Barack Obama has been almost universally supportive of President Bush’s plans to throw free money from tax payers to extremely wealthy investors whose recklessness brought about this, the greatest world economic crisis in 70 years. Right now we are looking at EIGHT AND A HALF TRILLION DOLLARS being handed out, at a time when all kinds of necessary spending on human needs and a sustainable economy are being rejected due to “lack of funds.”

Even more damning is the likelihood that financial regulation will not be reintroduced to prevent similar crises from repeating in the near future, and that many of the people who (almost purposely) engineered this disaster are now coming back to power in the new Obama administration. (Lawrence Summers and Robert Reich in particular.)

Obama supports a multibillion dollar giveaway to US automakers, whose commitment to producing fuel inefficient vehicles (and fighting of legislation to improve fuel efficiency standards) has brought them to bankruptcy. It does not appear that Obama will require much change in the kind of vehicles the “Big 3″ produce as part of the bailout.

A Fake “Green Economy”

One of the few inspirations for hope in our current economic problems was the chance that they would cause the institution of the kinds of radical economic changes that humanity needs to survive coming resource shortages.

Obama has taken this theme, stripped it of legitimate accountability, expert opinion, and hard numbers, and turned it into his first major address to the nation. Now we hear that “rebuilding roads” (the opposite of a green solution) and “replacing wasteful lightbulbs in schools” (as opposed to just banning wasteful lightbulbs and other kinds of wasteful production, like hummers, as was done during WWII) is the best he can offer a world on the brink.

Earlier, his campaign had mentioned the cost of the bailout as the reason why they would not be able to follow through on their promises to greatly increase alternative energy production in the US.

Finally, Obama has consistently embraced ethanol as both a solution to resouce problems and a magic cure for rural America. In fact, grain ethanol is, to quote the UN, “a crime against humanity,” responsible for most of the doubling of grain prices that we saw this year, leading to great increases in hunger. As the Worldwatch Institute points out, the grain needed to make enough ethanol to fuel an SUV up just once could feed a person for one year.

In fact, as currently produced it takes more energy to produce ethanol than can be derived from it–it only exists dude to massive government subsidies, the same subsidies that cause non-subsidized farmers in the developing world to go bankrupt when “free trade” agreement banning their tariffs are enforced, as Obama plans to continue doing.

Taxes

It seems that Obama flat out lied about taking away the giant Bush tax cuts for the megarrich, and also hopes to withdrawal his proposal to tax oil companies on the insane profits they’ve recently enjoyed at the expense of everyone else. He may still follow through on plans to cut taxes for the “middle class” (at a time when the US faces it’s greatest deficits and need for public investment ever), but keep in mind that when leading Democrats talk about the middle class, they mean people who make $250,000-$100,000 per year.

Obama opposes critical fuel taxes (supported by every leading environmental scientist and environmental body) that would support the development of alternative energy.

There is now emerging historical consensus that targeted public spending–and NOT tax cuts for wealthy corporations and individuals–is the best way to help the real economy recover and grow.

Healthcare

Obama opposes universal healthcare (aka “single payer”) , which is supported by most Americans and is successfully used by most developed nations to provide healthcare to all their citizens at a fraction of the cost of what Americans spend per person each year.

Selling Out

Obama’s congressional allies have claimed that he and they won’t be able to keep their promises to pass a major economic stimulus package due to “resistance from Republicans in congress.” The Democratic Party already controls the majority of both houses, and with just one moderate Republican could break any filibuster in the Senate. Therefore this claim is a lie.

Good public spending benefits the economy far more than tax cuts. Note that infrastructure spending that leads to renewable power and energy efficiency has an even greater return on dollar invested.

The Obama campaign has said, due to military spending and the bailout, they “probably won’t be able to meet our commitment” to raise foreign aid. Unfortunately, what foreign aid currently exists is often systematically designed to bankrupt farmers in the developing world, since the US is the only aid providing country that refuses to buy food aid from local farmers, instead using hunger as a cynical excuse to dump excess inventory from large, subsidized agrobusinesses, who claim this as a tax writeoff.

Military Waste

Obama wants to increase the size of the military, even though we spend more than all the rest of the world combined on “defense,” and it actually makes us less safe. Solving world hunger, transitioning to sustainable energy, industry, and communities, providing health care for all and promoting R+D and sustainable employment might seem to you to be more important priorities to which the trillions of dollars being burned up in military spending (when the full costs are counted) might be better dedicated. But you, my friend, are not Barack Obama.

His choice for Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, wants the US to make new nuclear weapons and maintain all our old ones.

Pro-War

Obama lied about his commitment to have US soldiers out of Iraq within 16 months, and he was dishonest to begin with since he fully intended private mercenaries to continue on there even after said “withdrawal.”

He wants to ramp up the war in Afghanistan, despite the fact that history has shown that only real social investment and not military force can bring peace to the region, one of the poorest and most miserable on earth.

He has expressed a willingness to bomb Iran and won’t rule out a first strike nuclear attack.

Middle East Peace

Obama’s anti-Palestinian stance is in some ways the strongest of any US president ever, and directly opposed to opinion of the people’s and governments of every other nation on earth. He does not seek a two-state end to the Israeli conquest, says he will not negotiate with the elected government of Palestine, and claims that Jerusalem should be considered the capital of Israel, something no other president or world leader has ever before seriously proposed.

The plight of the Palestinian people is a huge cause of foreign support for anti-US terrorism (due to our government’s financing of the majority of the military operations against them).

Latin America

Obama regards the democratically elected (in a landslide) governments of Venezuela and allied nations as “enemies of the United States,” and has urged sanctions against them. He has ruled out the possibility of ending the cruel embargo against the people of Cuba, despite the worldwide consensus that the embargo is illegal, hurts common people, and has been counter-effective in bringing political freedoms to the island.

Obama supports Colombian attacks of soveigern nations like Ecuador, in which civilians are killed. He considers the drug-and-death-squad dictatorship in Colombia to be America’s best friend in the region. He supports bringing the “Colombian solution” of military response to the drug trade into Mexico.

Selling Out

Martin Luther King Jr., a REAL AGENT OF CHANGE, said “My government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” Obama, a false prophet of progress, says the opposite, “We lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good.”

That is why Obama is president and MLK was, very likely, assassinated by our own intelligence agencies.

Total US military spending per year is now over $1.4 trillion. That’s enough to solve every major material problem of humanity.

Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State

• Thought Iraq War was a great idea. Still does in private.

• Made fun of Obama for imagining the possibility of talking to Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, and legitimately despicable people like the President of Iran.

• Opposes restrictions on US military aid to governments that engage in gross and systematic abuses of human rights. Supports unconditional military aid to evil, torture-loving government leaders like those of Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Pakistan, Equatorial Guinea, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Kazakhstan, and Chad.

• In 2002, Senator Clinton voted in favor of an amendment by right-wing bigot Jesse Helms that prohibits the United States from cooperating in any way with the International Criminal Court, and its prosecution of individuals responsible for serious crimes against humanity, such as those responsible for the genocide in Darfur. In addition, this vindictive law also restricts U.S. foreign aid to countries that support the ICC.

• Refuses to support international treaty to ban land mines, which is supported by almost every other government on earth, since land mines kill and permamently disable thousands of civilians every year, mostly women and children.

• Joined with Republicans to defeat a proposal that would restrict US export of cluster bombs to countries that use them against civilians. Up to 98% of casulaties from cluster bombs are believed to be civilians, with 30% of the bombs failing to explode on impact and turning into land mines.

• Drafted resolutions condemning the World Court’s for criticizng Israel’s construction of a “security wall” inside the terrority of another country and major human right’s groups condemnation of Israeli targetting of cilivians inside Palestine and Lebanon. (Because it’s not enough for us just to finance these crimes, we also have to immediately officially condemn any ethical organization that brings them to light.)

• Is generally a despicable person unable to string together more than two phrases without distorting the truth for personal gain.

Robert Gates, Secretary of “Defense”

• First ever military chief to be carried over from a president of a different party.

• Wants the US to create new nuclear weapons and preserve old ones.

• Like Obama, doesn’t think it’s a big deal that the US spends more on the military than EVERY OTHER NATION ON EARTH COMBINED (especially when military spending funnelled through the Depts. of State, Homeland Security, and Energy is figured in, along with debt on past military spending) and in fact wants to increase the size of the military, even though our military is actually making things more dangerous for people here and everywhere.

Lawrence Summers, Director of White House National Economic Council

• Believes poor countries are not polluted enough.

• Oversaw the deadly imposition of “Structural Adjustment” throughout the globe, destroying a majority of the economy of the former USSR, catalyzing crises in Asia and Latin America, and reducing the quality of life for hundreds of millions of poor people through requiring cuts to social safety nets, privatizing of public industries, and the free reign of financial speculation across the globe.

Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Fatherland Homeland Defense

• Leading advocate of using the military to round up immigrants along the Mexican border, supportive of chain gang prisons for undocumented immigrants and people awaiting trial.

Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff

• One of the most pro-war Democrats who worked to convince others in his party to support Bush.

• To quote his dad: “Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he be? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to clean the floors of the White House.”

Eric Holder, US Attorney General

• Serves as a lawyer for Chiquita bananas, defending their funding of right-wing death squads in Colombia that targeted union and peasant leaders.

Richard Holbroke, Special Envoy to Southeast Asia

• Oversaw US arming and coordination of the invasion of East Timor by the “our” proxy, the Indonesian military, an unprovoked attack that lead to the deaths of 200,000 East Timorese, one-third of their entire population.

Greg Craig, White House Counsel

• Lawyer for Bolivian ex-President Sanchez de Lozada who is charged with extreme corruption and genocide for, among other things, ordering the murder of 60 civilian protestors in 2003. Craig says “we do not accept your characaterization of those events as a massacre.” The dictator’s other lawyer, Howard Gutman, was one an early member of Obama’s Financial Committee.

Sonal Shah, Transition Team Advisor

• US Coordinator for Vishwa Hindu Parishad, militant group was held responsible for the genocidal pogroms against Muslims in the western Indian state of Gujarat in 2002 that killed 2,000 people and rendered 100,000 homeless. The Indian coordinator of the genocide, Narendra Modi, stays at the Shah family home when he visits the US.

More important even than who Obama’s appointing is who he ISN’T APPOINTING:

• Opponents of war, military waste, or the kind of destructive corporate economics that led to our current crisis.

• Proponents of universal healthcare, serious humanitarian aid, or radical changes to the way we use natural resources.

Al Gore, the last elected president from his party, Al Gore, believes Obama should announce a national goal of getting 100 percent of electricity generated by renewable sources within 10 years. Guess what? He’s not going to have any kind of authority in Obama’s administration.