OBAMA - May 28, 2009

As I look on our new US government, I have a feeling like watching a movie I have seen before. There is plenty of room between Tony Blair and Barack Obama, and yet the similarities are enough to leave me uneasy, and the delicacy of the present situation is enough to invest the actions of the new Administration with greater fears for the future. When Blair came to power in UK, there was no reason to expect any great reform of the disaster that was the earlier regime, but as the tenor of the campaign raised hopes that there would be a salvational change possible, we all hungered for it. After 12 years of Tory rule a resounding victory of the Labour Party, it seemed a reasonable expectation. In short time, it seemed that our expectations were excessive, and Rupert Murdoch’s were to be fulfilled. Even 4 years later, there seemed to be no choice other than the 2p worth between Blair and the Tories. We are now over 3 months into what some believed would be a new dawn but if so, we are seeing it from the bottom of a well and falling fast. As in the case of Blair, Obama has some concern for the poorest of the poor, but no general promise for all the working people, a few of whom will not suffer too much misery. The needs of Labor seem to stand in line well after those of the financiers and the banks, and even the party of labor may not have the stomach to borrow the hundreds of billions that would be required to do something like the New Deal. And in the wreckage even some of the plutocrats might be having to swallow the demise of companies like GM, because there are not enough working class customers to keep them alive. The economic predators are never sufficiently aware that as they cut the throats of the working people, they also are killing off the customers upon whom their own welfare depends.