Reverse, Restore, Expand and Punish

A lot of commentators are currently urging Obama to aggressively pursue the policies that he campaigned on. I can only join this choir. As other commentators have also pointed out, conservatives, such as William Kristol and journalists on CNBC, are currently deluding themselves into thinking that somehow, Obama is not the socialist in disguise as they said he was only a few weeks ago; he is actually a conservative in disguise. I’ll believe that when the Pope converts to Protestantism.

George W. Bush’s crimes against the American people are many… so many. Bush squandered American prosperity, he further removed social safety from the most vulnerable Americans, he repeatedly stomped on the American worker, the American retiree, the American poor, and any American who was not fortunate enough to already have his or her needs met beyond most people’s wildest dreams. Bush’s staunch and relentless opposition to providing health care to those who need it has undoubtedly killed tens of thousands of American during the last 8 years. George W. Bush’s presidency can basically be summed up in the following way: it was an unbridled and unforgiving 8-year assault on everybody who was not like him. George W. Bush has, unequivocally, been the worst President in American history. Although not entirely appropriate yet, writing about him in the past tense is positively exhilarating.

Bush started a judicial revolution, putting himself above the law, above Congress, above the courts, and above the world. What were his main objectives with doing this? It was legalizing torture. Bush threw International Law and International Humanitarian Law (which governs Human Rights and prohibits torture), out the window. Bush has a lot of blood on his hands by now, but ending America’s commitment to these principles is what caused the most deaths in total. Thousands of American soldiers have died, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, and tortured, spent and humiliated prisoners have taken their last agonizing breaths in ghost prisons around the world. Bush could have been impeached over a number of these atrocities, but because of the totally spineless politicians in Congress, he was not.

Obama’s first objective must be to stop all the developments that were started during the Bush years, so that the situation does not get worse. Bush is currently trying to deliver a few last kicks in the American groin by further ruining environmental standards, worker rights and more. Bush is now trying to poison the possibilities for his successor, so that the successor will be less successful. This is sometimes done in the world of business. A board of a company will try to make it so that, if a hostile takeover is done, the company will be in such bad shape when the takeover is complete, that there would be no point in trying to buy the company in this hostile way. Compare it to a bug that tastes so bad that no bird will try to eat it. Bush must be stopped now, before he can inflict yet more deliberate harm on the country.

Turning now to what Obama must work to RESTORE. Seeing that Obama is a bona fide constitutional scholar, I have no doubt that he will immediately work to restore the rule of law in America and internationally. America must get out of Iraq, close Guantanamo and all the other ghost prisons around the world immediately. Obama must reverse the Bush tax cuts, and obviously institute a more progressive tax collection formula. He must end the damage to the provision of health care that does exist caused by Bush, such as the barring of bargaining with drug companies for cheaper prices of drugs (I’ve rarely heard of a more stupid idea, by the way). One of the most philosophically atrocious things Bush did was to veto spending for sick, poor children. I seriously don’t think that even Mussolini or Franco would have done that.

Much damage has also been done to the competitiveness of the American economy. Every economy will try to have what is known as a “competitive advantage”, I. e. something that that economy can do better than others. This can be a 2,000 year-old engineering tradition, such as the one in Germany or relentless technological innovation, such as that in Japan. Bush decided that for America, the advantages were going to be, not what America could do well, but how America could be mercilessly exploited. Bush enabled companies to treat workers as they saw fit, squeezing ever more profit out of them while paying them less and treating them worse. Bush enabled companies to treat the environment as a dumping ground and excavation pit while enabling them to spew ever more poisons into the air by going back on the commitment to the Kyoto Treaty. Obama must restore the environmental legislation, end exploitation as a competitive advantage in lieu of expertise and innovation, and focus on local economic growth.

Obama ran on a platform of change. Conservative commentators are, as I said, trying to tell themselves that this “change” basically means “business as usual”. They seem to think that it means appointing lots of Republicans to important posts, reaching across the aisle to the right-wing of the Republican Party that is still left in office after the elections, and basically run a third term for George W. Bush. Any sensible person knows this will not happen. Obama must EXPAND the state and make it work for its citizens and provide the security that they deserve.

No longer must 30,000 American per year die because they don’t have access to health care. No longer must people have to file for bankruptcy because of medical bills. No longer must young kids have to sign up for the military just to get a college degree and then wind up being sent to Iraq. No longer must corporations stomp on the American worker by denying them the right to basic influence in the workplace and a fair wage. No longer must the American infrastructure, and in particular public transportation, be allowed to deteriorate even as the population continues to grow. No longer must people over the age of 70 have to work just to make ends meet. NO LONGER MUST AMERICA BE A SECOND-WORLD COUNTRY FOR ITS OWN CITIZENS!

I am dead serious about the crimes committed by George W. Bush. They must be investigated in the same way that Nixon and his administration was investigated. Bush must be held responsible for all the lies he told, the laws he broke and all the harm he caused. He must be charged as an individual. In addition, similarly to Nixon, Bush has allowed the intelligence agencies to run wild. The CIA was only too happy to torture people when Bush gave the go-ahead, and the FBI happily listened to people’s phone conversations, and so on and so on. There are probably many things that these agencies have done that we don’t know about. That is why we need a Congressional commission like the Church Commission in the 1970s. The Church Commission investigated how these agencies had run wild, and in the end imposed restrictions on them that lasted until Bush’s legal revolution and usurpation of all kinds of powers.

This is a plea to Obama: reverse, restore, expand and punish!!!