Obama Harvests His Presidency

 The Great House on billionaire Richard Branson's private Caribbean island prior to a devastating 2011 fire (source). It has since been rebuilt (click for tour). Cost to rent: $60,000 per night. Branson recently hosted the Obama family there for a post-presidential getaway.

by Gaius Publius

My words fly up, my deeds remain below.
Words without deeds never to heaven go.
    —Barack, Prince of Denmark, Act III, Scene 3

This is a story I didn't want to produce, but fully expected to. For years I've been writing about Barack Obama and his legacy, the one he wants to have and the one he actually has. In 2013 I listed the four economic items Obama wanted to achieve to complete what he considered his legacy list before his presidency ended:

Privatized “Medicare expansion” (the ACA). Benefits cuts for SS and Medicare. Keystone [pipeline built]. TPP [passed]. If Obama gets these four, he’s a happy man, and in his mind he goes out in glory.

He succeeded on the first; tried and tried and tried on the second; bailed on the third only when forced to by popular opposition; and pulled out all the stops, every last one of them, to pass the fourth in the last months of his last year, even as his chosen Democratic successor, Hillary Clinton, under pressure in the primary, finally came out as opposed. (Obama's chosen DNC chair, Tom Perez, was never opposed, nor was anyone else close to his administration, though Perez doesn't talk about that much these days.)

If it weren't for Tea Party and Freedom Caucus Republicans, he'd have been three for four — Social Security "reform" and TPP would have passed. Obama didn't lose for lack of trying.

Obama's real legacy also includes zero bankers jailed for fraud despite the rampant criminal behavior of Wall Street in the run-up to the 2008 economic devastation. As he told a group of Wall Street CEOs in 2009, "My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks." He was right, and proved an effective shield.

For all of those efforts, those that succeeded (passing ACA, protecting Wall Street CEOs) and those that failed (cuts to SS and Medicare, TPP, Keystone), he fully expected to be granted a "Bill Clinton future" — the big money, the big foundation, the international love and acclaim.

You can read about his fundraising for the foundation here. It's quite a story in its own right. You can hear the international acclaim grow stronger by the day, thanks especially to the serendipitous contrast with his successor, Donald Trump. And now the money is starting to flow.

"Bill Clinton Money" 

Fresh from his vacation on privately-owned Necker Island with billionaire Richard Branson, Obama has just inked his first lucrative speaking deal. The fee: $400,000. The venue: Wall Street.

Mark Hensch at The Hill:

Obama to net $400K for Wall Street speech: report

Former President Obama has agreed to speak at a Wall Street conference for $400,000, according to a new report.

Obama will appear at Cantor Fitzgerald LP’s healthcare conference in September, Fox Business Network first reported Monday.

Fox Business said it confirmed Obama’s appearance with senior members at Cantor, a financial services firm.

Obama will serve as the keynote speaker for one day at the company's event, sources there told Fox Business.

The following is from the underlying Fox Business report by Charlie Gasparino and Brian Schwartz, who broke the story. Note the criticism that looks to us like praise (my emphasis):

When he was president he called them “fat cats,” but now he’s likely thanking them for a huge payday.

Former President Barack Obama, less than 100 days out of office, has agreed to speak at a Wall Street conference run by Cantor Fitzgerald LP, senior people at the firm confirm to FOX Business. His speaking fee will be $400,000, which is nearly twice as much as Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state, and the 2016 Democratic Party candidate, charged private businesses for such events. [...]

News of Obama’s speaking deal with Cantor, which had yet to be reported, comes as the former president made on Monday his first public comments since leaving office after an extended vacation. In those comments to college students at the University of Chicago, the president spoke broadly about the need for public service and studiously avoided any mention of the current president, Republican Donald Trump, or how he intends to make a living now that he’s a private citizen.

It’s also likely to be a source of criticism against the former president given Obama’s record of attacks against Wall Street bankers for making huge salaries while average Americans were suffering from the ravages of the 2008 financial crisis. Obama, a progressive Democrat, spoke frequently about Wall Street greed during his eight years as president, and now he’s accepting a speaking fee from the industry he singled out as the main culprit of the banking collapse.

I'll return to the Fox piece in a moment. First, about the timing, compare Obama's first post-presidential days to Bill Clinton's immediate post-presidential trajectory (my emphasis):

On December 21, 2000, President Bill Clinton signed a bill called the Commodities Futures Modernization Act. This law ensured that derivatives could not be regulated, setting the stage for the financial crisis.

Just two months later, on February 5, 2001, Clinton received  $125,000 from Morgan Stanley, in the form of a payment for a speech Clinton gave for the company in New York City.  A few weeks later, Credit Suisse also hired Clinton for a speech, at a $125,000 speaking fee, also in New York.  It turns out, Bill Clinton could make a lot of money, for not very much work.

Notice that just like Clinton, who was fresh off his late December win for Wall Street deregulation, Obama is fresh off his highly focused effort to pass TPP in the final days of his own presidency. Unlike Clinton, who won, Obama ultimately failed, but Obama's win would have been much more monumental than Clinton's. Commodities futures deregulation enriched just one industry, though it did help wreck the whole economy. TPP was truly "NAFTA on steroids," a multi-industry monopoly protection scheme, and nearly everyone in America with real money would have benefited, not just the bankers.

By the way, if you compare Obama's speaking fee with Clinton's early fees, you may notice the price has gone up. (Clinton's later fees grew in line with those prices. In 2015 he was getting $500,000 per speech.) A good example of asset inflation — and that's not sarcasm. Everything the rich are buying these days is rocketing up in price. See "Art and real estate are the new gold, says Blackrock CEO."

Word and Deeds

I quoted Gasparino and Schwartz's piece for a reason. In it you can see the double benefit Obama gets — Wall Street reward money, plus undeserved credit for opposing Wall Street while in office.

Fox, in hitting him for hypocrisy — "given Obama’s record of attacks against Wall Street bankers for making huge salaries while average Americans were suffering from the ravages of the 2008 financial crisis" — actually praises him as an kind of "anti-Wall Street warrior" during his presidency, something (a) he certainly was not, but (b) something he desperately wants to be thought to have been.

After all, you can't retire as a "champion of the people" if you don't at least appear to champion the people. And you can't be internationally loved in your "retirement" years if the world sees you as a quid-pro-quo greed head. Managing how the world sees him will be crucial to Obama's success going forward.

And typical of Obama, the issue is words versus deeds. That "record of attacks" was entirely verbal. Obama's deeds were the opposite of attacks; they were entirely supportive. Which is entirely to be expected given the level of funding Wall Street poured into making and keeping him president in the first place:

Wall Street Responsible For One-Third Of Obama's Campaign Funds

One-third of the Obama re-election campaign's record-breaking second-quarter fundraising came from sources associated with the financial sector, the Washington Post reports.

That percentage is up from the 20% of donations that came from Wall Street donors in 2008, and contradicts reports that a growing Wall Street animosity towards the Obama administration may jeopardize his re-election bid.

And please don't forget that Obama's real legacy, the one involving actual deeds, includes what David Dayen called "the greatest disintegration of black wealth in recent memory." Of that I wrote this:

Occasionally, when there's justice in the world, one is not just branded by the manicured and curated image one tries to project. One is branded instead by what one actually does in the sight of others.

Will Obama see more justice than the millions whose homelessness he caused? I guess that part of the story is still being written.

One can hope. It will be interesting to watch this unfold.

You Get What You Pay For

Bottom line — Wall Street invested millions in Barack Obama's career in 2008 and 2012. That investment paid off over the eight years of his presidency to the tune of billions upon billions in profit and millions upon millions per year in executive compensation and bonuses.

It would not be at all surprising if Wall Street bankers were now saying "thank you" by giving him money he can keep. In fact, it would be entirely surprising if they weren't.

UPDATE: I discussed this issue and post on "The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen," WNHN-FM, progressive radio in New Hampshire. You can listen here; start at 30:00 (or earlier to listen to Garth Brooks sing "It Pays Big Money").

GP
  

Obama's Other Legacy: "The Greatest Disintegration of Black Wealth in Recent Memory"

(Source, and a good read on its own)

by Gaius Publius

"Nothing is sadder than a man who disclaims his power to preserve his reputation."

I've been writing a lot lately about outgoing President Barack Obama's legacy, especially on climate issues (example here). This is another piece in that series. I want to quote something from David Dayen's recent response to Ta-Nehisi Coates' widely read "My President Was Black." Coates praises Obama. Dayen adds, in short, "Yes...but."

Here's Dayen. After recounting a conversation he had with a person named Andy who was going through the hell of defending himself from foreclosure during the mortgage crisis, Dayen comments (my emphasis):

Should Andy exhaust his appeals, he’d join over 9.3 million American families who have lost their properties since the housing bubble collapsed, either to foreclosure or an associated transaction. Given the average household size in the United States, that likely represents more than 20 million people, forced to uproot their lives and find shelter. This had a particularly gruesome effect on people of color, who stored more of their wealth in home equity and were targeted for subprime loans. Coates points out that white households now hold seven times as much wealth as black households; he doesn’t mention how that statistic grew worse under President Obama, mostly because of foreclosures. Former Representative Brad Miller calls the crisis “an extinction event” for the black and Latino middle class.

I agree with Coates that “there is nothing mere about symbols,” and Obama’s meaning to black America looms large. But that achievement must contend with Obama’s culpability for the greatest disintegration of black wealth in recent memory.

If Obama ever reads this critique, I suspect he’d mutter under his breath, as he disclosed to Coates he does habitually when confronted with activist demands. “Where I got frustrated at times was the belief that the president can do anything if he just decides he wants to do it,” Obama grumbles.

Nothing is sadder than a man who disclaims his power to preserve his reputation. The presidency is subject to countless veto points and constraints, but the foreclosure disaster was unique; Congress had already given the incoming president the authority to act.

Your takeaway in three bullet points:

• Over nine million families — more than 20 million people — lost property during the mortgage crisis and had to find shelter or remain homeless.

• Obama already had congressional authority to act, and didn't. 

• As a result, Obama is culpable for the "greatest disintegration of black wealth in recent memory."

That's his legacy too. 

And for what did he do this? Dayen supplies his own answer in the quote I reprinted at the start of this piece, and I agree — "to preserve his reputation," his legacy. These simply the facts and must be acknowledged, despite the praise Obama's been lavished with lately. The homeless black man in the image above may owe his condition to the first black president.

A personal comment — Occasionally, when there's justice in the world, one is not just branded by the manicured and curated image one tries to project. One is branded instead by what one actually does in the sight of others.

Will Obama see more justice than the millions whose homelessness he caused? I guess that part of the story is still being written.

GP
  

How Obama Traded Away His Legacy

by Gaius Publius

I'm about to say the obvious, but with so many dots getting connected in this post-election, pre-Trump interregnum, I want to connect just these two and let the obvious sink in.

Obama's push for TPP not only cost Clinton the election (among other factors, of course), it very likely cost Obama his legacy — all of it.

Barack Obama has a number of what his supporters call "legacy achievements" — meant positively (I would add a number of inverse-legacy achievements as well) — but chief among them, first in the list, is always the ACA, "Obamacare." Whatever its demerits, and they are many, it did accomplish a narrow task — providing medical insurance, in some form, to millions of Americans who didn't have it before.

That legacy achievement is about to be stripped away, all because Donald Trump, with a fully Republican Congress behind him, has been elected president.

And what caused that Republican takeover of the White House? Again, many factors, but chief among them, in my estimation and in the estimation of a number of writers, is Obama's relentless push to pass TPP even as Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was running to inhabit, in effect, Obama's third term — and even as both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders achieved or nearly achieved unpredicted upsets running against "free" trade economics.

Let that sink in, because it's not going to be said in too many public Democratic places. Obama's relentless push to pass TPP in part cost Clinton the election and in full will cost Obama his signature ("legacy") accomplishment.

Again, you won't hear many Democrats say this, because the "free" trade wing of the Democratic Party is still in charge (of the Party, not the country). And that wing, which includes almost all Clinton supporters in the Party — including Tim Kaine, her choice for vice-president, and including Tom Perez, Obama's "not Keith Ellison" choice for DNC chair — is still in favor of job-killing trade deals. This intra-party dynamic, I predict, will keep them out of power for a generation, unless the Obama-Clinton wing is ousted from party leadership in something like the next six months. That's possible, of course, but it doesn't seem likely to happen.

(And before you say, or hear, that Perez was forced to support TPP because, as Secretary of Labor, his boss supported it, consider that Perez didn't feel as compelled to support his boss's position on the recent UN condemnation of Israeli settlements.)

Supporting my contention is this, written by Lori Wallach, head of Global Trade Watch at Public Citizen, and Murshed Zaheed, political director of CREDO Action. The whole piece is worth a read; they nail it.

TPP: How Obama Traded Away His Legacy

Donald Trump is preparing to wipe President Barack Obama's legacy from existence. The Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank and protections for the environment and immigrants all are set to disappear in no part small part thanks to President Obama himself and his relentless advocacy for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) right through Election Day.

And President Obama still won't face the sorry truth, this week declaring that he would have beaten Trump if he had been the candidate. After years of siding with corporate America to pass various job-killing trade deals over the opposition of congressional Democrats, he announced that it was "nonsense" that anyone should have the view that "Democrats have somehow abandoned the white working class."

Yet in fact, post-election polling and exit polls confirm that Trump flipped decisive states because he connected with voters' fury about job-killing trade deals.

Trump's omnipresent attacks on "rigged" trade deals resonated with communities devastated by mass job offshoring. Polling shows that Americans viewed President Obama's TPP as a corporate power grab that would cost more jobs, lower wages and raise medicine prices.

Trump won Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by 23,000, 11,000 and 68,000 votes, respectively. The number of people in those states certified as having lost jobs to trade since the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, is 78,331, 159,252 and 182,017 under just one government program that captures a fraction of trade-related job loss.

Notice the mention of NAFTA above. People have long memories when it comes to NAFTA, especially people out of work. NAFTA is almost iconic for "Democrat-sponsored job-killing trade deal."

About my comment that Clinton was running for "Obama's third term":

Meanwhile, President Obama's closing argument for Clinton at a Michigan rally the day before the election was to "continue this journey of progress," effectively promising a third term of an Obama presidency that had spent the past two years prioritizing the implementation of a trade deal despised not only by working class Midwesterners, but the entire Democratic Party base.

That clearly didn't sit well with Rust Belt voters.

My own thought about the election, one of them anyway, is this: Voters didn't just vote for "change" in some vague dissatisfied way. Many voters specifically repudiated "Clintonism" — Democratic Party-sponsored neoliberalism — when they voted last November. Evidence for that is this — Clinton's very high unpopularity, which cannot simply be chalked up to 90s-era right-wing smears. Too many younger voters, for whom the 90s occurred in the time of Alexander the Great (or at least Ronald Reagan), repudiated her candidacy as well, especially during the primary.

Why Did Obama Risk His Legacy for TPP?

To answer that, one must connect different dots. Here's two of them, via the New York Times:

With High-Profile Help, Obama Plots Life After Presidency

...The dinner in the private upstairs dining room of the White House went so late that Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn billionaire, finally suggested around midnight that President Obama might like to go to bed.

“Feel free to kick us out,” Mr. Hoffman recalled telling the president.

But Mr. Obama was just getting started. “I’ll kick you out when it’s time,” he replied. He then lingered with his wife, Michelle, and their 13 guests — among them the novelist Toni Morrison, the hedge fund manager Marc Lasry and the Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr — well past 2 a.m.

Mr. Obama “seemed incredibly relaxed,” said another guest, the writer Malcolm Gladwell. He recalled how the group, which also included the actress Eva Longoria and Vinod Khosla, a founder of Sun Microsystems, tossed out ideas about what Mr. Obama should do after he leaves the White House.

Publicly, Mr. Obama betrays little urgency about his future. Privately, he is preparing for his postpresidency with the same fierce discipline and fund-raising ambition that characterized the 2008 campaign that got him to the White House.

The long-running dinner this past February is part of a methodical effort taking place inside and outside the White House as the president, first lady and a cadre of top aides map out a postpresidential infrastructure and endowment they estimate could cost as much as $1 billion. The president’s aides did not ask any of the guests for library contributions after the dinner, but a number of those at the table could be donors in the future.

The $1 billion — double what George W. Bush raised for his library and its various programs — would be used for what one adviser called a “digital-first” presidential library loaded with modern technologies, and to establish a foundation with a worldwide reach. ...

...Including construction costs, Mr. Obama’s associates set a goal of raising at least $800 million — enough money, they say, to avoid never-ending fund-raising. One top adviser said that $800 million was a floor rather than a ceiling.

There are many more high-dollar names in the article, including these:

So far, Mr. Obama has raised just over $5.4 million from 12 donors, with gifts ranging from $100,000 to $1 million. Michael J. Sacks, a Chicago businessman, gave $666,666. Fred Eychaner, the founder of Chicago-based Newsweb Corp., which owns community newspapers and radio stations, donated $1 million. Mark T. Gallogly, a private equity executive, and James H. Simons, a technology entrepreneur, each contributed $340,000 to a foundation set up to oversee development of the library.

Those two dots, of course, are Obama's post-electoral plans and its price. So, did Barack Obama push so hard for TPP in order to feather Hillary Clinton's electoral nest, the Democratic Party's electoral nest ... or his own post-electoral future?

As a one-time mayor of Chicago, Hizzoner himself, used to say, "Youth wants to know." And so do the rest of us, though the answer seems fairly (as I said in this essay's first sentence) obvious. Hillary Clinton is off to a post-electoral retirement in semi-disgrace; the Democratic Party seems doomed to wander the wilderness for a good long time; and Obama ... he sails into a well-financed, almost golden, future sunset.

GP
 

Nearly 70 Organizations Call on Obama to Protect the Gulf of Mexico

Map depicting the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (source: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.)

by Gaius Publius

"The question now is whether we will have the courage to act [on climate change] before it’s too late."
    –Barack Obama, 2013

We've written about Obama, his language, his legacy, and his climate change actions here — "Climate Change and Barack Obama’s Legacy" — and in that piece discussed Obama's refusal to completely close public land and waters for fossil fuel extraction. Quoting Farron Cousins:

Under President Obama’s watch, the United States has become the largest fossil fuel producer on the planet when accounting for both oil and liquefied natural gas production. In terms of just crude oil production, the U.S. falls to third place, behind Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Oil and gas obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) now accounts for 50% of U.S. oil production, and, thanks to the Republican-controlled [but Democratic-enabled] Congress, the 40-year-long ban on crude oil exports was lifted.

Meanwhile, the government is still auctioning offshore oil and gas leases, even after President Obama presided over the largest ever oil spill in U.S. waters. Fracking continues its incredible boom, despite reports showing a rise in human-caused earthquakes related to fracking wastewater injections.

We also noted:

• Federal lands and waters could have accounted for 24 percent of all energy-related GHG emissions in the United States in 2012.

• Combustion of coal from federal lands accounts for more than 57 percent of all emissions from fossil-fuel production on federal lands.

• Methane pollution from venting and flaring from onshore federal leases rose more than 51 percent between 2008 and 2013, according to government data.

All excellent reasons for a legacy-seeking president to end all fossil fuel extraction on publicly held land and waters. Nevertheless, Obama has in the main resisted. Yes, there have been some new restriction of offshore drilling in the new five-year plan, but only to drilling in the Atlantic Ocean — that is, off the wealth-populated eastern seaboard.

Now come nearly 70 environmental organizations to ask that he do just that — end all offshore drilling. From the Sierra Club press release (my emphasis):

Nearly 70 Organizations Call on President Obama to Protect the Gulf of Mexico

Groups Call for the Gulf to be Excluded from the Five Year Plan
Tuesday, October 4, 2016

New Orleans, LA -- Today, nearly 70 groups sent a letter to President Obama, urging him to build on his climate legacy and remove the Gulf of Mexico from the 2017-2022 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program and immediately initiate a plan to transition the region away from a fossil fuel economy and towards one powered by clean energy.

In the latest draft of the five year offshore drilling plan released in March, the Obama administration removed leases in the Atlantic Ocean, but kept in leasing for the the Arctic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.

As of 2016, more than 20 million acres of the Gulf have been leased to the oil and gas industry, and the 2017-2022 leasing plan, in its current state, will open it up further. Currently, approximately 80 percent of the previously leased acreage has yet to be developed.

Groups point to significant environmental impacts felt throughout the Gulf as a result of offshore drilling, noting numerous pipeline bursts, spills, and rig failures that have inundated the waters with oil and toxins, as well as onshore effects leveled by the petrochemical industry against communities of color across the region.

The letter calls for fossil fuel operations to be replaced with a clean energy alternative: wind. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the Gulf of Mexico has the potential to generate 5,000 MW of wind power by 2030, supporting more than 20,000 full-time jobs.

More here. The letter is here (pdf).

Barack Obama is being challenged to choose. Does he want to protect the high-wealth eastern seaboard only and let the oil-and-gas industry risk trashing the less wealthy Gulf states (see map above)? Or does he want to save the coastal and offshore environment for all the citizens of the U.S. — and indeed of the world?

Is he counting on half measures to fully guarantee his legacy? I guess that depends on what you take his legacy needs to be, including the need for big-money donors like those mentioned here.

More simply: Does Barack Obama himself have the courage he called for? Or will that be his legacy, that he did not?

GP
  

Climate Change and Barack Obama’s Legacy

Revenue from fossil fuel extraction on federal lands by state, 2013. Note the offshore areas as well; the Gulf of Mexico is especially lucrative (source; click to enlarge).

by Gaius Publius

"The question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late."

–Barack Obama, 2013

This is another piece with not many pieces to remember. Unfortunately, though, the connections between the pieces I want to show you are actively obscured. My goals is to put all three pieces in front of you and let you see what they add to. It 's not pretty.

My take-off point is something written by Farron Cousins at the excellent DeSmogBlog. But I want to use the version published at Naked Capitalism, including Jerri-Lynn Scofield's brief introduction. Please click through for the whole thing. I'm going to be selective so you can see what matters most with one glance.

Scofield's intro makes three points in succession:

[T]he US rise to the position of the world’s third largest fossil fuel producer, [is] in part as a result of the fracking boom. While Obama and company have squawked about climate change, administration policy has actually fuelled that particular trend in fossil fuel extraction.

The underlying New York Times article that sparked the author’s post ... comprise part of the ceaseless drumbeat of legacy journalism as the Obama administration stumbles toward its finish line. Am I alone in being absolutely sick of these assessments, which serve to whitewash what has been a very sorry presidency for progressives, featuring a long litany of disappointments?

That section contains the gist, the three pieces that I mentioned at the start.

• Under Obama, the U.S. has become a fossil fuel-producing giant. 
• Obama is making pro-climate noise and doing anti-climate deeds. 
• Obama current legacy quest requires he do both — make the noise while doing the deeds.

What you see coupled in public are the legacy quest and the legacy words. What you see separately — never connected to the others — is the first point, fast-growing U.S. fossil fuel production, always touted as a plus. For example, Hillary Clinton put it this way in 2013, before she declared her candidacy, but after she left the State Department (emphasis added):

In Oneida County, Hillary Clinton touts U.S. oil-and-gas production 

... Late into the lecture portion of Clinton’s Oneida County appearance, she referenced a report that the U.S. in on track to surpass Russia in domestic oil-and-gas production.

That’s good news, Clinton said.

“What that means for viable manufacturing and industrialization in this country is enormous,” she said to the crowd of 5,800 in Hamilton’s athletic field house.

The sellers of oil and gas, companies richer than god, usually sell increased U.S. fracking and oil production as providing "energy independence," an appeal to patriotism bereft of real love of country (similar to the way Budweiser beer, owned by a Belgian company, is now marketed as "American").

"American" Budweiser beer is owned and produced by InBev through an intermediary company, AB InBev, which is primarily owned by the Belgian company that makes Stella Artois ("the Budweiser of Europe").

In the same sense that Budweiser is "American," support for increased U.S. carbon extraction is "patriotic." Budweiser is Belgian, and fossil fuel extraction will destroy us.

Obama's Legacy Billionaires

President Obama is now on his "quest for legacy" tour. He's saying things that will burnish his legacy, like expressing support for opponents of the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) which has sparked all the protests, including those led by native American tribes. At the same time, he's doing things, like pushing hard for TPP, the top item on every mega-corporation's wish list, so that he can finance that legacy.

Interesting two-step, burnishing the legacy with words that finance-the-legacy deeds erase. Think I'm wrong? Let's look at who finances presidential legacy libraries, and at what price. According to the New York Times (emphasis mine):

With High-Profile Help, Obama Plots Life After Presidency

...The dinner in the private upstairs dining room of the White House went so late that Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn billionaire, finally suggested around midnight that President Obama might like to go to bed.

“Feel free to kick us out,” Mr. Hoffman recalled telling the president.

But Mr. Obama was just getting started. “I’ll kick you out when it’s time,” he replied. He then lingered with his wife, Michelle, and their 13 guests — among them the novelist Toni Morrison, the hedge fund manager Marc Lasry and the Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr — well past 2 a.m.

Mr. Obama “seemed incredibly relaxed,” said another guest, the writer Malcolm Gladwell. He recalled how the group, which also included the actress Eva Longoria and Vinod Khosla, a founder of Sun Microsystems, tossed out ideas about what Mr. Obama should do after he leaves the White House.

Publicly, Mr. Obama betrays little urgency about his future. Privately, he is preparing for his postpresidency with the same fierce discipline and fund-raising ambition that characterized the 2008 campaign that got him to the White House.

The long-running dinner this past February is part of a methodical effort taking place inside and outside the White House as the president, first lady and a cadre of top aides map out a postpresidential infrastructure and endowment they estimate could cost as much as $1 billion. The president’s aides did not ask any of the guests for library contributions after the dinner, but a number of those at the table could be donors in the future.

The $1 billion — double what George W. Bush raised for his library and its various programs — would be used for what one adviser called a “digital-first” presidential library loaded with modern technologies, and to establish a foundation with a worldwide reach. ...

More — Obama wants to raise most of the billion dollars upfront so he doesn't have to do what Clinton did, engage in "endless fundraising":

Supporters have urged Mr. Obama to avoid the mistake made by Bill Clinton, whose associates raised just enough money to build his library in Little Rock, Ark., forcing Mr. Clinton to pursue high-dollar donors for years to come. Including construction costs, Mr. Obama’s associates set a goal of raising at least $800 million — enough money, they say, to avoid never-ending fund-raising. One top adviser said that $800 million was a floor rather than a ceiling.

A few more names:

So far, Mr. Obama has raised just over $5.4 million from 12 donors, with gifts ranging from $100,000 to $1 million. Michael J. Sacks, a Chicago businessman, gave $666,666. Fred Eychaner, the founder of Chicago-based Newsweb Corp., which owns community newspapers and radio stations, donated $1 million. Mark T. Gallogly, a private equity executive, and James H. Simons, a technology entrepreneur, each contributed $340,000 to a foundation set up to oversee development of the library.

And finally: "The real push for donations, foundation officials said, will come after Mr. Obama leaves the White House." How can you read that and not think, "When he presents the bill — the big ask — for what he did to please them."

I hope you didn't miss the talk of an "Obama foundation." Keep in mind, public corruption is now legal in America.

The Quest for Legacy Credibility

But you can't appear to be craven, money-driven, and go on a world-wide fundraising and legacy tour. You have to appear to care about the people. Nor can you launch a foundation if it looks like you promoted billionaire-friendly policies so billionaires will finance it. Thus his many "burnishing populist cred" speeches, backed by mainly ineffective, but headline-grabbing, actions. Thanks to a compliant media, the speeches outshine the deeds, or are never connected together.

Which brings us to Obama and climate change. To take one example, in 2013 Obama gave what was billed as a major climate speech in which he said things that suggest he really does get it about climate. Just a few brief snips, but do read it all. It's a very good speech (again, my emphasis):

[I]n the late 1950s, the National Weather Service began measuring the levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, with the worry that rising levels might someday disrupt the fragile balance that makes our planet so hospitable. And what they’ve found, year after year, is that the levels of carbon pollution in our atmosphere have increased dramatically.

That science, accumulated and reviewed over decades, tells us that our planet is changing in ways that will have profound impacts on all of humankind.

The 12 warmest years in recorded history have all come in the last 15 years. Last year, temperatures in some areas of the ocean reached record highs, and ice in the Arctic shrank to its smallest size on record -- faster than most models had predicted it would. These are facts.

And:

So the question is not whether we need to act. The overwhelming judgment of science -- of chemistry and physics and millions of measurements -- has put all that to rest. ...

So the question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late. And how we answer will have a profound impact on the world that we leave behind not just to you, but to your children and to your grandchildren.

As a President, as a father, and as an American, I’m here to say we need to act.

Sounds like he gets it, right? It's entirely possible he does. Yet this is the man whose "Clean Power Plan" relies heavily on transitioning to methane, another greenhouse gas, that when burned, becomes atmospheric CO2. And it probably doesn't hurt that Exxon is the "largest natural gas producer in the U.S." Are you remembering the "legacy billionaires"? I don't think Obama has forgotten them.

Obama and the Dakota Access Pipeline

Keep Obama's excellent words in mind when you read the DAPL news as it evolves. If the DAPL pipeline is completed, the money giants financing it are "banking on being able to drill and frack for the oil ... over the coming decades," according to Hugh MacMillan, a senior researcher with Food & Water Watch (quoted here).

Remember that — supplying oil and gas, all to be burned, for "decades."

That's both dangerous (toxic, really) and lucrative. So, which banks are involved? MacMillan again:

Citibank is the bank that’s been running the books on the project, and that’s the bank that beat the bushes and got other banks to join in. So, we have Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, SunTrust, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Mizuho Bank, TD Securities, ABN AMRO Capital, DNB First Bank—and that’s actually a bank based in Philly; it’s not the DNB Bank based in Norway, which is actually provided several hundred million to the Energy Transfer family separately—and ICBC London, SMBC Nikko Securities and Société Générale.

All of these names are candidates for the Obama legacy fund donor list, donors to the fund from which the Obama library and Obama foundation will spring. There has emerged some reasonably good (and headline-grabbing) news from the administration lately, but many are calling this news just posturing.

How will you know whether the administration is serious or not about standing with native Americans, and all Americans, in ending this project? When it ends the project using the authority it has without mass civil disobedience forcing them to do it. Or when the money a completed pipeline generates flows to its financers — Citibank, Wells Fargo, et al. Keep watching.

Despite His Words, Obama Won't End Extraction on Federal Lands

Which brings us to the end of Farron Cousin's piece. He rightly takes the president to task for saying good words and doing the worst of bad deeds when it comes to fossil fuel extraction on federal lands. Obama not only enables the carbon industry, he acts as one of their primary suppliers:

President Obama’s shortcomings on climate change action could be forgiven or even dismissed, if it weren’t for his administration’s willingness to open up federal lands and waters to fossil fuel industry exploitation. ...

Looking at some of the numbers on this issue reveals a pro-industry approach toward energy production. When President Obama took office in 2009, domestic oil production was at about 5.1 million barrels a day. By April of 2016, that number had climbed to 8.9 million barrels a day, which CNN notes is a 74 percent increase in just 7 years.

Under President Obama’s watch, the United States has become the largest fossil fuel producer on the planet when accounting for both oil and liquefied natural gas production. In terms of just crude oil production, the U.S. falls to third place, behind Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Oil and gas obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) now accounts for 50% of U.S. oil production, and, thanks to the Republican-controlled [but Democratic-enabled] Congress, the 40-year-long ban on crude oil exports was lifted.

Meanwhile, the government is still auctioning offshore oil and gas leases, even after President Obama presided over the largest ever oil spill in U.S. waters. Fracking continues its incredible boom, despite reports showing a rise in human-caused earthquakes related to fracking wastewater injections.

Yet fossil fuel extraction from federal land and water, overseen by the Department of the Interior, accounts for more than 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. From a study (pdf) commissioned by the Center for American Progress and The Wilderness Society:

Today, taxpayer-owned gas, oil, and coal extracted from federal lands and waters by private companies are one of the nation’s most significant sources of GHG emissions, accounting for more than one-fifth of all U.S. GHG emissions.[2] The U.S. Department of the Interior, or DOI, which has jurisdiction over the nation’s public lands, has no comprehensive plan to measure, monitor, and reduce the total volume of GHG emissions that result from the leasing and development of federal energy resources.

The study also notes:

• Federal lands and waters could have accounted for 24 percent of all energy-related GHG emissions in the United States in 2012.

• Combustion of coal from federal lands accounts for more than 57 percent of all emissions from fossil-fuel production on federal lands.

• Methane pollution from venting and flaring from onshore federal leases rose more than 51 percent between 2008 and 2013, according to government data.

Now reread Obama's "major" climate speech, especially this:

So the question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late. ... As a President, as a father, and as an American, I’m here to say we need to act.

In light of Obama's deeds, what else can you see in his words, but a quest for an undeserved pro-climate legacy, financed in future years by anti-climate billionaires and their friends.

Obama's Real Legacy

Farron Cousins notes several ways in which Obama has been a "disappointment." There are many more, including the constant attempts to cut Social Security before he folded that tent. After all, just as it took Nixon to go to China; it takes a Democrat to cut Social Security, and Obama gave it a very good try for years.

So how will he be remembered? Will Barack Obama be remembered by his words and the twin ad campaigns that bookmark his presidency, the one that launched it, for example here...

I don't think Will.I.Am had any idea that Obama would follow his campaign's frequent "Yes, we can" with a frequent presidential "But no, I won't."

...and the one that will end it, the legacy quest you're now reading about?

Or will he be remembered for what he really did, and not what he appeared to do? Here's James Galbraith's bleak assessment (my emphasis):

And the President too is a young man. Unlike say Lyndon B. Johnson or Jimmy Carter, when his term ends he won't be able simply to go home. He'll need a big house in a gated suburb, with high walls and rich friends. And a good income, too, from book deals and lecture fees. He may be thinking about that now. ... [But] it won't save him. For if and when he ventures out, for the rest of his life, the eyes of all those, whose hopes he once raised will follow him. The old, the poor, the jobless, the homeless: their eyes will follow him wherever he goes.

Galbraith was writing about Obama when he faces those he wanted to deprive of Social Security benefits. But he could also be writing about facing the climate-ravaged too.

Will Galbraith prove right? I guess, as with all legacies, only time will tell.

GP
 

Barack Obama: Legacy Play or "Untethered" Progressive?

2006: Barack Obama at the launch of the
Brookings Institute's Hamilton Project

by Gaius Publius

Obama's latest moves in the (sometimes semi-)progressive direction are all the rage among Democratic supporters and activists hoping, finally, that change has arrived. We saw his move on immigration, but just after the election, not before it — meaning not in time to save candidates like Colorado Senator Mark Udall. He followed that with a move to open the diplomatic and travel door to Cuba, finally. There's also talk in his State of the Union address about extending the ceiling for mandatory overtime pay, providing free community college, and the like.

All of this has garnered praise, as it should. It's also sparked talk of the "bolder," "untethered" Obama. Even his (never gonna pass) proposal for wealth distribution through a Wall Street tax, which I looked at here, has burnished the "new Obama" cred, at least among left-leaning voters and non-voters.

In that same discussion, though, I asked if this "new Obama" was sincere or a "legacy play":

Barack Obama's "Piketty Moment"

None of Obama's policy proposals (including TPP, I'm told) will pass. Most, in fact, don't have a prayer, in the new Congress or the old one. There are, for example, too many bought-and-paid Democrats to pass anything that taxes Wall Street one dime, the first penny, or the first tenth of a cent. And if something has not a prayer of passing — and is proposed by someone traditionally opposed to anti-One-Percent proposals — it starts to look oddly like an ad campaign, or an attempt to put an enemy on the defensive, or both.

As I've written elsewhere, I don't buy the idea that "this" Obama is "newly freed" Obama, someone who can express his true progressive beliefs. Obama was a free-trade, reform-Social-Security neoliberal in 2006; there's your "true Obama." If he was a secret progressive, he lied to Robert Rubin and Roger Altman to their faces, two years before he first ran for president.

So where is this newfound concern for the "middle class" coming from? Three things to consider:

▪ Legacy — Obama's major job for the next two years will be creating his post-presidential life. Has he chosen the Carter model or the Clinton model? You'll know as soon as he starts giving speeches for money. My money's on the Clinton model, and I'd bet any amount you want that I'm right.

▪ Clintonian legacy requires parting gifts to the already-wealthy. As noted above, Obama is promoting "free-trade" and TPP even as he's telling the old-old lie about "more jobs."

▪ But he can't appear to be handing out cash and prizes, giving the store to thieves, or his legacy as a closet progressive — touched with the Carteresque brush — won't pass muster. So he needs a cover story, one that many will buy. Aid for community college education, tax credits for child care, guaranteed sick and maternity leave, increased overtime pay, and the like, help burnish that story.

It's not that those things are meaningless; they aren't. It's that they won't happen. But that won't stop him getting credit for saying them, and therein lies the beauty. Can anyone say, for sure, he's being insincere? Not many. (I can, but then, I've read the whole speech carefully. His left hand takes back what his right hand publicly offers.)

The debate runs on, especially among the left-leaners Bill Curry identifies in this interesting piece — like the Ready-for-Hillary crowd (a/k/a "Dems first because Republicans") and the Dems-As-Betrayers splinter group. Who is this "new Obama"? And does he signal real change in the Democratic party? I won't answer the second question here, but here are a few data points on the first.

Climate and Carbon: On the One Hand, On the Other Hand

I mentioned "hands" above and said that in the State of the Union address, the left hand takes back what the right hand offers. There's more where that came from, both inside and outside his speech. First, on climate:

Obama seeks to put Alaska refuge off-limits to drilling

President Obama plans to ask Congress to designate more than 12 million acres of Alaska's wildlife refuge as a protected wilderness area, seeking to block oil and gas production. ...

In a video released by the White House on Sunday, Obama said he wants to "make sure that this amazing wonder is preserved for future generations." ...

Much of the dispute revolves around some 1.5 million acres on the oil-rich coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, long a source of contention between conservationists and backers of the energy industry.

Yet:

Obama administration opens up southern Atlantic coast to offshore drilling – but restricts it in Alaska

The Obama administration on Tuesday outlined a politically fraught plan for allowing oil and gas drilling in U.S. coastal waters, announcing steps to open parts of the southeastern U.S. coastline for oil leasing while imposing new restrictions on environmentally fragile waters off Alaska’s North Slope.

The proposals, intended to set a course for coastal energy development into the next decade, sought to strike a balance between soaring demand for energy production and White House priorities to protect sensitive environments, particularly in the Arctic. ...

By the way, the phrase "soaring demand for energy production" is almost right. Change it to "soaring demand for carbon-extraction profit" and you've got it. Soaring demand for energy production could easily mandate a World War II–style crash conversion to wind, solar and the like — but only if one wanted to go there. 

American Jobs and TPP: On the One Hand, On the Other Hand

From the State of the Union address:

So no one knows for certain which industries will generate the jobs of the future. But we do know we want them here in America.

The very next sentence:

That’s why the third part of middle-class economics is about building the most competitive economy anywhere, the place where businesses want to locate and hire.

Because business will always locate and hire where wages are high and benefits support a middle-class lifestyle to go along with those middle-class economics? Or the exact opposite?

And to get those jobs "here in America" he wants to pass the TPP, another massive NAFTA-style trade giveaway:

21st century businesses, including small businesses, need to sell more American products overseas. Today, our businesses export more than ever, and exporters tend to pay their workers higher wages. But as we speak, China wants to write the rules for the world’s fastest-growing region. ... That’s why I’m asking both parties to give me trade promotion authority to protect American workers, with strong new trade deals from Asia to Europe that aren’t just free, but fair.

Let me translate: "21st century businesses need to [send more American jobs] overseas. Today, our businesses export more [jobs] than ever, because businesses tend to pay their [foreign workers lower wages]. That’s why I’m asking both parties to give me trade promotion authority to protect [corporate profits] ..."

Is that an unfair translation? Not if you look at NAFTA's unarguable devastation of American manufacturing, to name just one of many such trade deals.

So he wants more jobs at lower wages, and NAFTA-style trade deals with both Asia and Europe, because ... wages will go up? ("Exporters tend to pay their workers higher wages"?) I'll leave it to you to decide if he's trying to make sense and failing, or just making a foggy pro-corporate pitch and doing pretty well at it.

Diplomacy and War: On the One Hand, On the Other Hand, On the Other Other Hand

Last one, this time on the military front. First, three quotes from the State of the Union address:

When we make rash decisions, reacting to the headlines instead of using our heads; when the first response to a challenge is to send in our military — then we risk getting drawn into unnecessary conflicts, and neglect the broader strategy we need for a safer, more prosperous world. That’s what our enemies want us to do.

But:

And tonight, I call on this Congress to show the world that we are united in this mission by passing a resolution to authorize the use of force against ISIL.

Because:

we are demonstrating the power of American strength and diplomacy. We’re upholding the principle that bigger nations can’t bully the small ...

No comment needed, I think. We've been bullying smaller nations since a long time ago. Looks like he wants a third bite at the Iraqi apple.

Legacy Play or Untethered Progressive?

If these contradictions were a minefield, he'd blow himself up. Which is the "real Obama"? If the more progressive Obama is the "realer" one, then he really is a traitor — both to us for the last six years, given how he allowed himself to be painted in 2008, and to himself and his presumed progressive values, for governing as his opposite.

I'd respect him a lot more if the "real" Obama were the one who spoke to a roomful of Robert Rubins in 2006 and declared himself a "strong free trader" (in those words) and a Social Security reformer (in easily translated code). Click the video above and give a listen; the real Robert Rubin was in the room (he's "Bob").

If Hamilton Project Obama is the real one, he'd at least get points for consistency, for fooling us consistently, and the wildly inconsistent language I quoted above would make more sense.

For memory's sake ...

Is that the real Obama, the one with the Will.I.Am overlay? Or is it just too confusing to think so? Me, I have much more respect for the man. I'm going to treat him as a functioning, consistent adult and choose "legacy play" as his current motivation. That man I understand.

GP


HOWIE SAYS "HELLO" TO EVERYONE

Yesterday he thought he might be going home today; then by last night he didn't think so so much. But he's been thinking about all of you out there, and you already know how much he looks forward to being back in his blogging chair! -- Ken

#

Could Obama Have Fought Harder For What He Says He Believes In?

Obama got kicked around pretty good over the weekend-- from the right and the left. Clark Judge is a right-wing propagandist and former speech writer for Reagan and one of the Bushs. Sunday his latest anti-Obama screed was published by a right-wing U.S. tabloid, The Mail in which the editors described him as "a top Washington insider." He may be-- but only in the circles Cheney and Bolton travel. "This weak and timid President," he insists, "talks big... and does nothing." This is followed by a few called-in right-wing talking points on the Ted Cruz/Ann Coulter-school of foreign policy.

Far more relevant was Thomas Frank's condemnation of the Obama presidency in Salon Sunday: Right-wing obstruction could have been fought: an ineffective and gutless presidency's legacy is failure. Despite the destructive insanity from the GOP/Confederate State of America, "we were promised hope and change on big issues. We got no vision and less action." Judge's critique is worthless except into a window into how the anti-American reactionary elites are reacting. Frank, on the other hand, is one of America's foremost political thinkers. If what he writes stings, it should. He channels future historians looking back to out time who see "a time when America should have changed but didn’t... an age when every aspect of societal breakdown was out in the open and the old platitudes could no longer paper it over-- when the meritocracy was clearly corrupt, when the financial system had devolved into organized thievery, when everyone knew that the politicians were bought and the worst criminals went unprosecuted and the middle class was in a state of collapse and the newspaper pundits were like street performers miming 'seriousness' for an audience that had lost its taste for mime and seriousness both. It was a time when every thinking person could see that the reigning ideology had failed, that an epoch had ended, that the shitty consensus ideas of the 1980s had finally caved in-- and when an unlikely champion arose from the mean streets of Chicago to keep the whole thing propped up nevertheless."

Cue... Hillary Clinton for 4 more years of this crap? Or... Ted Cruz? Why not try fascism, many are already thinking-- even if they don't call it that-- and see if that works this time? Elizabeth Warren seems determined not to run in 2016. She seems like the only plausible political leader who could prevent another 4 years of mediocrity or worse. She's busy fighting to keep the Senate from falling into the hands of fascism and, more than anything, she's fighting for the issues of progressivism she outlined at Netroots Nation last week.

The Obama team, as the president once announced to a delegation of investment bankers, was “the only thing between you and the pitchforks,” and in retrospect these words seem not only to have been a correct assessment of the situation at the moment but a credo for his entire term in office. For my money, they should be carved in stone over the entrance to his monument: Barack Obama as the one-man rescue squad for an economic order that had aroused the fury of the world. Better: Obama as the awesomely talented doctor who kept the corpse of a dead philosophy lumbering along despite it all.

Still channeling future historians-- and citizens trying to understand the failures of the 8 years of Obama's presidency, Frank asks why "did the president do so little about rising inequality, the subject on which he gave so many rousing speeches? Why did he do nothing, or next to nothing, about the crazy high price of a college education, the Great Good Thing that he has said, time and again, determines our personal as well as national success? Why didn’t he propose a proper healthcare program instead of the confusing jumble we got? Why not a proper stimulus package? Why didn’t he break up the banks? Or the agribusiness giants, for that matter?" And the response will be, of course, "the crazy right-wingers running wild in the land. He couldn’t reason with them-- their brains don’t work like ours! He couldn’t defeat them at the polls-- they’d gerrymandered so many states that they couldn’t be dislodged! What can a high-minded man of principle do when confronted with such a vast span of bigotry and close-mindedness?"

But Frank's not buying it; neither am I and it's why so many Americans who elected him are going through such severe disillusionment now. "In point of fact," he writes, "there were plenty of things Obama’s Democrats could have done that might have put the right out of business once and for all-- for example, by responding more aggressively to the Great Recession or by pounding relentlessly on the theme of middle-class economic distress. Acknowledging this possibility, however, has always been difficult for consensus-minded Democrats."

Disillusionment, by the way, not because Obama "failed to win the Grand Bargain, but because he wanted to get it in the first place--because he seemed to believe that shoring up the D.C. consensus was the rightful object of all political idealism." His electoral coalition got nothing... except the banksters-- and they have put $67,324,285 into his political career (more than they gave McCain and Hillary combined) and the LGBT community, whose issues weren't really something he even campaigned on in 2008 but who got more out of his 8 years than anyone else.