DISQUS

Not necessarily challenging you here, but what leads you to believe that Obama will be able to influence black opinion with this tactic any more than his predecessors?

I remember mentioning a few years back that a speech we read for class by Booker T. Washington (I.I.R.C.) was almost identical in content to Cosby's and Obama's and hundreds of others despite being written nearly a century beforehand and in a completely different era racially speaking.

There's a grain of truth to the "stop being so black" argument, but history has shown it's not a feasible solution. You've made a pretty compelling case that not only is it an unproductive tactic, it's also COUNTER-productive.

If it takes a black president for it to work, great, but color me skeptical.

Ridiculous.

US military spending as a percentage of US GDP was 4% in 2007, compared to over 40% during WW2. Currently, GDP is shrinking at a 0.5% annual rate. A 25% increase in defense spending (from 4% of GDP to 5% - not realistic) would but GDP growth back in the black without Orwellian garrison state nuke scenarios. Your comparisons are off by an order of magnitude, geopolitical fabrications notwithstanding.

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http://knol.google.com/k/alexander-emilfaro/gov...

The consumption crisis is largely a red herring. The overall tax burden in the US is substantially smaller than in other developed meaning that government spending composes a significantly smaller percentage of GDP than other developed nations. In fact, the annual deficits that the US runs indicate that the government spending ratios overstate the current tax burden on Americans.

Consumption is only ~50% of GDP in much of Europe because the other ~50% is government spending. Since the countries we're discussing all have comparable GDP per capita, we can see that the real difference is that the US economy is consumer-driven. And now that that part is faltering the solution to address the systemic weakness (The 70/30 split) is to increase government spending and balance the split. So, really, Obama is proposing the correct solution based on the criteria you've set forth. Most importantly, the type of spending Obama is proposing has huge long term benefits. Bombs are a one-time purchase. Infrastructure pays dividends.

Just a quick comment regarding Obama and Harold Ford Jr:

Obama lost TN in the general election by almost 20 points compared to Ford's 3. More importantly, however, is that Obama actually underperformed Kerry in TN. This chart (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5...) offers a pretty telling overview. Obama performed substantially better than Kerry in nearly every state except for many states that constitute the "South". Alaska and Arizona had little change due to the Republican candidates representing those states, but Arkansas saw a 5+ point swing downward from Kerry's numbers for Obama.

It still seems to me like Obama won in spite of being black rather than because of it. He ran what was inarguably the best campaign in history against a terrible Republican candidate running a terrible campaign and things were far more closer than they should have been. One need only look at the huge gains that Obama made in traditional Republican states like Georgia, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, and Virginia to get a better picture of how southern states should have voted.

I don't think it makes much sense to lump all whites into one group when analyzing how they racialize blacks. For many, Obama's blackness is not a problem. For others it's a dealbreaker, and for those in the "middle" pragmatic political desires trump blackness. At least this time.

Obama has suggested a number of times that he supports a plan along these lines, so hopefully he finds a way to navigate through the wreckage that is the US Budget and make it happen. It absolutely is, as you said, an investment, and it's one that pays for itself in a matter of years. We're finally beginning to see a broad acceptance of the idea that the economy is in many ways a much bigger national security issue than terrorism or Middle Eastern peace. The American manufacturing sector is dying and it's never coming back. It's becoming increasingly less realistic for those who can't pay for college to go to a trade school or work at the local plant. We need to invest heavily in education to fuel future American innovation and raise living standards.

Health care reform and alternative energy development are also investments that will pay for themselves. The irony in all of this is that government spending tends to generate a greater amount of output per dollar spent than the equivalent in tax cuts. Most importantly, the programs we're talking about here are all productive uses that will pay for themselves and cannot in any way be duplicated by private industry.

Interesting show. Do you find that your kids have adjusted well once they re-enter the education system?

It's definitely something I'd consider doing. School safety doesn't even enter the equation. My kindergarten teacher tried to hold me back because I didn't hold my scissors properly. The fact that I was the only one in my class that could read in addition to being about 4 years ahead of everyone else in math never really entered the picture...

I doubt he's actually racist, but that doesn't mean he isn't a politician through and through. I find in many ways that Obama is following the same strategy: going after the soft, easy targets ("deadbeat dads" + "personal responsibility" lately) while dodging the fundamental economic and political issues that underpin most of the problems that blacks face. Every once in awhile, he'll drop something in about revitalizing inner cities with federal money, but he has yet to make any real policy declarations, and given the disastrous state of the annual federal budget, it's hard not to see it as any more than wishful thinking. We can thank Iraq for that. Talk about unintended consequences...