Paul Craig Roberts, Part 1

The following is part two of a two-part essay.

Offshoring and "free trade" have destroyed employer-provided health coverage for millions of employees. Private health care coverage can cost as much as one-third and even one-half of a person's earned income, and some people are not insurable. National health insurance seems to be in the cards -- only there is no money for it. All the money is being spent in pointless wars and on bailouts of financial fraud. The Obama budget puts bankster bailouts and pointless wars ahead of the health of the American people.

National health insurance advocates emphasize that a single-payer system is less expensive because it eliminates layers of profits. It is also less expensive for a less promising reason. Unless there is a parallel private health care system, national health systems limit health spending to what is provided in the government budget. Over time, health care has to compete with everything else in the budget. Every part of the budget has its partisans and special interests. It is fantasy to assume that national health will always be well funded. Just look at the state of the National Health Service in the United Kingdom.

Obama's plan to tax the rich is another con job. Obama's budget defines the rich as a person with a $250,000 before-tax income. This is a rotten joke. The rich are the banksters, such as Hank Paulson with his $160 million annual bonus, and heads of hedge funds, with their billion-dollar annual incomes. To confuse the struggling middle class with the real rich is criminal. A person with a $250,000 income before tax does not come close to being rich. Obama's "tax the rich" scheme will devastate the upper-middle class and leave the super rich undamaged.

The only change we have from Obama and the Democrats is for the worse. Bush's FY 2008 budget deficit was $450 billion. The FY 2009 deficit is projected at $1.2 trillion. The budget deficit in Obama's first budget is $1.75 trillion, a fourfold increase in two years.

Obama's projected budget deficits are an understatement. For example, Obama's budget assumes a less steep economic decline than the economy is experiencing, and it projects that war costs will drop to $50 billion annually beginning in 2011 -- this despite Obama sending more troops to Afghanistan and recent congressional testimony of Lt. Gen. David Barno, former head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, who said the war in Afghanistan could last until 2025.

The "war on terror" will never end because the moronic U.S. government has defined everyone who resists U.S. hegemony as a "terrorist." The great danger to American civil liberty is that the U.S. government regards as terrorists American citizens who realize that the neoconservative dream of American hegemony is a fantasy. As the Obama regime has not repealed the Bush regime rule -- "you are with us or against us" -- Americans who oppose hegemonic war are lumped into the "against us" category.

There seems little chance that civil liberties will be restored. Obama and his "liberal" Justice (sic) Department have sided with Bush-Cheney on every important civil liberties issue. Yet, the ACLU sees "hope" in Obama's rhetoric!

On Feb. 21, Yahoo News reported: "President Barack Obama's administration has sided with predecessor George W.

Bush on the rights of detainees at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, saying they cannot challenge their detention in U.S. courts. In a two-sentence court filing Friday, the U.S. Justice Department said 'the government adheres to its previously articulated position' of denying habeas corpus rights to Bagram detainees, backing a similar decision by the Bush administration."

"Earlier this month," Yahoo News reports, "the Obama administration backed another Bush anti-terror policy when it urged a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing Boeing Company of helping fly suspects to secret CIA detention centers overseas. The Justice Department said the case should be thrown out to protect state secrets."

Do you remember the illegal spying? The U.S. telecom industry succumbed to Bush regime pressure and broke the law together with President Bush. The illegal act made the U.S. telecom industry subject to lawsuits, but the Bush regime placed its co-conspirators above the law.

Now Obama has sided with the Bush regime. On Feb. 26, therawstory.com reported: "The Obama Justice Department continues to stand behind a Bush era law meant to prevent lawsuits against telecommunications companies accused of illegally sharing private customer information with intelligence agencies. In a brief filed late Wednesday obtained by Raw Story, the Department of Justice provided its views to Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, after the San Francisco federal judge questioned the constitutionality of the wide-sweeping law and whether it gives the U.S. attorney general too much power in deciding whether a company is immune from lawsuits after it has shared information with federal agents."

On Feb. 26, antiwar.com reported that the "new CIA director (Leon Panetta) declares nothing has changed, nothing will change." Panetta declared that the U.S. policy of conducting war on Pakistan's sovereign territory "would continue." The attacks, Panetta claimed, "have been successful." For the CIA, claims of success equal legality. Did the Bush regime ever express greater arrogance and hubris?

With Rahm Israel Emanuel, an Israeli dual citizen, in charge of the White House and Obama's schedule, Obama will have an even less independent foreign policy in the Middle East than Bush. Somehow someone among the Obamacons managed to put forward an appointment that could challenge the Israel lobby's stranglehold. Charles Freeman, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, former top Pentagon official and president of the Middle East Policy Council, was chosen by Adm. Denis Blair, director of national intelligence, to head the National Intelligence Council.

The neocons went berserk. Steve Rosen, formerly of AIPAC, currently indicted as an Israeli spy; Gabriel Schoenfeld, who wants The New York Times indicted for allegedly violating the Espionage Act for reporting the Bush regime's illegal spying; Daniel Pipes, who sees Muslim terrorists under every bed; Michael Rubin of the warmonger American Enterprise Institute; and Frank Gaffney, possibly the goofiest person in America, damned Freeman's appointment as "deeply troubling" because Freeman has an open mind on the Middle East situation.

In other words, if you are not on Israel's side, you are disqualified.

There is no more certain indication of continuing war in the Middle East on Israel's behalf than for Freeman's appointment to be blocked.

Pay close attention to this one. If Obama succumbs to the Israel lobby and nixes Blair's appointment of Freeman, the United States will have to finance interminable wars on top of trillion dollar bailouts and massive unemployment.

The United States might not even make it to 2012 before it is a banana republic. <

To find out more about Paul Craig Roberts, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
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