At the close of this week Barack H. Obama will have been in office
for one year. At this point it seems fair to try to give a
grade to his performance thus far.
I will wait a few more days before giving an "overall" grade,
but would start by pointing out a few things that "everyone knows".
1) Obama's policies in Afghanistan and the drone raids in Pakistan may or may not be to one's liking, but they are certainly not a surprise to anyone who was listening to his campaign rhetoric in late 2008. (That's why I didn't vote for him.)
2) To the extent that Obama can claim credit for getting GM and Chrysler
into and out of bankruptcy in "record" time and without complete liquidation of those companies, he has at least one major accomplishment
on the economic front. Further discussion here is welcome, and I would
not be surprised if there are those who differ with this judgment.
3) Torture and detention at Guantanamo will probably end this year: ending torture and detention at Bagram (and other "black sites") should be the next order of business, but seems not to be getting much attention from the Obama administration.
4) The "health reform" and medical care bill about to be signed by Obama is absurdly weak compared to norms of the industrialized world.
Optimists say that now that the principle has been established, gradual modifications will lead to an acceptable system (20 or 30 years down the road from here). Pessimists think that the stranglehold of the
insurance and pharamceutical lobbies on the American health care system will persist for the foreseeable future.

Hannah, like you I didn’t expect much of Obama to begin with, and he has not disappointed. His silence on Israel’s shameful and horrid war on the people of Gaza a year ago was a telltale sign that he is not the embodiment of change, but a stooge for the system that made him what he is. From where I am sitting, he is a colonial racist with a mindset belonging in the 19th century. How else could you explain his belief that blowing up people will convince their surviving relatives to treat their women better.

Obama’s war in the Afghanistan, fought to make sure Muslim members of the US Army are not gunning down their colleagues in Fort Braggs, pretty much defines the man. It hasn’t occurred to him hat US troops annihilating local tribesmen and their families in Afghanistan won’t stop rich Nigerian kids from setting their arse on fire over Chicago.

And then Obama’s Nobel Prize, wtf? US military operations are being funded more than ever, troop numbers expanding in war zones, this preznit is responsible for yet another increase in an already obscenely high military budget, constantly blabbering on about how he will re-establish the US as the nation leading the world, when I look past his conciliatory speeches I see just another tool from the imperialist drawer.

His achievements on the domestic front I can’t really comment on, since I don’t live in the US I don’t really follow most of the issues, although from what I’ve read his Health Insurance solution is weak as piss, dishes out countless billions of taxpayer dollars to for-profit businesses in return for little. His love of the Patriot Act, his enthusiastic support for illegal wiretapping and other police state conditions, Obama is a Gestapo man like his predecessor. He has scuttled any attempts to prosecute the people responsible for war crimes committed under his predecessor and made sure all CIA torturers walk scot-free. Either he deep down actually approves of torture or has the spine of a jelly fish, my guess is both.

I suppose one’s gotta give him credit for having calmed the economic waters somewhat, saving the US auto industry along the way, but hey, at the end of the day it’s a jobless recovery, for which to achieve he nearly doubled your national debt. How fiscally responsible that will turn out remains to be seen.

Glenn Greenwald has brought to light some awfully nightmarish things about Cass Sunstein, especially as he relates to Barack Obama. Greenwald goes into great detail about this in his blog post entitled "Obama's Confidant Spine-Chilling Proposal"...

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/15/sunstein/index.html

Keep in mind that Cass Sunstein is not only one of our country's leading fascists, but he is also one of Barack Obama's closest confidants. Also keep in mind that Obama is a knuckle dragger compared to Greenwald when it comes to constitutional law. His understanding of our constitution and his respect for it outshine Obama's by several solar masses!

that obama kept robert gates was a good indication that cynicism was justified. his silence about israel's slaughter of gaza also soured whatever unspoken hope i secretly harbored.

the economic team and other cabinet selections stunk of the corporate revolving door. the claim of transparency has been a joke. protecting torturers (so far, maybe holder will do some legal theatrics for reelection purposes) is par for the course.

the only reason i didn't give him a straight F is because obama is just part of a dysfunctional system that will violently lash out if challenged too overtly.

basically he's probably keeping his family alive by going along with the program.

Iran A (= basically doing nothing)
Style B (Eloquence declining)
Economy F
Israel-Palestine Z

While thinking about Obama's pussyfooting around the prosecution of torturers, try reading this Harper's article by Scott Horton (and reported at
Antiwar.com. If true (as it seems to be) this would explain the kind of internal opposition that Obama must be finding to any move in the direction of applying Nuremberg or Geneva convention standards to U.S. military personel. One suspects that most "good Americans" will reject Horton's allegations, and that even those politicians and lawyers whose duty is to uphold the law will prefer to perpetuate the cover-up. The only positive aspect is that there are still a few people who attempt to learn the truth, and to act on it when they become convinced of the facts in these cases. The cases themselves are murky by design and by the necessity for shielding the miscreants, up and down the chain of command. Such betrayals of national ideals may seem to be a fact of life, but they lead to the kind of dry rot which is hollowing out American institutions and may well lead to their collapse for lack of faith, much as the contradictions between the promises and the performance of communism finally brought down the Soviet Union.

This link from Naked Capitalism analyzes some factors contributing to "government approved apathy" on this story, which should be a burning issue. The author notes the detail of Horton's story, which in itself tends to make it more credible than the cover story (although the latter too seems to have received notable creative input). Here is the full Seton Hall report cited by Horton.

Since economics has shown to be the dismal science that it is, then I can't agree with either Krugman or DeLong that Gruber's analysis of the health care reform bill is objective. What's worse about economics is that it is the closest thing to being politics without actually being politics.

So we all must face the fact that there are really only two kinds of economists: ones that fudge the numbers for the rich, and others that fudge them for the rest of us. And I must say that for an economist to argue, as Prof. Gruber does, that slapping an excise tax on insurance policies will somehow cause workers' wages to go up is clearly fudging for the rich. Emptywheel of FireDogLake does a superb job explaining why Gruber's biased analysis of the health care reform bill clearly making him a hired gun for the rich who's hired by them to further weaken the middle class:

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/01/17/on-gruber-i-dont-want-apologies-i-want-independent-analysis/

Some may be surprised that the Democratic party, which claims to be the party for the non-rich, would hire someone like Gruber who is clearly an economist who fudges for the rich. But none of us should be surprised by this once we realize that the Democrat party has become overrun with a huge litter of Blue Dogs who are bought by the rich who have also bought economists like Gruber to fudge the numbers in their favor.

and see ya later health care reform.

unbelievable. i guess the dems have their scapegoat now for why they're gonna tank on every progressive expectation the hopium smokers were high on.

Obama's new song:

And the lights all went out in Massachusetts
The day you left me standing on my own.

(with apologies to the Bee Gees)

The Scott Horton article ought to be huge news, but it won't be. I fear we will never see all the war crimes brought to light, brought to court, brought to justice. I heard John Yoo justifying his torture memos to a fawning NPR interviewer this afternoon...shudder.

Another sickie: the "jesus rifles." more shudders.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/19-8

my hope now is that this horribly damaged health insurance bill will go down in flames, but then, there ain't much hope for anything better. best recent read, not that all those congresscritters will ever pay attention to it: "The Healing of America" by T.R. Reid.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/23-7

"Everybody in, nobody out."

'grading' obama is too lenient
"m" for murderer?
"w" for war criminal?
"e" for extrajudicial assassinations?
why settle for anything less than prosecution for these crimes & other betrayals of trust?
and a number of factors may indeed make such an event possible
accountability we can believe in?
right on, man

Prosecuting Obama? Jeez, you would have to prosecute at least 5000 of his U.S. predecessors, plus every Israeli leader and Cabinet member since 1945, before you got round to examining his crimes. Obama, for all his faults, is way down the queue.

My personal prediction:

The Republicans are going to make massive gains in the mid-term elections using the chant:

"WHERE'S THE CHANGE???"

They will spend literally $$$ hundreds of millions spreading the above message which will be facilitated by clever and targeted obstructionism, aided and abetted by the same mainstream Neocon-Zionist media that fed its incorrigibly gullible populace with all that Iraqi-WMD nonsense. Very depressing. I feel sorry for 90 % of U.S. citizens brainwashed by years of Exceptionalist, Capitalist nonsense into believing that they, as individuals, are to blame for the mess their country is in. It's like viewing a 21st century version of "Animal Farm", the 'pigs' being companies like Goldman Sachs and the 'horses' being the ordinary workers.

Almost makes me want to become Marxist. R'giap, don't raise your hopes

Cass Sunstein is someone that the Right and the Left can agree upon. Let me start by saying the Rahm Emanuel is someone who wouldn't mind seeing our country turn into a fascist state. But Cass Sunstein, I'm afraid, as Glenn "Glennzilla" Greenwald points out, is someone who is willing to use his power in the Obama White House to turn our country into a fascist state:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/15/sunstein/index.html

Gun-totting teabaggers are afraid that if Sunstein gets his way, he'll take away our right to bear arms. But if you think about it, they should have little to fear that he'll do this because Obama has a strong track record for 1) supporting gun rights and 2) caving to teabaggers' demands. So for these reasons, Obama isn't likely to appoint Sunstein to the Supreme Court, where he could do lots of damage to the second amendment.

Leftist civil libertarians, OTOH, are afraid that if Sunstein gets his way, he'll take away our freedom of speech. They really do have reason to be fearful of him doing this not only because Obama has a strong track record of undercutting liberals, but also because he has done next to nothing to scale back, much less give up, any of the ill-gotten, anti-American, unconstitutional presidential powers that Bush so ruthlessly accumulated during his years in power. So for these reasons, Obama may indeed extend his presidential powers to Sunstein so that he can silent those of us who speak out against our government.

I find it ironic that loud-mouthed media pundits, like Beck and Limbaugh, are making a lot of noise about Sunstein being a threat to our second amendment rights, when he's really not much of a threat to this, while media pundits, right and left alike, remain silent about him being a threat to our first amendment rights, when he is very much a threat to this. So I find this to be doubly ironic that media pundits depend on our first amendment rights in order stay employed, but they'd rather use these rights to defend our right to bear arms than our right to free speech.

NEWS ALERT:

“A 63-year-old law limiting political spending by labor and big business was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court today in a landmark decision that called any ban a restraint of free speech.”

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/01/us_supreme_court_ruling_on_cam.html

This news wouldn’t be so bad if there were such a thing as Big Labor to counterbalance Big Business. But since only small labor exists today and is getting smaller and smaller with each passing day — thanks to both sides of the aisle working hand in glove with Big Business to drive labor unions into extinction, thereby driving workers into servitude — this court decision is bad news for all workers across the nation!

Obama is a hyper-conventional thinker (actually he is not a thinker at all) - ‘democrat’ or ‘progressive’ without any or much, heart behind it. (This is not his fault. He is probably a nice person in many ways.) He has written politically correct boiler-plate since he was a very young man. As well as two books - both about himself.

His speeches pre-election were totally void of substance, and in contradiction to his pol record. (Bush was better.)

He is weak - read ‘bi-partisan’. Was politically inexperienced - read underestimated Republican opposition. He does not like taking decisions - takes too much advice, follows along. Too subservient to his ‘elders’. He has avoided populist discourse, maybe that is to his credit, but it is bad politics. Not capable of denouncing the system that put him in place - how could he be?

He is a pure product of the US political system, mired in contradictions. He looks and acts like the ‘black’ hired to present well, be the front man on camera. (Ultimately a victim. As will soon become clear.) And yet, he has tremendous power...He has not been able to reconcile his positions as Commander-in-Chief, new-boy-on-the block, and as beholden to special interests. His choice of Biden, Clinton, Summers and Geithner...enough said.

We tend to forget that Obama is a lawyer. For me, his biggest failure is the human rights / civil rights issues (Gitmo, Bagram, Patriot Act, torture, renditions, combatant status, etc.) because he could have accomplished much. Reversing or back-tracking from the Bush neo-con era was a real possibility (however, expecting him to prosecute Cheney, etc. was illusory.) I mean, jeez, the man could sign like 5 executive orders and it’s all over. 80% of Americans would approve, and it would have been the kind of ‘moral’ victory the world was looking for! There was *nothing* to be lost! It would have required, though, fresh discourse about ‘the war on terror’ - and there, as we have seen, he proved incapable, though he, afaik, did at first try to temper the ‘terror’ framing... still it is a point to be discussed with lots of detail. (see the top post). I’m most sceptical.

Foreign policy. Same old, A democrat war to replace a Republican war. Pakistan. Yemen. ..

Health care. That this would be a hopeless quagmire was a certainty. The US health system is built on profit, charity, and proximal responsibility only: employer-employee relations, family. About 50% (?) of Americans don’t believe that they should be responsible for other’s health and see health-care as a commodity one pays for like cars or whatnot. Very hard to undo, even if at the same time large majority of Americans are for something like ‘single payer’ or ‘medicare for all’, which is not realistic. Still, Obama deserves points for courage here. Nevertheless, a smart politician would have attacked this matter sideways on, or with stealth, possibly slowly (4 years is not long though) or risked all and gone to the core directly. The core is two sided: doc/pharma/insurance profits and a hopeless, quagmired, literally medieval, bureaucracy. (Plus more.) He should have taken one year, in all cases, to develop a strategy, and should have developed a true bi-partisan platform. A make or break it deal. Writing 2 000 plus pages of proposed bills packed with pork and wiggle-room provisions is flap-lally-do. I realise that is the American way so maybe it is just hopeless.

Bank bail-outs. Begun by Bush and it’s too soon to judge the substance. The manner was not optimal, to put it mildly. I think this is the domain that he understands the least.

Israel. Fail. Requesting Israel stop building settlements (funded partly by US dollaris and US charities) is a bit like asking a juvie, when he robs old ladies, would he please use a water pistol instead of a cosh and a flick-knife.

Climate, energy, territory. Fail. Everybody else gets Fail too, so he can join the club.

Education. Don’t get me started. Anyway it has slipped under the radar.

I have tried to be 'balanced' but Obama scares me more than Bush did.

And tried to look for positive points, came up empty. Maybe the positives are to be framed as lack of negatives?

@Blackie, -Excellent points. In some ways, Obama is scarier than Bush , even with Bush's destruction of Iraq and the countless unnecessary deaths. It is hard to compare the two U.S. Presidents when each has a measurement needle of injustice pegged totally off the scale. Obama has turned out to be what I would call a “Judas goat”. A Judas goat is a goat that a slaughterhouse uses to fool the sheep that trust and willingly follow the goat into the slaughterhouse.

@Dan of Steele – I agree 100%. It is shocking that Corporations are given the same or more “rights” than an actual person. My only contention is making this a left/right political issue. I consider myself to be on the “political right” in this case, yet wholly agree with you that the Court is in error. The political right believes in a strict adherence to the Constitution. This Supreme Court decision gives Corporations an upper hand without a doubt and actually diminishes/removes the rights of the individual. And I don't agree with your suggestion to make this bad decision acceptable, that is, dictate equal time on networks during election campaigns. First off, to even get on the ballot would still be too difficult when others have corporate/special interest backing. Second, even with equal time, Fox News can spin it one way and MSNBC can spin it another with their talking heads commenting unfairly. I would suggest that Corporations not be allowed to support any candidate whatsoever, just like 501c3 Corps are not allowed to now. That would remove much of the biased programming along with the paid talking heads who are the puppets of networks like FOX and MSNBC.

I always very much enjoy posts from and about other countries, e.g. Debs from NZ. So from Switzerland. This matter is the Nth bras the fer between the US and CH.

The US -IRS, then the Gvmt.- requested that the UBS turn over X number of names of ‘tax evaders’, who had, or still have, accounts in UBS-CH. The number of names has varied, some will remember figures like 4,000, 17,000, 52,000 accounts - the final no. is 4,450, bitterly negotiated. The bulk have not yet been revealed, the deadline for doing so is Aug. 2010.

The Swiss at first refused, offended, maidenly like.

They had a bi-lateral agreement with the US, called the QI (Qualified Intermediary) and the request fell completely outside it. Secondly, and this is generally not known, that accord permitted the US, in certain circumstances, to obtain names, but the US never used it, with the possible exception of one or two cases. Nor did they ever request the ‘back’ taxes owed them but that is another story.

The US played bully on the block and threatened to sue UBS for trillions, in effect to bring it down. Was this an empty threat? Nobody knows, opinions vary; in any case, the US had the upper hand, it could calibrate the threat to have various effects, from tsunami-awesome to merely bothersome.

The Federal Council capitulated. Violating banking secrecy is a penal crime in CH, prison time guaranteed. They have been, for once, open and candid about their choices, and have even revealed that one member, Moritz, wrote a co-report (dissenting opinion.) Readers will grasp that a Constitutional Crisis of Major Proportions is brewing.

Their choices were as follows.

Refuse and let the US shatter UBS. This would have lead to war, without arms. Use their prerogative - ‘reasons of State’ - that permits them to do, literally, anything at all, and reveal the names themselves. Enjoin the UBS to transmit the names - UBS would have loved that. Have the Finma, the bank surveillance authority, fork over the names. They chose this last option, because, from their pov, on the face of it, it was the most ‘legal’, ‘proper’ route. (Perhaps also because it was the most complicated and left wiggle room.)

They explained that using ‘reasons of state’ was not warranted in this case -UBS is a private entity- and that they have abused it in the recent past (The Tinner brothers affair, involving nuclear proliferation, the CIA, US threats, spies, Pakistan, and more. )

The matter went straight to the Federal Administrative court, who handed down their decision relatively quickly: The Finma is guilty. The Finma defense was super lame, they committed a blatant violation of the Constitution. Both the Finma and the Fed council tell the same tale: the Finma was not coerced, discussions took place, the Finma acted in good faith, etc. The Finma has appealed the decision, the case will now go to the ‘Supreme’ court. (Finma will lose.)

Have the UBS clients sat still? No sirree.

The first judgement came down last Friday.

One American lady, either confident or just furious and ballsy, sued ‘immediately’, not the Finma, but the Federal Council, as the Fed. council had itself *promised* the US to reveal the names. The court decision (which I have not read) likely rests on that promise - if the highest authority in the land engages itself in this way, who actually does the dirty deed is immaterial.

She won!

There are 25 identical cases behind her on the docket, and about 4,200 of the ppl concerned are in the same position. This decision CANNOT be appealed. (Not by her because she won; not by the CH authorities; and not by an ‘international’ court.)

The Fed council acted illegally.

This decision may imply that the ‘new’ accord with the US, elaborated in Aug. 09 - which includes the promise to transmit the 4,450 dossiers by Aug. 2010, re defines ‘tax fraud’ and so on - is...retroactively invalid?

On Saturday, the US stated that it expects CH to uphold (continue to apply, etc.) the accord.

The Feds. will make a statement on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, various forces that were waiting for the Friday ballsy US lady decision, are now gearing up. For one, the Cantons. it is unbearable to them that the IRS could view Swiss citizens accounts when they themselves cannot.

Too big to fail - erosion of internal and international law and ‘respect’ (see AIG bail-outs in the US for ex.) - gradual take over by corporations (last US Supreme court decision) - globalization, not only of commerce through wage (etc.) arbitrage but of mafia-like strong arming - squashing of poor/helpless/powerless ppl everywhere - .... - well my friends it doesn’t look good.

Obama is best buddies with the head of UBS-US, plays golf with him as a public statement, lots of photos! Only 6 (!) UBS-CH accounts have been treated through the conduit of UBS>Finma/Gvmt>IRS, and that was with the holder’s agreement, a direct order from them to the Bank. The other names transmitted are still in limbo and not revealed/treated/acted upon.

Blackie-

Interesting post. The timing of the news (last aug) that swiss bank account holders would no longer enjoy the protection of Swiss banking secrecy laws, seemed almost like a propaganda move to scare americans to pull their money from those accounts. Or maybe even to keep americans from opening new accounts wishing to protect their assets as the economy crashed.

I'd imagine this was theater to sell the american public the myth of their infallibility... If the swiss can be made to sell-out their clients, then anything is possible in this new age of the american empire, none of the old institutions are to be trusted, the state can find you anywhere you try to hide (well, anywhere outside the D.C. beltway...).

I'm not making a lick of sense, even to me, but I think what I'm trying to get at is that the propaganda of the swiss banking sell-out is being used to keep the public in fear of the state. This is something Uncle $cam could probably explain better with his erudite knowledge of propaganda.

DaveS

The timing of the news (last aug) that swiss bank account holders would no longer enjoy the protection of Swiss banking secrecy laws, seemed almost like a propaganda move to scare americans to pull their money from those accounts. Daves wrote.

I think this is exactly what was aimed for. The US set up a kind of fiscal amnesty program, self-disclosure would permit the holders to avoid jail time while paying very stiff penalties/fines, much higher than the ‘back taxes‘ owed. (Just to be clear, I’m not fond of tax evaders, etc.) See for ex (just off the top of google) from the WaPo Nov. 09

Details as to which accounts the two governments would target for disclosure under the agreement were withheld until Tuesday to keep depositors guessing about their risk of being exposed -- and to keep them under pressure to confess in return for an IRS offer of leniency.

The offer, originally set to expire in September, was extended to mid-October. As the deadline loomed, a crush of depositors filed voluntary disclosures. All told, more than 14,700 people turned themselves in under the IRS leniency program, more than 12,000 of them after the deal with Switzerland was announced, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman said in a briefing Tuesday.

http://tinyurl.com/yjznugy

The connected and in-the-know would have been advised, or would have understood, that they had nothing to fear, all this is for show, and is basically to reinforce the US finance industry /power, crush competition, while pretending to address ‘tax evasion’.

(See BamaBoy's golfing partners.)

I doubt that the world is waiting for my grade on Obama's first year,
but I'm inclined to "grade on the curve" and thereby award him
a D+, on the grounds that, although his performance has been much worse than his "promise", it is, alas, par for the course for U.S. presidents.
As Parviz has pointed out Obama deserves some credit for not (yet?) making war with Iran, but his otherwise total capitulation to Israeli
dictates should be scandalous (but isn't, of course). The same goes
for almost all of the other "moral issues", with special reference
forgetfulness about those who enabled or encouraged torture. It's as if Bagram doesn't exist. Moreover, the good work of those noble citizens who have been pursuing legal redress for the victims of such crimes redounds rather more to Obama's discredit, since they still seem to be
swimming against a strong stream of complicity, at least in the desire to cover-up what happened. A failing grade is avoided only because the U.S. economy has not completely collapsed, despite the odd notion that huge payouts to the banksters and their ilk are better policy than
providing work for the willing.

The latest news from Afghanistan, namely the return of Rashid Dostum as Minister of Defense, is more than sufficient to quash any dreams of "progressive reform" in that afflicted country.

There are still three years to go in the Obama administration, so one can still hope for improvement. But the old question remains
pertinent: was hope, the last element in Pandora's box, a compensation for all the evils that escaped when the box was opened, or was it indeed the worst of all of them?

Hannah,

I wish I'd had teachers like you in school I might have gotten decent grades

As for how long america is at war: until our treasury is used up.

DaveS

Which regime? yours or ours?

DaveS