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Johann Hari: The Contradictions Facing a Black President of the American Empire

Obama Chronicles — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:11:44 +0000

The tears are finally drying - the tears of the Bush years, and the tears of awe at the sight of a black President of the United States. So what now? The cliché of the day is that Barack Obama will inevitably disappoint the hopes of a watching world, but the truth is more subtle than that. If we want to see how Obama will change the world - for good or bad - we need to trace the deep structural factors that underlie US foreign policy, and tease out what he will do about them. A useful case study of these pressures is about to flicker onto our news pages for a moment - from the top of the world.

Bolivia is the poorest country in Latin America, and its lofty slums 4000 meters above sea level seem a world away from the high theatre of the inauguration. But if we look at this country closely, we can explain one of the great paradoxes of the United States - that it has incubated a triumphant civil rights movement at home, yet thwarted civil rights movements abroad. Bolivia shows us in stark detail the contradictions facing a black President of the American empire.

The President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, has a story strikingly similar to Obama's. In 2006 he became the first indigenous President of his country - and a symbol of the potential of democracy. When the Spanish arrived in Bolivia in the sixteenth century, they enslaved the indigenous majority and worked millions to death. As recently as the 1950s, an indigenous person wasn't even allowed to walk through the centre of La Paz, where the presidential palace and city cathedral stand. They were (and are) routinely compared to monkeys and apes.

Morales was born to a poor potato-farmer in the mountains, and grew up scavenging for discarded orange peel or banana skins to eat. Of his seven siblings, four starved to death as babies. Throughout his adult life, it was taken for granted that the country would be ruled by the white mestizo minority; the "Indians" were too "child-like" to manage a country.

Given that the US is constitutionally a democracy and its Presidents say they are committed to spreading democracy across the world, you would expect them to welcome the democratic rise of Morales. But wait. Bolivia has massive reserves of natural gas - a geo-strategic asset, and one that rakes in billions for US corporations. Here is where the complications set in.

Before Morales, the white mestizo elite was happy to allow US companies to simply take the gas and leave the Bolivian people with short change: just 18 percent of the royalties. Indeed, they handed almost the entire country to US interests, while skimming a small percentage for themselves. In 1999, an American company, Bechtel, was handed the water supply - and water rates for the poor majority doubled.

Morales ran for election against this agenda. He said that Bolivia's resources should be used for the benefit of millions of bitterly poor Bolivians, not a tiny number of super-rich Americans. He kept his promise. Now Bolivia keeps 82 percent of the vast gas royalties - and he has used the money to increase health spending by 300 percent, and to build the country's first pension system. He is one of the most popular leaders in the democratic world. In slums across South America, I have seen this pink tide rising through the barrios and favelas, where millions of people are seeing doctors and schools for the first time in their lives.

I suspect that a majority of the American people - who are good and decent - would be pleased and support this process if they were told about it honestly. But how did the US government (and much of the media) react? George Bush fulminated that "democracy is being eroded in Bolivia", and a recent US ambassador to the country compared Morales to Osama Bin Laden. Why? To them, you are a democrat if you give your resources to US corporations, and you are a dictator if you give them to your own people. The will of the Bolivian people is irrelevant.

There is another layer of disagreement between Morales and US power. Bolivians have a widespread millennia-long tradition chewing coca leaves, or brewing them in tea: it's a good way of keeping your energy up when you are doing grinding work at such a high altitude. But in the 1980s, the Reagan administration announced that this was contrary to the demands of the "war on drugs". They trained and paid for elite white military units to forcibly "eliminate coca." They rampaged across the Bolivian countryside destroying the crops of desperately poor people. Evo Morales - a coca farmer himself - saw them burn a peasant farmer alive, an experience he says "changed me forever." He wants to legalize coca for private use - and he is supported by 80 percent of Bolivians.

For these reasons, the US has been moving to trash Morales. Latin America still lives in the shadow of its own 9/11: on September 11th 1973, Henry Kissinger and the CIA backed the coup that led to the violent death of the freely elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende, to stop his programme of democratic socialism from proceeding

Over the past few years, the techniques have become a little less crude. By an odd quirk of fate, almost all of Bolivia's gas supplies are in the east of the country - where the richest, whitest part of the population lives. So the US government has been funding and fueling the hard-right separatist movements that want these regions to break away. Then the mestizos would happily hand the gas to US companies like in the good ol' days - and Morales would be left without resources. The interference became so severe that last September Morales had to expel the US Ambassador for "conspiring against democracy." This weekend, Morales is holding a major referendum on a new constitution for the country which will entrench the rights of the indigenous people.

Enter Obama - and his paradoxes. He is obviously a person of good will and good sense, but he is operating in a system subject to many undemocratic pressures. Bolivia illustrates the tension. The rise of Morales reminds us of the America the world loves - its yes-we-can openness and civil rights movements. Yet the presence of gas and coca reminds us of the America the world hates - the desire to establish "full spectrum dominance" over the world's resources and send troops barging into their countries, whatever the pesky natives think.

Which America will Obama embody? The answer is both - at first. Morales has welcomed him as "a brother", and Obama has made it clear he wants a dialogue, rather than the abuse of the Bush years. Yet who is Obama's Bolivia advisor? A lawyer called Greg Craig, who represents Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada - the hard-right former President of Bolivia who imposed some of the most extreme privatizations of the 1980s, and is now wanted on charges of genocide in Bolivia for the massacres of indigenous protesters. Craig's legal team says Morales is (yes) leading "an offensive against democracy."

The structural pressures within the US political system that drove hostility to a democratic civil rights leader like Morales up to now have not dissolved in the cold Washington air. The US is still dependent on foreign fossil fuels to keep its lights on, the drug war bureaucracy will continue its senseless crusade, and US corporations still buy Senators from both parties. Obama will still be swayed by those factors.

But while this is a reason to be frustrated, it isn't a reason to be cynical. Why? Because while he will be swayed by those factors, he will also subtly erode them over time. Obama has made energy independence - a massive transition away from foreign oil and gas, and towards the wind, sun and waves - the centre of his governing programme. If the US is no longer addicted to Bolivian gas, then its governments will be much less inclined to topple anybody else who wants to control it. (If they're off oil, they'll be much less invested in the Saudi tyranny and petro-wars in the Middle East too.)

Obama also says he wants to peel back the distorting effect of corporate money on the US political system. He is already less slathered in corporate cash than any President since the 1920s. The further he pushes it back, the more breathing-space democratic movements like Morales' get to control their own resources. He also seems to be a less fanatical drug warrior than his predecessors, offering praise in the past for those who believe the US should concentrate on treating addicts at home rather than trying to burn and fumigate their supply from every forest or mountain on earth.

But we will see. If you want to know if Obama is really altering the tectonic forces that drive American power, keep an eye on the rooftop of the world.

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here or here.

MJ Rosenberg: At Last, an Honest Broker

Obama Chronicles — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:08:26 +0000

Hopefully, George Mitchell's tenure as special envoy to the Middle East will turn out to be a case of what Yogi Berra would call, "deja vu all over again." Specifically, we could use a repeat of May 9, 2007, which was the highlight of Mitchell's career thus far.

That was the day that the conflict over Northern Ireland, which began in the twelfth century (and in which 3,500 people had been killed since 1966) ended. It was the day when Protestant leader Reverend Ian Paisley joined former senior IRA commander Martin McGuiness in a power-sharing Catholic-Protestant unity government.

It was a day, in the words of the BBC, "of such improbability that it sets a new benchmark against which the future will judge unlikely events still to come"--like an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For a time it appeared that Israelis and Palestinians would end their conflict before Irish Catholics and Protestants. It was in 1993 that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasir Arafat signed the Oslo Agreement on the White House lawn.

But then Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by an Israeli terrorist and, just as the killer intended, Oslo died shortly after its Israeli sponsor. After Rabin's murder, neither Israelis nor Palestinians fully observed the agreement (although it still succeeded in dramatically reducing the violence).

The Irish equivalent of Oslo was the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 which created the framework for peace by establishing a power-sharing arrangement between Protestants and Catholics. The ancient enemies would serve side-by-side in the same government, settling disputes through politics not violence.

Like Oslo, the Good Friday Agreement hit snag after snag, with both sides caught violating its terms. Just two months after it was signed, 29 people were killed and 200 injured in an attack by an IRA splinter group in the city of Omagh--an action designed to scuttle the peace process. But none of the major players on either side were assassinated, as Rabin was, and each setback was followed by intensive efforts to resuscitate the agreement.

This last point marks a striking difference with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Protestants and Catholics never stopped negotiating following an act of violence. Israelis and Palestinians invariably use acts of violence as a pretext to stop negotiating; never seeming to grasp--or not caring--that by doing so they were giving the terrorists on both sides a veto on the peace process.

Another difference worth noting is that while Oslo was signed by moderates in the Israeli and Palestinian camps, the Irish peacemakers were hard-liners known for their intense animosity toward the other side.

In an article about successful mediation that he wrote with Richard Haass in 2007, Mitchell said: "Including in the political process those previously associated with violent groups can actually help. Sometimes it's hard to stop a war if you don't talk with those who are involved in it. To be sure, their participation will likely slow things down and, for a time, block progress. But their endorsement can give the process and its outcome far greater legitimacy and support. Better they become participants than act as spoilers."

That is how it worked in Northern Ireland. Both sides were represented by hardliners; fanatics in fact.

Protestant Paisley had famously said, "If an IRA man comes to a Protestant home and my men are there they will kill that IRA man. Yes sir." Catholic McGuiness once said, "I am prepared to go to jail. I would rather die than disrupt or destroy my code of honor to the IRA."

The gaps that divided Irish Catholics and Protestants were every bit as wide as those dividing Israelis and Palestinians. Like Israelis and Palestinians, the two sides were fighting over one piece of land (although the Northern Irish could not simply divide it between them as Israelis and Palestinians can). The religious animosity was as intense as that between Jews and Muslims. And the 800-year old Irish conflict was some 700 years more ancient than the 100-year old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

So why did the Good Friday Agreement succeed while Oslo collapsed?

Perhaps the most significant reason was the perseverance of one critical outsider: George Mitchell. Mitchell became involved when British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had invested heavily in the success of the Irish negotiations, asked President Bill Clinton for help in bridging differences between the two sides.

Blair believed that the American president--unlike a British prime minister--could be the honest broker both sides would trust. Clinton agreed and appointed former Senate Majority Leader Mitchell as his special envoy. He expressed full confidence in him and sent word not only that Mitchell would speak for him but that, when called upon by Mitchell, he would himself use his powerful persuasive abilities to push for an agreement.

With Clinton's full backing, Mitchell had the authority he needed to get the job done. Mitchell was as tough as he was even-handed (he was neither in the Catholic or Protestant camp, just as he is neither in the Palestinian or Israeli camps). And he was indefatigable, involving himself whenever he was needed, whatever the issue.

In that same article about successful mediation, he stated that "peace never just happens; it is made, issue by issue, point by point." But, he warned, "in order to get negotiations launched, preconditions ought to be kept to an absolute minimum. . . . Confidence needs to be built before more ambitious steps can be taken. Front-loading a negotiation with demanding conditions all but assures that negotiations will not get under way, much less succeed."

Mitchell also wrote that he believed that there should be a price paid by whichever side dodges commitments it has made to the other side or to the mediator (i.e., the United States).

"Sanctions should be introduced when there is backsliding. In the case of Northern Ireland, it meant public criticism, stopping diplomatic contacts, the suspension of local institutions. There must be a clear price to be paid for unacceptable actions," he wrote.

These specific sanctions are not fully applicable to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but the point remains. For the last eight years, Israelis and Palestinians have made commitments that neither has lived up to. Although the Bush administration had no hesitation pointing to Palestinian non-compliance, it almost never called on Israel to live up to its commitments (think of the oft-promised settlements freeze).

Moreover, U.S. envoys to the region--including Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice--never had full presidential backing for their efforts and were repeatedly undermined by Elliot Abrams and other White House neoconservatives.

As a result, the United States lost its credibility as an honest broker and, as George W. Bush's term ended, the conflict was infinitely farther from resolution than it was when Bill Clinton left the White House.

That is about to change. Mitchell's appointment is the proof.

President Obama would not have appointed George Mitchell unless he intended to push the process to a successful conclusion. Nor would he have made the appointment in the presence of the vice president, secretary of state, and the assembled staff of the State Department.

As for Mitchell, it is safe to assume that he would not have taken the job if he did not know that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would fully back his efforts, without regard to the supposed political constraints on disinterested mediation. After all, Mitchell is going down in history as the man who brought peace to Ireland. It is inconceivable that he would choose to follow that success with failure in the Middle East.

As for Barack Obama, he promised to begin the serious pursuit of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement during his first year in office. He's well ahead of schedule. He appointed and tasked George Mitchell as special envoy on his second full day in office.

Obama wasn't exaggerating. He is indeed "fired up, ready to go." Also ready to go, and now almost sure to go, is the ugly, pointless, and horrifically bloody Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the words of the song Michelle and Barack Obama danced to at ten inaugural balls on Tuesday night: "At Last."

MJ Rosenberg is the Director of Israel Policy Forum's Washington Policy Center.

John Fischer: Are We Scared of the Change(s) We Need?

Obama Chronicles — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:01:36 +0000

With the frenzy of inauguration day fulfilled and the twilight-zone foibles of the last eight years in the rearview, it's tempting to forget that one of the central messages coming from the nascent Obama administration is about sacrifice. True, it has been couched in aspirational language: a difficult journey, a long road, a "new spirit of service where" Americans "pitch in and work harder." But the core message--from the train-ride to the inauguration--has been that Americans need to come together, man up, and make tough choices in tough times. Ironically, the sentiment behind the words bear a resemblance almost-president John McCain's almost-financial advisor Phil Gramm's suggestion that this country had become a "nation of whiners." While the sentiments were polar opposites (Gramm with his head in the sand; Obama all tough-love about the future), the consistent theme of Americans scared to face change is striking.

No one would argue that things seem pretty bleak right now. The recession's official. California's in the hole for $40 billion, Detroit's gone begging, the economy shed well in excess of a million jobs this past year, and The New York Times is not quite sure how it's going to pay off its debts. In the same recent poll that indicated Americans' faith in Obama to fix the economy, 92% of the respondents considered the state of the national economy as "fairly or very bad."

But two weeks ago the Minneapolis Fed released a report meant to put things into numerical and historic perspective, with surprising results. In terms of both jobs lost and gross domestic product shrinkage (the former non-farm, the latter pegged to 2000 dollars), where we are today is nowhere near the worst we've seen. Compared to say, 1948 or 1957, our economic slowdown is on par or lighter than the median for such periods, the reports suggest.

So what's really going on here? Is there perhaps an unintentional grain of truth in the blasphemy that Americans are not emotionally equipped to deal with the basic sacrifices of economic contraction and the Obama administration's insinuation that they will soon have to do so? As with all things involving numbers and complex systems, the answer is: well, sort of. People's panic is perhaps justified but misdirected. Like the tip of an iceberg, our current recession is not so much a problem in and of itself, but a hint of much bigger things below the surface.

Last year the VC firm Sequoia Capital distributed a presentation to their clients that began to bring the state of the market into sharper focus. In a nutshell, the low interest and cheap debt of the last three decades spawned a vicious cycle: easy cash enabled the U.S. to buy foreign goods; those dollars sent overseas were in-turn used to buy U.S. Treasuries, keeping Treasury rates low and money cheap. In essence, the more we spent, the more we could spend. At the same time, Sequoia explained, this excess of cash spread to housing. Home ownership and property value skyrocketed. And Americans plowed almost the entirety of this newfound value into their discretionary spending. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Americans were living on credit and saving nothing. Meanwhile derivatives and other financial "implements" turned cheap money into more money, which then got spread all throughout the economy, fueling production and further spending. In effect, the capital underpinning the American economy was stacked on itself like a house of cards. And at some point it started to topple.

The postmortem on the crisis formerly known as subprime lending has been on the table for some time now as has the op-ed stalking horse of the overspent consumer. Yes, bad decisions were made throughout the financial industry and many people lived an irresponsibly borrowed lifestyle. But the true reason for people's fear of economic failure is far more compelling and has gotten far less press.

More now than ever, we are confronted by the very real possibility that the current system we rely on for our style of living has reached its breaking point. Even as forces are aligning to jumpstart the economy, they may treating the symptom of a larger disorder. Obama's current economic plan addresses tactical realities ranging from infrastructure investment to tax cuts to credit liquidity to banking failure. But it has so far offered no answer to the lingering question of whether our contemporary lifestyle has proven to be unsustainable? If our current version of the American dream is an entirely financed one, then how much of it will we have to give up to pay it back?

The way this recession has unfolded calls into question fundamental assumptions about bigger ticket items like home ownership, higher education, transportation, leisure; things we take for granted as integral parts of being American. As Sequoia so understatedly observes in their presentation, this is crisis is "not normal." The mechanics underlying it are too complex; no one really knows its true consequences.

So maybe we are a nation afraid of the change we need. But with compelling justification. Change in the White House is different from change at home. Our crisis of so-called consumer confidence is not merely in our ability to keep buying, but to keep living the way we believe we're supposed to. And that's a scary thought.

Raafi Rivero: A Million Views (and Then Some) on Obama’s Inauguration

Obama Chronicles — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:47:28 +0000

Standing behind a small lectern last March, Barack Obama addressed the nation as his campaign threatened to disintegrate underneath him. His near-40-minute speech on race, now considered one of the pivotal moments of the campaign, was remarkable both for the intelligence it credited to the audience and the depth with which it dealt with the issue. It has been viewed 40 million times* on YouTube. The advertising world has had its own race issue, on the table now for more than 40 years, but has yet to find a voice that can apply salve to that gaping wound whilst moving an otherwise ailing industry toward reconciliation.

Separately, and without our noticing it, YouTube has become the default TV channel of the internet. This is remarkable considering that a) YouTube did not exist during the last presidential campaign and b) so much of the content is published by non-professionals. As the 30-second spot eases into its golden years, the race is on to create advertising relevant to an era in which audiences increasingly consume their world crumb by crumb: Fantasy sports break games down to the individual achievements of players; iTunes encourages music consumption via individual songs; and YouTube breaks TV into the favorite three-minute bits we can e-mail or post to blogs.

Wassup Redux
At the nexus of these disparate notions, perhaps, sits Charles Stone III, director of the hugely popular Wassup series of Budweiser spots and, eight years later, the hugely popular Wassup2008 YouTube short featuring the same characters.

Stone, a director of three feature films, successfully managed the career leap espoused by countless directors in the pages of the industry press. And yet, working outside the industry, he managed to create a viral hit the likes of which has been generally elusive to the advertising world at large. Wassup2008, an Obama-backing take on the year's hard times, generated more than 2 million views in its first three days and has a total of more than 5 million. The fact that Stone is African-American is both central and inconsequential to this piece.

Stone speaks with the same world-weary optimism as his character in the Wassup material: He is the conductor of the show, funnier, but using fewer words than his buddies. "Dookie! Pick up the phone." There could be a joke hiding behind each phrase, but his sentences resolve in succinct thoughts. Just when you think he's let the humor slink back to the closet, he drops the punch line. It is a rope-a-dope, a limbo-rock. "Even though I'm still inspired by Barack, and looking forward to a future with him as president," he says, "I kind of burned myself out on the celebratory aspect of his success. It was like when you eat too much Mexican food."

Stone seems to be neither burdened nor encouraged by the snail's pace of diversity issues in advertising, noting that "there are opportunities in the mainstream [advertising world to present] more hip and contemporary black characters that aren't the typical Colt 45-types." Yet his grin toward Obama tells us the most; he is as anxious for change as anyone else. "The norm of color is a problem and still a stigma," he warns, but adds, "I'm optimistic. More optimistic about the commercial world than the feature world, or especially the TV world."

His former executive producer at Believe Media, Gerard Cantor, added that Stone is an "example of a 'creative' package that may be the future model: a director who is more of a unique creator and can therefore bring an agency's two-dimensional idea into a unique three-dimensional campaign." Stone himself is intrigued by the array of possible venues for his work. In addition to rekindling his relationship with Believe, he is in development for both a comedy and a drama, noting that "part of the trick for an artist working in the commercial world is to coax creativity on command."

Obama Gets It
But the vast and looming question that hangs over every filmmaker working in advertising and every advertising agency working with clients is the internet. Should the strategy center around microsites or blogs, "virals" or sponsored links, Twitter feeds or Facebook widgets? And rising to the podium today was a man who used every single one of them without prejudice; a black man, it should be noted, who used them all to raise nearly a billion dollars. In the process he embodied Scott Goodson's Cultural Movement, and personified Alan Wolk's Brand as Prom King, and probably hundreds of other lesser-known Big Ideas in marketing, advertising and television.

It is apt use of this disruptive technology that promises to wield the cudgel to stereotypes in a way that years of hackneyed characters on TV and advertising could not. Online we see increasingly complex depictions of minority characters become hits because, as Wassup proved (again), minorities are actually the ones behind the camera.

One of the most successful video series on YouTube in the past eight months is comprised of the following: A young black guy stands in the middle of the woods growling unprintable insults at an ex. The videos are filmed in grainy black and white, handheld, and utterly without pretension. Barack Obama he is not. The six videos in the series have amassed more than 25 million views -- the first one with 12 million alone -- they have been uploaded by other users attempting to boost their own numbers, and countless imitations and "response" videos have been uploaded. The series itself, called Unforgivable, is nominally a spoof of the vapid advertising for Sean P. Diddy Combs' cologne of the same name, in which Combs himself is pictured usually with multiple sexual partners. (Warning: Not Safe for Work)

Raafi Rivero is a director and cofounder of Desedo Films.

NOTE: *Alley Insider notes Obama's race speech has 40,920,498 total views. The video link has since been routed to the official Obama campaign upload of the speech which itself has an additional 5 million views. The video with 40 million views is no longer up.

Read more: The Internet, Twitter, Beer, Computers, Websites, Obama, Media, Business, Facebook, Barack Obama, Internet, Television, Itunes, Video, Viral Video, Online, Youtube, Marketing, Branding, Online Video, Technology, African-Americans, Minorities, Business News

Pete Wentz: No Longer the Underdog

Obama Chronicles — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:27:13 +0000
"Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important." - Eugene McCarthy, Minnesota Senator

"I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!" - Al Franken (as fictional character Stuart Smalley), Minnesota Senator

There's a fine line between Hollywood and Washington, DC. My parents met campaigning for Joe Biden and I met my wife at "Top of the Pops," so I know that line all too well. While it must have been strange when the dude from the chimp movies became president for my folks, between governors "Terminator" and Jesse "The Body" Ventura and a mayor with no name, it's business as usual to me. In fact, it still surprises me that I have only seen Warren Beatty and Martin Sheen play politicians on television or in the movies.

I made the trek from Hollywood to Washington, DC this week for the inauguration where my band Fall Out Boy played the Youth Ball. I've been a fan of Barack Obama's for a while and, like everyone else, was elated when he won, and even more so when I had the privilege to meet him at the event. He's an underdog, which is something I can relate to (and he uses a Blackberry as much as I do -- although I don't think we'll be getting any Twitter updates from our new President).

As he begins to translate campaign promises into actual leadership and the business of governing, Obama now has an interesting challenge. Much like an indie filmmaker or an underground rock band, he was an underdog and he had the people's support because of it. Everyone was rooting for him as they would David in his battle against Goliath. America loves an underdog. The Cubs are living proof of that.

But a funny thing happens when the underdog wins (trust me on this one, I have scratched and won one of the biggest lottery tickets that a goofy little Midwestern guy like me can get away with). The elation is high, but so are the expectations. Now there is a rapt audience. There is a microphone hissing, and feedback. When that happened before it was quaint and authentic. Now it's annoying and unprofessional. Now the challenges that our nation faced in November have been compounded. There is a recession, there is war, there is a mounting unemployment rate. And there is history to be made. Now he's no longer the underdog. He's the leader of the free world with big ideas and big responsibilities. Now everyone expects results.

You could choose to move fast, which would alienate the fan base and distances you from those who brought you here, but you potentially reach a wider audience. Alternately, you could choose to stand still, which discredits the innovative, independent spirit which got you here in the first place. In the end the choice may not be President Obama's on how fast he moves: our bureaucracy may be the only area of our culture that is run in a more unconventional way than the entertainment industry.

At the risk of extending the metaphor, President Obama faces a challenge like Lauryn Hill after her album "Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" won five Grammys or the Coen Brothers after Blood Simple won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. Will it take a while for his own Fargo or No Country for Old Men? Or will success come early and often? Either way I, for one, am glad the underdog got a shot. Underdogs are the ones who are hungry, who will transcend convention and will break barriers. Just when it's at its worst... it gets better. As long as he just keeps up the pace he has so far, I have a feeling we will keep rooting for him. And heck, you never know about the Cubs!
Read more: Celebrities Talk Politics, Entertainment, Obama Inauguration, Inauguration, Obama Administration, HuffPost Inauguration Ball, Fall Out Boy, Joe Biden, Barack Obama Inauguration, Barack Obama, Entertainment News

Lloyd Chapman: Bush May have Cheated Small Businesses Out of a Trillion Dollars in Contracts

Obama Chronicles — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:27:06 +0000
There is no way to know exactly how many billions of dollars George W. Bush cheated American small businesses out of during his eight years in office. Officials in the Bush Administration went to extreme lengths to make it difficult, if not impossible to tell how many billions of dollars in government small business contracts were actually diverted to corporate giants around the world.

Under Bush, the Justice Department went to federal court on several occasions to fight Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for the specific names of firms that had received federal small business contracts. They fought the release of reports that uncovered large businesses committing fraud to illegally receive government small business contracts. A case is currently pending in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals after the Bush Justice Department appealed a San Francisco Federal District Court judges ruling to turn over the names of all firms that received federal small business contracts for 2005 and 2006 to the American Small Business League (ASBL). (http://www.asbl.com/showmedia.php?id=1150)

Since 2003, 15 federal investigations have uncovered the diversion of billions of dollars in federal small business contracts by Bush officials to Fortune 500 firms and thousands of other large businesses in the U.S. and Europe. (http://www.asbl.com/documentlibrary.html)

One investigation by the GAO found, "Over 10,000 Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contracts are missing in the system [FPDS]," and "The identification numbers assigned to each contract awarded prior to FY2003 are concealed." (http://www.asbl.com/documents/fpdsaccuracyletter10000.pdf)

In 2005, the Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Inspector General released report 5-15, which stated, "One of the most important challenges facing the Small Business Administration and the entire Federal government today is that large businesses are receiving small business procurement awards and agencies are receiving credit for these awards." (http://www.sba.gov/IG/05-15.pdf)

In another attempt to cover up the diversion of federal small business contracts to large corporations, Bush officials removed the number of employees and annual volume fields from the Central Contractor Registration (CCR) database. This move made it almost impossible to uncover the identities of large businesses masquerading as small businesses in the government's vendor databases. (http://www.ccr.gov/)

Based on the results of the 15 federal investigations, statements of current and former government executives and dozens of investigative stories by main stream media such as the Washington Post, the Associated Press, the Miami Herald, the Wall Street Journal and ABC, CBS and CNN, the American Small Business League estimates Bush Administration officials diverted up to $100 billion a year in government small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms and other large businesses.

Each time a new federal investigation or a major media story was released, which found Fortune 500 firms had received billions of dollars in federal small business contracts, Bush officials at the SBA would claim the findings were the result of honest mistakes or "miscoding." They have never explained why the "miscoding" mistakes (http://www.asbl.com/asbl.resource/content/supdoc/hr3567/ASBL0820.pdf) always resulted in federal small business contracts being diverted to Fortune 500 firms. On several occasions the SBA press office even issued press releases claiming it was a "myth" that large businesses had received federal small business contracts. (http://www.asbl.com/documents/sbamythvfact.pdf)

For eight years Bush Administration officials refused to implement a federal law establishing a 5 percent federal contracting goal for woman-owned firms. Bush Administration officials at the SBA closed the office to assist veteran-owned firms. The vast majority of SBA staff designated to assist minority-owned firms were laid off.

Bush cut the SBA's budget and staffing to the point that the agency could barely function. Hundreds of the SBA's most experienced staff were laid off.

After 9/11, the SBA allowed millions of dollars in federal disaster relief funds designated for small businesses affected by the terrorist attack in New York to be diverted to unaffected firms all across the country. (http://www.asbl.com/showmedia.php?id=86)

During recovery efforts following major hurricanes like Katrina and Ike, hundreds of small businesses went bankrupt because government financial assistance was delayed as the result of SBA staffing cuts. Recovery work and contracts that could have been given to small businesses, more often went to very large companies.

Considering the volume of federal small business contracts that were diverted to large businesses, and the lost contracting opportunities for small businesses and firms owned by women, minorities and veterans, the Bush administration likely cheated small businesses out of over $1 trillion.

Small businesses may not fair much better under President Obama. To date, President Obama has not proposed a single policy to stop the flow of over $400 million a day in federal small business contracts to corporate giants. Even worse, President Obama appears to favor a change in federal law that will divert federal small business contracts to firms owned and controlled by some of the nation's wealthiest venture capitalists.

If President Obama does follow in George W. Bush's footsteps and enact legislation and policies that will divert even more government small business contracts to large businesses and wealthy investors, he will most likely do just what President Bush did and talk about what a valuable resource small businesses are to our nation's economy while he is doing it.

Read more: Bush Administration, Barack Obama, Economy, Small Business Administration, Middle Class, Sba, Lloyd Chapman, George Bush, President Bush, Business News

Obama To GOP: “I Won”

Obama Chronicles — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 13:47:35 +0000
During a morning meeting with congressional leaders from both parties, President Obama acknowledged the philosophical differences between his stimulus package and the Republican plan - but, sources familiar with the conversation said, Obama then noted: "I won."

The exchange arose as top House and Senate Republicans expressed concern to the president about the amount of spending in the package. They also raised concerns about a refundable tax credit that returns money to those who don't pay income taxes, the sources said.
Read more: Barack Obama, House Gop Obama, President Obama, Obama Congressional Leaders, Republicans Obama, Obama Congress, Politics News

Cindy Letchworth: Obama Steps Up For Wildlife

Obama Chronicles — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 13:40:13 +0000
Some good news today. President Obama has halted measures that would eliminate Endangered Species Act protection for wolves in the northern Rockies. This memo, sent by Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, was issued Tuesday to all agencies and executive departments commanding them to stop all proposed actions until a full policy review could be executed by the current administration.

This measure is a clear step in the right direction. By stopping the slaughter of wolves in the lower 48 states, we are one step closer to a clearer understanding of wildlife needs. While the Bush administration put into effect a changed Endangered Species Act days before he left office, the threat to the wolves in the Rocky Mountains wasn't scheduled to be published until January 27th. Thankfully, diligent groups like Earthjustice and Center for Biological Diversity were ready to seize the moment for protection and review.

The Emanual memo, according to Patti Goldman, Vice President of Program for Earthjustice, said the wolf delisting rule will be withdrawn. This delisting was pushed through despite a ruling by a federal district court which declared the act illegal in July.

Due to the "midnight regulations" of the Bush administration, many new environmental rules were published before they could be easily reversed. U.S. federal law mandates a 60-day waiting period before any major regulatory changes become law, thus many outgoing presidents try to publish new rules in November in order for them to be tougher for the new president to undo.

The challenges are still great for the Endangered Species Act, but with any luck, President Obama's current decision for the gray wolves is definitely a step in the right direction.

Read more: Endangered Animals, Environment, Conservation, Wolves, Obama, Animals, Rocky Mountians, Nature, Politics News

GroundReport: First Post-Obama Attack In Pakistan Kills Al-Qaeda Members

Obama Chronicles — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 13:37:29 +0000
Originally published on GroundReport.com, the citizen journalism platform that covers world news from the ground.

By Abudlhadi Hairan

PESHAWAR-- At least 18 people were killed in a suspected American missile attack in North Waziristan agency of Pakistan on Friday.

It was the first attack that took place after President Barack Obama's entry in the office. Pakistani officials had expressed their hope that as president, Obama would stop the drone attacks.

According to local officials, at least three missiles targeted a house in Mir Ali, North Waziristan, killing over ten people, including Arab nationals, and wounding many more.

Officials said that at least four Arab al-Qaeda operatives were among the dead.

There was no immediate reaction from Pakistan, but high officials, including President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, have repeatedly condemned the drone attacks and warned about their negative effects.

The latest attack came after Pakistani security officials, in a joint raid with the Central Intelligence Agency, arrested a Saudi-born al-Qaeda operative, Zabih al-Taifi, near Peshawar late Wednesday.

Go to GroundReport.com for more coverage from Pakistan. GroundReport is a citizen journalism platform that allows anyone to publish global news and earn money.
Read more: Al-Qaida, Asif Ali Zardari, Al-Qaeda, Drones, Barack Obama, Pakistan, President Obama, Obama Pakistan, Obama Missile Strikes, Obama Pakistan Missile Strikes, Groundreport, Pakistan Obama, World News

Kirsten Gillibrand Pick Praised By Obama: “Wonderful Choice”

Obama Chronicles — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 13:29:53 +0000
President Obama released a statement praising New York Gov. Paterson's choice of Kirsten Gillibrand to fill the state's vacant Senate seat:

"Governor Paterson made a wonderful choice in appointing Kirsten Gillibrand to fill Secretary Clinton's seat in the United States Senate. I am confident that she will continue Secretary Clinton's distinguished service to the people of New York and to our country.

"During her career, Kirsten has been a strong voice for transparency and reform in government and shares the belief that government should be open, accessible and work for all of our citizens. In Congress and as special counsel for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, she worked to strengthen public and private partnerships to invest in infrastructure and New York's economy.

"At this time of great challenge, I know that Kirsten has the integrity, character, and dedication to public service to help us achieve our greatest goals," said President Obama.

See a slideshow of Gillibrand and read more about her voting record, positions and history here.
Read more: Kristen Gillibrand, Carolyn McCarthy, Obama Gillibrand, Barack Obama, Gillibrand for Congress, Jonathan Gillibrand, Kirsten Gillibrand Voting Record, New York 20th Congressional District, Gillibrand, New York Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, Politics News