ble differences. One class exploits and lives off the labor of the other. One class concentrates the vast majority of wealth in its hands while millions of others barely scrape by. One class dominates the country's politics and controls its government. One class makes and enforces all the laws in order to defend its interests.
And if partisanship is "petty," "immature," and "poisonous," why continue the farce of having two political parties of the ruling class, when they are in effect two wings of the same party? It is also incredibly telling that Obama referenced Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address. We might remind him that despite Lincoln's friendly words, only a long and bloody civil war succeeded in ending the divisions that literally tore apart the nation. At that time, the country was divided between the capitalist North and the slave-owning South. Today the country is divided into two main classes: the working class and the capitalist class. To try and reconcile the two is to try to square the circle. Obama and those closest to him know that big explosions of the class struggle are on the order of the day. His task is to keep that struggle within "safe" limits.
Obama must therefore make some cosmetic changes. He must give the appearance that he is doing something new and different. After eight years of Bush and co, there will be something of a honeymoon while Americans wait and see what they can expect in the months and years to come. He is expected to establish the tone of his new administration early on, while Bush limps around the White House for a few more months. Obama will probably move quickly to announce tax cuts on the "middle class," while attempting to raise them on the rich. In reality, he will more than likely simply roll back some of the Bush tax cuts for the rich, which would merely take us back to the levels of taxation under Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton; i.e., to a time when cuts in social services and a skyrocketing military budget really took off. However, even if he does raise the rich's taxes, how much they will actually pay remains to be seen. There are a million and one loop holes that they use to avoid contributing to the public treasury.
He has also already indicated that all spending increases will mean cuts elsewhere in the budget. With projected falling tax revenues due to the economic crisis, and an astronomical military budget (over $500 billion per year), additional cuts, especially in the public sector, are sure to come sooner rather than later. Cuts in federal programs will mean that the states and local government will have to make up the difference. To make ends meet they will either have to increase local property and sales taxes, or allow infrastructure, schools and other public services to deteriorate further. Either way, the the burden will be put right back on workers and the poor.
A couple of anecdotal comments by people close to Obama reveal their own expectations for his administration. Obama's vice president Joe Biden ominously said in a recent interview that within the first six months of Obama's presidency, his supporters' loyalty would be tested, and that they would need to rally behind him; a clear hint at some already foreseen controversial policy or development. And Tom Daschle, the Democrats' former leader in the U.S. Senate and rumored to be in line to become Obama's White House chief-of-staff, said recently that the winner would have only a 50 per cent chance of winning a second term in 2012. In other words, his closest insiders expect his policies to be unpopular. Why should we expect anything else from someone who supports the Patriot Act and who voted to approve increased government surveillance of U.S. citizens?
Big Oil and Obama's foreign policy
Many are sick of Bush and his ties to Big Oil, but a closer look at Obama's energy policies should give his supporters, particularly environmentalists, serious pause for thought. For starters, in addition to wanting to expand the use of wind and solar energy, he is a proponent of expanding the use of nuclear p