used in New Zealand which is routinely listed as the least corrupt country in the world, renew the part of the Civil Rigts Act which requires some federal oversight in states where there is a history of gerrymandering, demand accountability on where and who we ship weapons to, making sure the process of who receives federal contracts is fair and accountable, or changing our tax code to be more progressive and help bring stability to our economy like exists in Australia. These types of actions will fire up the base of the Democratic Party and get people excited. There has been no progress on any of them. This is a major failure of the Democratic Party. The only 2 major bills the past 5 years have been watered down (even though neither one got a single Republican vote) and were very limited in scope. This isn't so much about appeasing the republicans as it is appeasing the corporate interests who are corrupting our system.

3. The surveillance of American citizens is unconstitutional without a warrant. There has been no serious effort by the President or his party to change those laws.

These are serious problems that threaten the ability of people to get fired up about the Democratic Party, I'm not very fired up personally after all of these concessions and am hoping for a third party if our electoral system would allow it.

Obama's Social Security proposal's flaws, with myths

In light of President Obama's announcement that he will use a "chained-CPI" for social security benefits means he is using the same sort of scare tactics the Republicans have used for the past 30 years, and puts him to the right of Ronald Reagan in economics, from the Keynesian camp to the voodoo laissez-faire Chicago School of Psuedoeconomics.

First of all, there are multiple consumer price indexes. Wikipedia lists 4 different indexes, one of which Social Security uses. Social Security uses the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) to calculate the cost of living adjustment for social security benefits. The CPI-W is a very good measure, and it is defined here:

Obama's Chained CPI is a real measure, and Investopedia shows how it is a wildly different measure which assumes that people will use less expensive products all the time, which presents a few problems. First of all, since Medicare doesn't pay for all Senior health expenses (like nursing homes) they have a lot of medical expenses that they cannot get cheaper for a different price, and comes out of their paycheck. They cannot get a cheaper product and the Chained-CPI is a bad measure for determining that group's cost of living. Second, it is a real dilution and not very useful, because it is never an accurate adjustment because people don't always buy the least expensive thing, either for moral reasons (like how I never shop at Wal-Mart given a choice) or personal choice. (something made by Apple as opposed to another product) Third, it purposefully dilutes the consumer price index by not accurately representing the increase of price of the items in question, which shows how it should be abandoned. CPI-W is a good measurement which calculates inflation based on over 8,000 items, which makes an accurate measure which doesn't allow any one item to throw off the COLA for Social Security which insures that social security payments will be adjusted accurately.

There is no reason to change the payments that Social Security makes every year, it continues to run a surplus and if Obama's plan passes seniors will find that their payments will drop considerably, which will hurt the economy.

First you attack the seniors, then you attack the students, and nobody screams

I just read a summary from CPB on the President's budget for education, and he is going to set student interest rates to the market rate. This is bad for several reasons:

1. Sallie Mae is government corporation, and whatever money they make is extra. They don't need higher interest, and making lower interest is a good idea.
2. Tuition has risen so much at state schools over the past few years that college is becoming increasingly unaffordable. The least the government can do is decrease the interest rate which will save middle class families millions of dollars, but putting the rate at such a risk is a terrible idea.
3. The only motivation I can see to tying Sallie Mae interest rates to the market rate is that it will now be easier for large banks to steal a significantly larger share of the student loan market, by offering "discounts" which people will flock to. If everyone uses private banks than it will make it easy for Republicans (or as seems more and more likely, Democrats) to attack and dismantle Sallie Mae.
4. Eliminating Sallie Mae (which currently gives decent interest rates) and forcing people to go to banks which might then raise their rates for students will give a lot of free money to the big banks that practically own our government.

The Democrats ran last year on a platform to defend the middle class, it was practically the theme of their national convention. "Trust us, we are the defenders of social security, the givers of Medicare and affordable education" yet the past week has seen the Democrats leading the attacks on both education and Social Security.

If there ever was an appropriate time for a third party that represents the interests of average Americans to appear, the time is now.

BEDA 2013 post number 10!

Social Security, the imaginary crisis.

I am offended that President Obama is attempting to cut Social Security benefits by changing the way that inflation is calculated. I volunteered for my local representative's campaign (Democrat), supported my new governor (another Democrat), and have followed the President like every other political junkie. He got my vote last year, and right now I think I should have voted for the Green Party.

The numbers for Social Security don't match the rhetoric of the Republicans, or now the Democrats. Social Security has run a surplus every year that it has been in place and if the cap for social security income was raised and we made it a national priority to get more Americans to work (the percentage of Americans actually working is now less than at any point since the 1940s) which will strengthen our economy, social security, shrink the deficit, and many other things that need to happen. The Democrats are falling into the corporatists trap now. Thinking back over my knowledge of American history, the last time the Democrats passed a massive bill that created real reform that made our country better was in 1968, when my parents weren't even in school yet, which was the Civil Rights Act. Every bill the Democrats have pushed for since then has been weakened before it hits the floor hoping that the Republicans will vote for it "as is" (haha) after which the Republicans dilute the bill even more, slash taxes, slash spending (except our massive corporate income tax breaks for large corporations) and our country is the worse for it.

I have a real historical example for why governments need to boost employment in recessions. When President Franklin Roosevelt was President the economy improved from 1933 to 1937, when the economy shrank, and than increased after his second New Deal came into place. In 1937 the President and Democrats decided to focus on the deficit, after which the economy took a short tumble, until President Roosevelt got his second New Deal in place which helped the economy grow until it became a war economy. Once the changes in his reforms took hold which took some time, unemployment dropped before World War II even began. Source

Obama should not attack social security by trying to fix what isn't broken, he is doing what President Franklin Roosevelt did right now by abandoning his base in 1937 afterwhich the economy will suffer if we take that money out of senior's pockets and increase Social Security's surplus  which is bad because that money won't be in the economy helping people. When and if social security runs a deficit, the first thing is it has over $2 trillion worth of treasury bonds to cash out, so if it ran a small deficit it wouldn't be a problem for a long time.

If the government chooses to increase revenue as opposed to tap into the vast reserve of cash that has accumulated over 70+ years that is reserved for Social Security it could last for a while without changing anything (it is a complicated analysis because it is dependent on state of unemployment, wages, distribution of wealth, etc.) which wouldn't mean immediate doom, and there have been times in past where Social Security ran a deficit from 1975-1981 and nothing terrible happened. The easiest way to increase the amount of money Social Security makes would be to increase the cap that taxes are paid on, which could cover the deficit given our current distribution of income for a very long time. The alternative is to present more incentives for businesses to hire people which would reduce unemployment payments from the government and increase social security payments to the government. Given our unemployment crisis right now as a country this is my preferred approach, and that it would be sustainable assuming nothing drastic changes (like a stock market run which creates layoffs followed by a depressed economy like happened in 1929 and 2008).

Blog Every Day April 2013 post number 9

Study your history

Seriously though, most of the mistakes we are doing today are repetitions of mistakes our ancestors have made. There are a lot of huge similarities between today and the Great Depression, and our leaders don't seem to understand that in their religious zealotry for Milton Friedman. They are repeating the same mistakes that historical figures have made, namely Andrew Mellon (head of the Federal Reserve from 1921-1932), Herbert Hoover (US President, 1929-1933), and Heinrich Bruning (Last Chancellor of the Weimar Republic 1930-1932). Besides being contemporaneous, these three fine gentlemen (at least they would be if Friedman's guesses were correct, you need some evidence to make a theory, so I will call his writings guesses) followed the assumptions of Milton Friedman while they were in power, before they were replaced by Keynesians in the United States and Nazis in Germany. They desired a limited role for their governments and central banks to play in stimulating their economy, firing of public workers and decreasing wages, and cut government spending. If Milton Friedman was correct, the great depression would have never happened or would have finished before 1933 under their policies, because they did exactly what he and similar guessers would have them do. I hope I don't have to mention that did not happen.

Unfortuntately for the libertarian/Republican/CDU/pseudo-economics etc. movement, this didn't happen. The policies of Mellon, Hoover, Bruning and others with the same mentality led to the worst economic crisis in history. GDPs fell, wages fell, unemployment rates rose, everything that Milton Friedman says wouldn't happen given the situation did. Why do we want to emulate these three crooks?

President Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Prime Minister David Cameron, Chairman Ben Bernanke, President Jens Weidmann, President Mario Draghi, Governor Mervyn King, Secretary Jacob Lew, General Director Christine Lagarde, and Speaker John Boehner, if you people value your legacies, please choose the right path, proven economics over unproven speculated pseudo-economics. Every single one of you has been choosing to emulate the three people I mention above, and you are all doing close to what Milton Friedman would tell you to do, either through austerity or not fighting hard enough for proven economics. Fortunately you aren't doing the last major part of the policies of 1929-1932 which was the shutting down of the global market through tariffs, which created economies that approached that of modern North Korea which is the only country to currently pursue self-sufficiency, but you have managed to do every other important policy that set the great depression in motion and kept it going those four horrible years!

I don't consider the monetarist theories valid economics because they have absolutely no proof for their claims and every single time their ideas have been done the countries that try them have been worse off in the end with higher unemployment, lower GDPs, and other major failures of the global economic system. Please switch to scientifically proven Keynesian economics as soon as you can, because the people of the world need to have a system that works, and we don't have the time or patience to disprove Milton Friedman yet again. Nobody wins with your system in the end, not even the banking crackpots who tell you to do this. We need a system that works now!

Our unemployment is at a 30 year low right now in America, don't make it go any lower!

This post was inspired by Gerald Silverberg, an economist who is willing to do the legwork and prove things before he says them. If only Milton Friedman did the same the world would be a much better place.

BEDA post #7

A few issues Obama has failed on.

Now, I agree with President Obama on a number of issues, especially health care, closing GitMo, repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell, free trade with conditions, the stimulus package, and a few other major deals.

However, Obama has made some major mistakes during his Presidency, and nothing is as large as his support of drone bombings. I am currently listening to Rand Paul's filibuster (the first one I have listened to, and he has some good points) and I must agree with him on boycotting John Brennan. The Democrats have failed to stand up for what should be a very easy issue for social liberals. President Obama need to reanalyze his policy, and for people who do not know about the situation, this documentary has a lot of great information as a start.

There are a number of excellent reason why President Obama and the Democrats need to change their policy on drone strikes and people need to pressure their congressmen to change their policy.

1. There need to be clear laws on how the government may not kill people like this without a warrant to fulfill the 4th amendment, because otherwise there is no way to empirically determine whether a person is guilty besides trying the person in court.
2. The 4th amendment is being violated with drone strikes.
3. There should not be a difference in drone strikes within the United States and abroad. When the government starts killing foreigners without the proper due process of law, it is violating the principle of the Constitution. What would we do if all of a sudden Russia started doing drone strikes in other countries, perhaps Alaska, but they do the same excuse our government has made that they are not within their country hence have no protections. This is an inexcusable and pathetic excuse, and it is tragic that there is no party that can form in our country due to our election system that can take seats from Democrats that can reverse this policy.

Indefinite detention is another issue where the President has not made great progress in, especially when it comes to immigration. Frontline made an excellent documentary on this topic. With little coverage of this issue, and no front page coverage in any major news paper, there is no surprise it has not become a major political issue, and with no third party to make it an issue, it is no wonder that the Democrats have no found it reasonable to make it into a major issue, with the constant showdown on debt. No wonder so many Americans feel so disillusioned about our political issue. The Democrats will attack Republicans when they break the law in this way, and a few Republicans will attack the Democrats when the Democrats break the law yet again. This is why we need a third party that will push it through even when they are not in power and that people will be behind the movement and push for very reasonable regulations and this clash between Democrats and the new party will keep each other in check, instead of only clash between the Democrats and Republicans, one of whom always tries to compromise, and one of whom always tries to fulfill as much of their agenda as possible. That is not a good combination, and having a left-wing third party to clash with the Democrats when they fail to follow through with the campaign promises which has happened with Obamacare, repealing Gramm-Leach-Bliley, closing Gitmo, immigration reform, and other important issues.

Another issue that no one has been willing to take up is homelessness, especially homeless veterans. We have failed them 100%. There needs to be a major effort towards eliminating homelessness here in the United States, and when local governments make laws that drive homeless people from the streets while the churches that do help homelessness are stretching their resources to their maximum, never have enough. As a side note, this is why I find Libertarianism to be an untenable downright absurd position, that you can't truly support the quality of life of people without reasonable programs so that people can maintain high qualities life. This is why we need reasonable programs so people can find work, have health care, and access to housing, which the Democrats don't have the political will to pass through, and no incentive to work harder towards their campaign promises. I hope this post will be obsolete soon, but right now it is completely accurate.

If you aren't decided yet, here's all you need to know.

So, i was just watching a collection of eloquent speeches (yeah...) by Mitt Romney, and I know that it is by DailyKos which is liberal, but still fair.

After doing some intense discussions with some Republicans I know that cutting $50 billion from the budget will not eliminate the $900 deficit, I decided to see what FOX News had on Obama: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-6bOm6hmZo

That should be enough.

If you want to know what Obama stands for, I recommend the following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE0DwFo2G9A on Native American rights
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P8DRQjqCac on the National Debt, solutions, and its implications
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=302IM0rAKKc on taxes and where the economy grows from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQGMTPab9GQ on gay marriage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHj9E6hcfn4 on Iran

If you want to know what Romney stands for, I recommend the following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPgfzknYd20&feature=youtu.be on gay marriage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grS7hK0QTlo on the national debt and the birther movement (the debt is actually just over 100% of GDP)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSJVskD2iCE on taxes, including a little from Obama.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wqiivwivBE on Israel, including http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/guest_bloggers/6236/romney%E2%80%99s_compliment_to_the_jewish_people_closer_to_a_slur/

Hopefully this can help make voting a little easier.

I have already made a post "Obama v. Romney" which did this, but here is some more information on important issues:

On taxes, if you support a tax code which is progressive, where those who don't make a lot can save for the future and where the rich pay a larger percent of their annual income than others, vote for Obama. If you support a tax code where poor people making the cost of living pay income tax, and tax cuts for capital gains, different industries like oil, and the lowest effective rate for millionaires create the lowest rate for millionaires in the developed world, vote for Romney.

On Iran, if you want to unequivocally give unconditional support to Israel no matter who actually strikes first, vote for Romney. If you do not want to invade Iran, vote for Obama.

On Gay marriage, if you believe the government has a role in determining who can and cannot get married, vote for Romney. If you believe that marriage is a human right and the government should allow gays and lesbians to get married, vote for Obama.

On the national debt, if you think the debt should be fixed thoroughly through cutting the budget and through no tax hikes, vote for Romney. If you want a balanced approach with a more progressive tax code and keep services the government provides to working-class families, vote for Obama.

Please subscribe through Google Reader or a similar service for updates! If you know an undecided voter, please share!

Obama v. Romney

Here is my attempt to compare the policies and records of President Obama and former Governor Romney.

Part 1, their record.
Obama, his successes and failures in comparison to his claims

• Fulfilled the following promises, and successes:
• The United States left Iraq
• The United States has an exit plan for Afghanistan's war.
• We have not invaded Iran.
• Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
• Repealed Don't Ask Don't Tell
• Rescued the American car industry, instead of paying unemployment insurance to Detroit.
• Rescued the American banking industry, instead of paying several trillion dollars in FDIC insurance to the four major banks.
• Osama bin Laden was killed under his administration.
• Unemployment has decreased since the Stimulus package kicked in.  It is functioning like a normal economy, despite being higher than is preferable. http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000
• Reformed health care, so that college students can stay on their parent's health care insurance and people cannot be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions. For me, a college student with cerebral palsy these are two main reasons to vote for Obama, and why my Dad can enter the private sector to get paid more money.
• Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act.
• Missed the following promises, and failures:
• Closing Guantanamo Bay
• Signing the NDAA of 2010, instead of vetoing it and sending it back to Congress, remember the cost of which would have been deadlock and probably more pork.
• Has advocated for the Buffett Tax, which Congress has blocked.
• Dissapointed a lot of Democrats and should have overjoyed a lot of Republicans on the following:
• Signing Free Trade Agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea (a note I wish to make is these are bilateral and our exports to these countries, yes, the United States has exports, now have no tariff from these countries)
• We are giving more money to Israel than under any previous administration.  http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf

I have heard a lot of Republicans claim that Obama has been blaming the Republicans for blocking him and that he should own up to his own mistakes... but they are making fun of the intelligence of every single American because they are leaving out that in the United States of America there is a Separation of Powers and the President is not our monarch and cannot do anything large without Congressional support. The only exception is declaring war because in 2002 Congress (which was controlled by Republicans) retroactively gave the President the power to declare war without Congressional approval which was practically retroactively giving support to every military action the President declares. This is basically calling Americans stupid. Why do we put up with this?

Mitt Romney's plan is more or less the following: (From his website)

• Decrease tax rates for the wealthy.
• Reduce government spending on Social Security and privatize Social Security.
• Outlaw abortion
• Outlaw same-sex marriage
• Invade Iran
• Increase aid to Israel beyond Obama levels.
• Decrease regulations on guns
• Make it so people like me, college students and people with pre-existing conditions, will lose our health insurance.
• Opposes unions
• Increase oil drilling, increasing Exxon Mobil's profits.
• Smaller government.

Who will benefit from Obama's plan (if implemented fully)? The middle class will directly benefit through lower taxes and lower costs to health care and education, along the lower economic class. Equal rights for gays and lesbians and legal recourse if employers are ripping off female employees.

Who will benefit from Romney's plan (again, if implemented fully)? Loan sharks through fewer regulations, oil companies through less stringent regulation and drilling in America's most pristine places, and owners of factories that employee unioned workers. The middle class will not benefit, and the poor will slide backward faster than ever before through increased costs to education and health care. Who will benefit from invading Iran? Oil companies because Iran has 5.1% of the world's oil production. Romney does not serve regular Americans, he serves the oil companies.

The motives behind politics

I am currently taking a sociology course at my local community college. One of the most important parts of sociology is the two major theories behind it. The first is structural functionalism, that every decision has costs and benefits to society, and the second is conflict theory, that society is in constant battles for resources. I want to look at the major issues of today to look and see where the Democrats and Republicans get their motivations from.

My sources are: www.opencongress.org for the votes. www.opensecrets.org for the lobbying, and news organizations, predominately NPR, BBC, Al Jazeera, and most importantly, PBS. I have chosen these four because I have observed they usually don't benefit just one side but give more balanced viewpoints and wider coverage than any other source.

First. The money. The motivation. According to www.opensecrets.org the largest financers of political campaigns in order are Finance/Insurance/Real Estate, Health care, communication/electronics, energy (oil), labor, construction, agriculture, transportation, and military. Looking at where the money comes from I will look at what they will get out of the major political debates.

Finance/Insurance/Real Estate have a mix of interests. The real estate industry benefits from subsidies for housing (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) and tax breaks for mortgages to encourage people to buy houses, not rent. Insurance has an interest in requiring people to get health insurance from them with no public option, and oppose all forms of universal health care which will shrink their business. Instead people are required to have insurance (which given the situation of money and media I think is the best available option for Americans. We spend far too much in the hospitals as a country for what we get.) Finance would be like banks and stock brockerages who do not want regulations and have collapsed the economy through their lack of responsability. They then get bailed out (what else are we going to do? Pay them unemployment and pay deposit insurance to all their depositors?) when they collapse the economy after lobbying to end government regulations and ruining the finances of real people.

The second would be health care. The largest are manufacturers of medicine, lobbying to get their drugs through the FDA before others. The American Medical Association is not included in the list on opensecrets.  This helps explain why universal health care has so few advocates in our government.

The third is Communications/Electronics. These are the people who support things like SOPA, PIPA, and other terrible things. They monopolize their respective markets and get the government to buy their goods. Others want to impact what regulations are passed that effect their business.

The fourth is energy. This is dominated by oil corporations fighting renewable energy and environmental regulations to protect their businesses at the cost of the country's economic dependence on foreign oil and a vicious cartel. They are almost entirely Republican financiers.

The fifth is composed of unions. These people fight for social programs, schools, or whatever else their industry is interested in. They are almost entirely Democratic financiers. An important note here is how unions are different from corporations, instead of being led by their leaders who are CEOs (like the rest of the lists here) the decisions are made by their members and their leaders are elected by the union members.

The sixth is made of construction, especially people who construct homes. These people donate across the board and are interested in keeping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac how they are.

The seventh is agribusiness, and these people are interested in keeping their subsidies from the Department of Agriculture and having input on what regulations are put on their businesses. They also oppose legal work visas for Mexicans to work on their farms because they would have to pay them minimum wage and work them no more than 40 hours per week.

The eighth is Transportation. These people are diverse. The people who run rail lines (Berkshire Hathaway, CSX, and others) are interested in keeping AMTRAK on their lines only, keeping the other smaller lines without AMTRAK trains. The autodealers are interested in keeping funding mass transit at bay, so that they can continue to sell far more cars than are needed. (Notice the clash between Berkshire Hathaway and National Autodealers Association) Others include Courier Services who have an interest in keeping their ability to ship packages and stay unregulated. Also some airlines who are interested in keeping the environmental regulations (which cost money) at an absolute minimum. American Trucking Associations is another one that is heavily interested in keeping freight trains at a bare minimum.

The ninth is Defense. These people are interested in the government buying their goods and expanding our military. It is already the largest military budget in the world and the companies want us to buy more of their goods. It makes them rich and takes up a quarter of total government expenditure (half of all discretionary spending). Our government has two types of spending, Mandatory (social security and medicare are the largest amounts here) and discretionary (almost everything else) and the department of defense takes up more than all other mandatory and our annual interest on our debt combined! Also, assuming that it would cost the Federal Government $80,000 to send one American to college for four years ($20,000 per year), if we took half the defense budget out we would still have the largest military budget in the world and could provide free college tuition to 35 million Americans with only half of our military budget. That includes tuition, books, fees, room and board, the whole college everything. We would then make far more in taxes because people would not be deducting their student loans from their income tax, which would more than balance out in the end.

Part 2: The Policies

The Republicans and Democrats agree on a number of issues, the housing market, transportation (although a growing number of Democrats favor mass transit), agriculture subsidies, bailing banks, and Israel. Pro-Israel PACs (according to opensecrets) give 2/3 of their money to Democrats and 1/3 of their money to Republicans, and bth parties support continuing to give them money every year for their military. Perhaps they don't need to give as much to the Republicans because of their evangelical wing? Most of these are not usually brought up. Looking at the policies, we can see how they benefit the big donaters to political campaigns, but the American people often do not benefit as much.

How do the American people benefit from deregulating banks that then collapse? How do the American people benefit from exporting weapons to Israel? How do the American people benefit from the housing market collapsing? How do the American people benefit from having education cut to make way for military? How do the American people benefit from the highest rates for health care in the world with quality that is not significantly better than our European peers, but in many measures is worse (according to the CIA World Factbook)? How do the American people benefit from Monsanto getting government subsidies by less competition? How do the American people benefit from oil companies getting fewer regulations and renewable energy getting stalled, now for over 30 years? How do the American people benefit from AT&T monitoring what we do on-line?

The answer to all of these questions is, no, we lose massively. Very few politicians speak out against these massive corporate powers. Someone to speak out on the issue would be to say "America is going to get renewable energy." (hurting the oil lobby, dropping energy prices for 310 million Americans) "We are going to increase food production to bring down food prices by ending government subsidies to agriculture and scaling back the Department of Agriculture." (hurting Monsanto and United Fruit, now known as Chiquita, dropping food prices for 310 million Americans) "We are going to protect the access to all websites in America and reject pay per view for different websites as proposed in SOPA." (not giving Comcast more money, protecting access to the full internet for 310 million Americans) "We are going to outlaw dangerous lending practices." (Ending short-term gains for large banking institutions and stabilizing the economy for 310 million Americans) "We are going to have universal health care." (Hurting the never ending flow of cash to the insurance industry and decreasing health care costs for 310 million Americans) Behind all of this Americans don't get enough opportunities through education through lack of funding (despite having mostly excellent teachers) and don't cover issues like economics and politics that means Americans don't realize where the corruption actually is.

If someone said this, that person would be hated by those companies. Those people are President Barack Obama, Future Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Barney Frank, Senator Al Franken, Representative Dennis Kucinich, and these are the people who get the most hatred from right-wing media. We have not had a President who is so absolutely against these corporate interests since President Carter left the White House and he has received more than his fair share of hatred from the right wing. That is why FOX News and Romney's company Bain Capital's asset Clear Channel (which broadcasts Rush Limbaugh and other far-right pundits) are attacking President Obama. He is a threat to the massive lobbyists who control our government through campaign spending. He is the 99%, he just needs to say it. He was born to a mother from a poor (yet educated) farming family from Kansas and an immigrant father, what origin could be more humble than that? Because he is a threat to these massive lobbyists (especially the insurance industry) they have stepped up their spending, and their media doesn't represent what he really says because if the majority of people in the Deep South realized just how much they would benefit from his policies, he would win 40-50 states come November. This is why they are making voter ID which the NAACP, ACLU, SPLC, and other defenders of our freedom oppose. He is shaking up the status quo as much as he can, and he needs our help to help us. We need a Democratic Congress to pass a Constitutional Amendment to outlaw bribery (aka lobbying) and laws to make it punished severely. The Constitutional Amendment is needed so the Courts can't overturn the regulations again. If Mitt Romney is elected this will not happen, if Obama is kept there is a chance that we could see a massive decrease in corruption if he has a Congress that will work with him and pass these reforms!

They claim that he wants to end the American way of life, and there is some truth for this because he wants to change the system where everything our freedom is supposedly based on is a good that is provided by one of the major lobbying industries (namely own a house and own a car per person, look at the list of lobbyists and there is a clear correlation) and put less restrictions on what we can do, say, or protest, and provide every American with health care, college, and well funded public schools but he can't do that because Congress opposes everything he says, even routine legislation! He wants to change our country the same way Scandinavia's governments did when they became first-world democracies! On top of this most Americans don't hear what the President actually says and this is the big problem because what they think of him is what they are told by the media which is owned by the people who corrupt our system. Why else are there Exxon Mobil commercials on the evening news? If he is reelected and Congress is a Democratic majority than we could see universal health care, affordable college, and a growing economy with less corruption in Congress. If Mitt Romney wins, well, that's not possible because he changes everything he says on a frequent basis, whatever the lobbyists want him to say. If the American people vote for Obama and support him with a Democratic-controlled Congress (which is possible if people in the South start to vote) than there will be big changes, just like our greatest generation did and our standard of living will improve. I would love for the American way of life to be less dependent on the products of the same people who lobby our government.

This is why I am voting OBAMA 2012.

www.barackobama.com