On February 1, 2014, Norman Soloman writes on Nation of Change:
Barack Obama put on a deft performance Tuesday night. With trills of empathy, the president’s voice soared to hit the high notes. He easily carried a tune of economic populism. But after five years of Obama in the White House, Americans should know by now that he was lip-syncing the words.
The latest State of the Union speech offered a faint echo of a call for the bold public investment that would be necessary to reduce economic inequity in the United States. The rhetoric went out to a country that in recent years has grown even more accustomed to yesterday’s floor becoming today’s ceiling.
The speech offered nothing that could plausibly reverse the trend of widening income gaps. Despite Obama’s major drumroll about his executive order to increase the minimum wage for some federal contract employees, few workers would be affected. The thumping was loud, but the action was small.
See http://www.foreconomicjustice.org/?p=11554 for my response.
In his fifth State of the Union address, President Obama essentially said that he is going to go it alone. His major policy plan for 2014 is to bypass Congress altogether and use targeted executive orders to get things done. A flurry of executive orders is obviously better than nothing,
but it’s hardly the kind of bold leadership and change this country needs to undo the destruction caused by decades of wealth concentration at the exclusion of the vast majority of Americans and policies that facilitate economic inequality. The real state of the union is precariously fragile.
While progressives should support President Obama as he works to make his “year of action” a reality, we should demand more than just a jobs focus and policies that protect and enhance the interests of the richest Americans at the expense of all other Americans, and demand that equal opportunity is extended to EVERY American to accumulate a viable wealth-creating, income-producing asset-based estate to provide both income and financial security.
President Obama needs to embrace and use the kind of bully pulpit to advance ownership-broadening policies. He will need more than just executive orders; he will need our efforts to start organizing from the ground up.
Given this preface, I have edited and modified President Obama’s State of the Union speech. Below I present the revision of the main body of the speech that deals with economic inequality, that I believe President Obama should have presented. The italicized words are President Obama’s; the non-italicized are my edits.
My hope is that the policy provisions I have presented will generate a national discussion for creating a truly unique, global-leading just and environmentally responsible Ownership Society that fosters personalism, creativity and innovation.
http://www.nationofchange.org/state-phony-populism-1391270684
