As I read Obama’s Triangulates While His Base Only Murmurs, by Cedric Muhammad, I find myself extremely perplexed. My first question, if one knows the meaning of culture how can one assume culture can override political ideologies. It is true that politics is an aspect of culture, however politics has the power to direct the path of culture

For example, the morality of Christianity and its love of humanity did not stop Christians from oppressing Africans into chattel slavery. And later the North and South had to fight a four-year bloody war to discontinue chattel slavery, due to the advent of industrialization. It should be also noted that cultural behavior could change irrespective of morality as economic pressures take hold. This shows the force of politics and the agency of economics to direct culture.

In using Obama’s answer to Andre Showall’s question as his of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will administer only 1.6 billion dollars for infilstructure improvement and it will be put into the hands of big business, who will take their profits off the top. It does give workers extensions on their unemployment insurance, Medicaid and Medicare, but this doesn’t give them a solid public works project, which can remain viable until the economy picks up again. However, this still falls very short of giving workers national health insurance, which would cost the government approximately $1,259 billion. As things stand with the Recovery Act, we can only stay in place and descend further as the economy erodes.

I’m also amazed as to why Cedric never mentioned Obama’s facilitation of Bush’s programs of TARP: Trouble Asset Relief Program and TALF: Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility. These two programs have started out costing the taxpayers well over a trillion dollars. And let me say this, I never saw one banker force Bush or Obama into creating these programs.

And I must go further because Treasury Secretary Geithner personally announced he was making a capital infusion of over two trillion dollars into the coffers of the largest banks. As I recall, the public or Congress was never asked whether they were in consent. Mind you, if a capitalist enterprise is too big to fail it has extreme authority; one could say oligarchic position.

What Cedric is doing is blaming the victim; Black leadership does not wheel enough power to achieve their goals. If Cedric looked closer he would see that no citizen group sets policy in this country, only the legislature and the executive. Cedric goes further in bearing his naiveté when he assumes that the Israeli lobby forced the U.S. to do their bidding. One has to take note that the U.S. gives Israel five billion dollars a year – free. Remember the old saying, “he who pays the piper calls the tunes”.

Obama’s refusal to attend the Conference Against Racism and Zionism is merely a continuation of a long standing support for Israel no intention of paying reparation to African-Americans.
Obama continues to overlook the Bush Administration’s misdeeds. He refuses to indict the mandate to torture, wire-tapping, renditioning and the superimposing of our Bill of Rights with the USA Patriot Act and several others that have followed it. This too violates our Constitution. Lets take this a further there is no two party system here it is one party with two branches of the Capitalist party.

The 2008 campaign did not have any alternative parties to participate in the debates. The electoral system is controlled by the Republican and Democratic parties – who else? At this point Cedric can’t you see that Obama is a mouthpiece for the ruling elite – “come on smell the coffee”?

Critique posed by: Ronald Crenshaw
E-mail: reddog_15@netzero.com

Very few progressive groups held President Obama accountable prior to the election; so why now expect him to do anything that we deem necessary to improve our situation in America. This is espcially true for African Americans. We wanted him to win so badly that few of us questioned him with our concerns. During the campaign season it was near impossible to criticize him without being excoriated by friends and family.

I maintain that the radical change that is needed for African Americans will not come directly from the ballot box. It comes from direct action in the form of protest as was done during the 1960’s. Recall the film footage where folks were treated in inhumane ways in order to vote, sit at a lunch counter, attend a decent school, etc. A nation that treats anyone like that is one that holds deep contempt and resentment for those people. Those feelings do not go away very easily even with a Black man in the White House.

We have NOT arrived with the election of Barak Obama. However we have obtained a very powerful symbol in a first Black family. At some point we as a people have to move beyond accepting only symbols as a way of empowering ourselves. In order to improve the quality of our lives we have to do as Mr. Muhammed states, demand that something substantive be done to improve our lot in this country. I too believe as he that President Obama wants us to demand those things.