The United States of Obama

While the world awaits the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, contributing editor-at-large Tess Lawrence says she’s still an Obama girl.

THE WORLD is only hours away from awakening to either the re-election of incumbent US Democrat President Barack Hussein Obama or welcoming Bishop Willard Mitt Romney, Republican member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints into the White House, as the 45th President of the USA, perhaps under the spiritual guardianship of the Angel Moroni, son of Mormon.

His 2009 Nobel Peace Prize notwithstanding, many of Obama’s early devotees are understandably disappointed that his campaign rhetoric first time around seems to have dissipated during his term in the Opal Office, excoriated by being outnumbered, outmanoeuvred and constantly thwarted by a hostile GOP Opposition, determined to disallow him any political touchdowns.

The yes-we-can credo seemed to morph into ‘if-only-we-could’ and the audacity of hope became imprisoned to a litany of broken promises and dreams to us that included the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison, originally built as a naval refuelling base in 1903, but which stands today as a notorious sentinel to injustice and hypocrisy of the alleged First Nation of the alleged First World under the malevolent and lying influence of President George ‘Dubya’ Bush and his war mongering cronies, who made billions of dollars out of the unwinnable and obscene wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; fortunes that continue to be built upon the corpses of American and allied military personnel and the hundreds of thousands of innocent indigenous civilians, including scores of children.

First, we the people, sent in those dangerous clowns to Capitol Hill, Canberra and the Houses of Parliament, and then we were compliant when they sent in those indiscriminate killing machines, the drones.

In Australia, we’re still endorsing their use, complicit in our silence and then there are the use of land mines that remain long after the soldiers have left and that we all know are designed to kill children and demoralise civilian communities. But then again, we endorsed the aerial spraying of Agent Orange along with the poisoning and genetically mutating impact it continues to have on returned Vietnam veterans and their families, to say nothing of its impact upon the Vietnamese.

Never mind about the Yellow Peril. What about the Orange Peril ?

The legacy of Dubya’s murderous legacy, his moral, political and financial bankrupting of the USA still contaminates the relationships between the USA and other countries, including our own. Bush ensured that he and America were hated.

Read the full article, with full links on Independent Australia, here

• What Guy Barnett reckons …

POWER WITH THE PEOPLE AT A HUGE COST

By Guy Barnett

6 November, 2012

At the U.S. elections, Americans choose not just a President, but one third of the 100-member Senate, all of the 435-member House of Representatives, most of the 7000 State members of Congress, a quarter of their 50 State Governors, and thousands of local mayors, councillors and officials. But there is more.

Americans will elect the local sheriff, members of the judiciary, members of the school board and fire department. On top of that there are numerous referenda questions to answer.

The US has more than 177,000 elected officers according to one report.

The founding fathers designed the system this way to ensure power devolved down to the people rather than centralised in Washington, D.C.

US elections are held every two years on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Presidents and State Governors are voted in for four years, Senators (Federal and State) for six years (like Australia) and members of the House of Representatives (federal and State) two years.

The cost of this election so far is US$5.8 billion (A$5.58 billion), which is a 30% increase on the previous Presidential election in 2008 and much more than the Tasmanian Government’s annual spend.

US politics requires big money, big donors and big IOUs. Campaign costs in 2008 were on average $8.5 million for a Senate seat and $1.5 million for a House of Representatives seat. This time around the costs are far bigger with the Virginia Senate race itself costing $68.4 million so far.

President Barack Obama has raised more than US$630 million and Republican candidate Mitt Romney US$390 million so far with a further US$400 million raised by associated entities on the Presidential campaign alone.

By comparison the 2010 Australian federal election cost over $160 million with $53 million in public funding going to the political parties.

Voting is voluntary in the US and compulsory in Australia. When I campaigned for the Republicans at the 1986 US elections the aim was to “get out the vote”. With just over half the adult population voting the aim is still to energise the voter base to actually vote. That is one of the reasons for the high cost. Special interest groups that can motivate their members or support base are hugely influential. In the 1980s campaign techniques were ‘in-your-face’ with buttons on your lapel, town hall meetings and megaphone politics in the streets. Today social media and marketing is to the fore. Pre-recorded phone calls from politicians and others are commonplace.

Keeping the power with the people comes at a huge cost in the US.

Guy Barnett, former Tasmanian Senator worked as a lawyer in Washington, D.C. US in 1986 and 1987.