It's always the year 2000

After two and half years of Barack Obama, you might think partisan Democrats would be a bit hesitant to pull out the whole 2000 election card and, perhaps, would dial back the condescension toward those underwhelmed by the choice offered them by the two major parties. Obama, after all, epitomizes everything those dime's-worth-of-difference curmudgeons, be they Naderites or anarchists or merely observant, have been saying. While he may differ from Bush stylistically, he is substantively the same, committed to the same imperial policy of empire abroad, albeit with more of a liberal internationalist, and corporatism at home.

Surely, you'd think, given the performance of a man who once, and in the more sycophantic sectors, still is, billed as the most progressive president of our lifetime -- a doubling of the troops in Afghanistan, a blatantly illegal war in Libya, billions of taxpayer dollars funneled to an unaccountable Wall Street -- liberals would at least quit pretending we were but an Al Gore presidency away from a worker's paradise.

You would, of course, be wrong:

I remember well the contention that there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between George W Bush and Al Gore. And, indeed, there wasn’t. Both wholeheartedly embraced American military hegemony as a foreign policy and the neoliberal “Washington Consensus” approach to international economic policy. Both emphasized improved education as the key to long-term prosperity, both valorized capitalism as an engine of growth, and neither in any meaningful way challenged the various prevailing economic and social dogmas of the era. And yet looking back in concrete terms, it seems to me that the 2000 election turns out to have been one of the most consequential in American history. That’s because while both Bush and Bill Clinton pursued policies from within the paradigm of the elite American ideological consensus of the post-Cold War era they actually pursued very different policies.

I'll say this much about Matt Yglesias, author of the above defense of the U.S. political system: at least, to his credit, he steers clear of the sneering Nader-bashing that characterizes most liberal remembrances of George W. Bush's 5-4 victory over Gore back in 2000. That's something. Progress, maybe.

Instead of bolstering his case with the next logical step of citing specific examples of how Bush "pursued very different policies" from Bill Clinton, though, Yglesias curiously turns to Europe. Spain's Franco and Italy's Mussolini were quite similar, he maintains, but the former didn't involve his country in World War II, evidence that even minor differences between politicians "can be quite large in terms of practical consequences."

While I give the guy props for trying to explain the difference between Republicans and Democrats by turning to two European fascists, I can't help but think Yglesias is engaged in a red herring, shifting from the harder task of detailing the substantive differences between Bush and Clinton/Gore he asserts to the easier task of highlighting differences between leaders of two different countries with their own unique histories and political situations. The issue is whether the U.S.'s two-party system allows the possibility of major substantive differences -- like don't-get-involved-in-a-world-war substantive -- between the two viable, corporate-approved candidates for the presidency or whether in fact the system precludes such a possibility by design.

Insofar as there were substantive differences between Clinton and Bush, I'd argue it's because they served at different times, when the needs of the establishment differed. Had 9/11 happened on Clinton's watch, you can't tell me the guy who enforced an embargo against Iraq that, conservatively, killed hundreds of thousands of civilians -- a price, you'll recall, that was deemed "worth it" -- wouldn't have gotten his Rambo on and exorcised all those liberals-are-pussies demons for good. And Al Gore? You can't tell me the guy who campaigned on the need for a more interventionist U.S. role in the world while his opponent, Bush, spoke of a need for a more "humble foreign policy," wouldn't have done the same. His running mate Joe Lieberman -- allow me to repeat that, his running mate Joe Lieberman -- certainly wouldn't have been a powerful advocate for peace.

The few stylistic and the fewer substantive differences between Democrats and Republicans aside, no matter who wins the result is always the same: more war and corporatism; the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer; and a legion of pundits on both sides arguing we ought to be grateful for the dime's worth of difference we get.

Another broken promise, another broken life

So Obama isn't going to end the war in Afghanistan, close Guantanamo Bay or reverse the Bush administration's policies on "enemy combatants." Meanwhile, he's supporting a corporatist health care reform package that would maintain the employer-insurance tie -- a work-or-die incentive in keeping with the US's founding Protestant work ethic -- and, rather than removing such state privileges for the insurance industry, would further increase them in the form of a new mandate that all Americans by their product. But while that whole "change" thing has yet to appear on most fronts, there is one area where President Obama's policy is in line with Candidate Obama's rhetoric: medical marijuana, with Attorney General Eric Holder promising to end federal raids on suppliers and patients who comply with state law, a welcome departure from the Bush administration's open disdain for the right of consenting adults to use medicines not manufactured by major pharmaceutical companies and the will of voters in 14 states and the District of Colombia.

Fooled ya! As The Denver Post reports:

Federal drug-enforcement agents Friday raided the home of a Highlands Ranch man who a day earlier bragged in a 9News report about the large and profitable medical-marijuana-growing operation in his basement.

Someone making a profit selling a drug? Oh dear, someone grab the smelling salts! Unless your name's Glaxo, Smith or Klein, the DEA won't be having any of that, hippie, despite the fact that, as stated by the Colorado government (pdf), "There are no regulations regarding dispensaries." And under the ballot initiative overwhelmingly approved by Colorado voters a decade ago, patients are allowed to specify caretakers to grow marijuana for them, so there's a clear reason why state law enforcement did not arrest this man first: he wasn't violating any state laws.

The DEA, however, isn't pretending this raid had anything to with a violation of state law, ostensibly the only reason the Obama administration would permit the agency to conduct one. No, it had to do with maintaing the supremacy of the central government, and signaling to we mere citizens that politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, DC, not us peons leading our peaceful, productive lives, will decide what substances may or may not be put into our bodies:

Along with the raid, Jeffrey Sweetin, the Drug Enforcement Administration's special agent in charge of the Denver office, sent a message to anyone involved in Colorado's increasingly profitable medical-marijuana industry.

"It's still a violation of federal law," Sweetin said. "It's not medicine. We're still going to continue to investigate and arrest people."

Though you seem like a charming guy, special agent Sweetin, I must ask: what medical school did you go to? The medical value of marijuana is actually besides the point, though. The more fundamental question is, what entitles someone with a uniform and a badge to use the threat of force to dictate what another human being, another soul who entered this world ignorant and naked, may do, so long as their behavior is consensual and respectful of the equal right of others to experience the same freedom? And on a practical, cost-benefit level, isn't locking up and ruining the life of some pot dealer -- and taxing his neighbors to keep him locked up -- causing greater harm to society than if said dealer had been free to, horror of horrors, continue selling an herb that has never killed anyone to other consenting adults?

I don't expect a DEA agent or any defender of the drug policy status quo to answer that question satisfactorily because I suspect many, like agency chief Michelle Leonhart, aren't too concerned with the moral and philosophical problems with their line of work, instead getting off on the visceral thrill of busting down doors and cracking skulls and acting all special agent like, to which I say: grow up or get an Xbox.

Is Obama really eliminating fossil fuel subsidies?

The short answer: no, hell no, as I describe in a recent piece for my day job (expensive subscription required):

White House officials are claiming the Obama administration’s proposed 2011 budget eliminates subsidies for fossil fuels, saving taxpayers $40 billion over the next decade. But that projected savings is dwarfed by the amount the U.S. government spends protecting oil supplies and trade routes in the Persian Gulf, an estimated $27 billion-$138 billion annual subsidy to the oil industry that experts say increases global energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

At the same time, the Obama administration is proposing more than $1 billion in new funding for fossil fuel research and development, including $668 million for the Department of Energy’s “Clean Coal Power Initiative,” which aims to develop and commercialize new environmental technologies for the coal industry—suggesting what constitutes a fossil fuel “subsidy” is more a political decision than a policy one.

War is the new peace

Here in DC, the frenzy of orgiastic leader-worship that accompanied the inauguration has died down somewhat -- outside of the professional sycophants and courtiers in and around Congress -- but throughout the city one can still find shops hawking left over Obama merchandise. Walking by one such store the other day, I couldn't help but notice these, shall we say, rather naive t-shirts:

Thought it wasn't intended as such, these shirts would fit in well as the latest in ironic hipster fashion at Urban Outfitters -- that is, if Urban Outfitters wasn't already selling a wide selection of sickeningly earnest Hopeware.

And while I appreciate the sentiment, associating the latest American caesar with "peace" in anything but a mocking sense seems fairly indefensible in light of this:

WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (IPS) — President Barack Obama has given military commanders a free hand to determine the size and composition of a residual force in Iraq up to 50,000 troops, apparently including the option of leaving one or more combat brigades or bringing them from the United States, after the August 2010 deadline for the ostensible withdrawal of all combat brigades now in Iraq.

Although the ostensible purpose of the combat brigades remaining in Iraq would be to protect other U.S. troops in the country, they would also provide the kind of combat capability that U.S. commanders have wanted to maintain to deal with a broad range of contingencies.

And this:

CIA Director Leon Panetta said yesterday that U.S. aerial attacks against al-Qaeda and other extremist strongholds inside Pakistan would continue, despite concerns about a popular Pakistani backlash.

"Nothing has changed our efforts to go after terrorists, and nothing will change those efforts," Panetta said in response to questions about CIA missile attacks, launched from unmanned Predator aircraft.

And, of course, this:

President Obama has ordered the first combat deployments of his presidency, saying yesterday that he had authorized an additional 17,000 U.S. troops "to stabilize a deteriorating situation" in Afghanistan.

The new deployments, to begin in May, will increase the U.S. force in Afghanistan by nearly 50 percent, bringing it to 55,000 by mid-summer, along with 32,000 non-U.S. NATO troops. In a statement issued by the White House, Obama said that "urgent attention and swift action" were required because "the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and al-Qaeda . . . threatens America from its safe-haven along the Pakistani border."