Should Netanyahu be Snubbed?

The politics of the United States, unfortunately, makes it virtually impossible to really snub the Israeli Prime Minister, even when he deserves to be snubbed.  Netanyahu's public displays of disapproval with regard to the US stance vis a vis an apparent hunger on the part of the Israeli Prime Minister to start a war with Iran, should actually be denounced by Senator John McCain and others in the United States.  What Netanyahu is doing is in effect, an attempt to force the United States to become an implicit partner in deciding to go to war, before the United States has determined that it is in its interest to do so.

After the experience with the Iraq War, which was started by President Bush, because some of his advisers, and the warriors in the Conservative intelligentia convinced him that Iraq posed a nuclear threat, Mr. Netanyahu should be sensible and sensitive enough to understand why the United States should not blindly go to war with Iran, over suspicions that it is developing nuclear weapons.  However, he has his own agenda, which he has every right to stick to.  There is no single reason why President Obama and the United States should go along, before the president and his team determine that it is indeed time for such a mission.

Israel remains a very important ally of the United States, but it should not dictate the security policies of the United States.  

Playing Clint Eastwood with Romney

The party conventions leading up to the US presidential elections are over.  Let the games begin.  To me the 

games began a few days ago, following the discouraging jobs' report.  As expected, the Republican  

candidate for president, Governor Romney jumped all over the numbers.  Very disappointing!  He declares.  However, there is a tiny bit of significant detail that is missing, and has been throughout the electoral

season: what will Romney do?  It is a tricky question for a Republican presidential candidate, who 

has bought into the myth that government is bad for the people.  The problem is that if one believes that 

government is the enemy and that the private sector and its values hold the keys to solving fiscal, economic and policy problems, there is no reason for the person to run for the highest government job in the country.

That sets up a great parody of the performance Clint Eastwood presented at the Republican convention.  

Governor Romney, you say that the president's economic policies have failed; and that the recent jobs report  

shows that the president's policies have not worked. What would you do differently?  Second question:  if you truly believe that the private sector and not government creates jobs (as Republicans like to say), why

are you running for president, at a time when you know that the country faces great challenges with regard to 

job creation?  

Third question:  you are elected in November.  The treasury department comes to you. and tells you that

credit is frozen all over the country.  We have just lost half a million jobs.  The automobile industry is on the brink of liquidation.  Cities across the country will be forced to eliminate jobs for teachers, fire fighters, and

the police.  Students will soon be unable to get college loans.  What would you do?  Nothing?  Ask the 

Congress to pass laws cutting taxes for "job creators"?  If you have a divided Congress that is unwilling to adopt your tax proposals, what else will you have to offer?

Obamacare Survives in the Court

The Supreme Court's ruling is a triumph, once again, of law as an institution that develops in the direction 

of the development of human knowledge, as Aquinas conceptualized it.  That approach to law is what 

strict constructionists often come up against, when they argue that anything that does not literally adhere 

to the letter of the constitution as written is unconstitutional.  

 

In rejecting the strict constructionist interpretation of the US constitution, once again, the Court did another  

remarkable thing, in an age of passionate partisanship that often threatens to impose the will of the rowdy   

minority on the majority.  It erred on the side of such Founding Fathers as James Madison, who sought to limit the exposure of the United States to the ever-present threat of mob rule in a constitutional democracy.

Romney's Voodoo Economics

Romney's voodoo Economics

By Fubara David-West

Governor Romney's posture on the U.S. economy qualifies as a case of voodoo economics,
because it is based on nothing but a myth: business knows best; and a creed, which says that the
entire program of governmental public policy can be reduced to a slogan, lower taxes on job creators! What the presumptive Republican nominee for the presidency has going for him is
is that there is a huge population of Americans, for whom the myth is an appealing
cultural song, and the creed, the stuff of religious doctrine.

That is why, in spite of the fact the last Republican President, George Bush basically sold the
same kind of program to Americans, with all of the bravado of a Texas cowboy, Romney is now self-assuredly promoting it. President Bush embarked on his program after taking
office with a booming U.S. economy, and with Federal budget surpluses that were
projected to last well into the future. By the time he left office, eight short years later, his treasury department was alerting him to the fact that the US economy was facing a complete
melt-down, with huge Federal budget deficits, an American automobile industry on its death-
bed, cities and school districts in dire fiscal straits, businesses facing a credit freeze, the economy shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs every month and with the housing industry in such a bad shape, that trillions of dollars in middle-class wealth had been wiped out.

Trust me, the Republican presidential candidate, Romney says, I know about business and how to create jobs. Trust my hackneyed slogans, because I am not Obama! The interesting thing is that many Americans are actually paying serious attention to him, because at this moment, he
is tied with the president in the polls.

President Obama: Be Bold, Surprise the Nation

If all we have heard and read about President Obama's upcoming speech are correct, this might be another missed

opportunity in the boldness-for-real-change department. What we have read and heard so far seems to indicate that

the president and his team are opting for a stimulus package redux after the pattern of the first $800b package, which

Republicans and the Tea Party folks have successfully sold to the public as a total failure.

I hope that the president would surprise us by coming out with a program that directly and massively attacks the two critical problems at the roots of the recession: the mortgage crisis, which has evaporated billions of dollars of wealth

in the middle class, and the high unemployment numbers, which have not budged due to the fact that corporate

America is sitting on billions of dollars in cash instead of using it to hire people, who will become active consumers and producers once again, of new products and services.

There are two items that must be in the president's new initiatives:

(1) A program to mop up the mortgage mess, by putting aside several billion dollars for directly buying up mortgages at the value of homes in today's market and refinancing at current rates for 30 years. The program should be run through

Fannie Mae and the housing departments of the states and the cities. The homes should be sold back to the current home owners.

(2) A program to give businesses large and small an incentive to hire people. Reducing the payroll tax to close to zero for 10 years is the kind of a bold program that is needed.

The first program would breathe financial life into the middle class all over the country, which has been devastated with .

lost property values. The second program would finally give private industry the kind of long-term certitude they have been calling for, as for as a condition to start putting their huge cash reserves to work in the marketplace. Both

programs, if implemented will increase the likelihood of a second term for President Obama. The question is whether the Republicans will be willing to stop such programs through the legislative process, even though they are essential for

a quick economic recovery, just to deny the president a second term.

Fubara David-West.

On Buchanan's "Foolish and Unconstitutional War"

The current military action in Libya is technically speaking not a war. It is a political use of military force, to forestall an imminent humanitarian disaster, which might have had catastrophic consequences for the those in Arab countries, who are currently rising up to demand their political rights. In that respect, it is a classic case of what Bleckman and Kaplan (1978) define as a use of force for political, rather than martial purposes.

The multilateral use of military force in Libya is intended to send a message to the Libyan regime that it must change course, and not slaughter its own people, for rising up to demand their political rights. Unless the Qaddafi regime survives, to slaughter the civilians he was threatening to, this mission will be a resounding success. That is why President Obama is calling for Qaddafi's ouster.

Of course, it is also possible that a humbled Qaddafi will get the message, even if he survives. In that case, success might also be measured by the number of Libyan lives the international community, under a UN mandate and American and NATO leadership saves. It is quite baffling that some of the leaders in the Congress and the Senate will refuse to understand that this is a matter that implicates the national interests of the United States, both in terms of America's long-standing commitment to democratic transformations in autocratic states, and in terms of upholding certain international values regarding human rights and crimes against humanity.

There would have been no possible way for President Obama and the world community to explain satisfactorily, why they did not act to save those fighting for their political rights, in spite of the fact that the Qaddafi regime announced its plans to massacre them en masse.

Libya: Ensuring that Qaddafi does not succeed

The final outcome of this conflict should determine the kind of institutional and operational structures within the African Union, which will should be kept alive. The African Union and its member states, cannot stand by and do nothing to forcefully stop the slaughter of Africans by their supposed government.

President Jonathan in Nigeria should step out and lead the AU out of its inaction on this matter. If he has any vision for change, he should use it now to move African states to finally repudiate the idea that a government, in the name of state sovereignty, can commit crimes against its citizens and not be held accountable by the international community. This is a time for leadership.

As things stand, whether the Qaddafi regime succeeds in keeping its hold on power or not, after this crisis, its legitimacy will be in tatters, and it does not have the kind of power that a China has in international politics, to ward off such a devastating blow in the international community, as China was able to do after the Tienanmen Square massacre in 1989.

President Obama, whose performance on this matter has been outrageously weak, should immediately move towards leading NATO members, to recognizing the provisional authority that the Libyan opposition is putting together, and to start a massive effort to both arm the opposition and to ensure that the Qaddafi regime does not survive.

I thank you.

Fubara David-West.