Failures of the Obama White House: Which The White House and Congress Would Repeat in A Second

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While Ta-Nehisi Coates praised President Obama, others recognized that his actions against repressed peoples worldwide was more significant than any small gains he eked out for minorities in the United States. Vocally opposed, was Cornell West who argued that Coates ignored the injustices enacted outside the United States, but also those created by powerful forces internally (such as Wall Street and the US Military and Intelligence departments) which were not explicitly in support of White Supremacy but harm the poor, the disregarded, and the abused, in search of more power. West meant, that Obama had failed to curtail these vultures, or had failed to protect their victims.

Many voices weighed in when West criticized Coate's book, We Were Eight Years in Power, in an editorial in The Guardian. West was attacking an ally and aided the enemy.  The debate between them missed the point entirely.  It didn't matter because it was a debate between two cis-gendered men instead of between more marginalized people.  Both were wrong because African Americans aren't discriminated against in the United States.  And so forth into further absurdity.

Allies of a broad policy, but opponents of a nuanced position, always introduce the question of when it is OK to criticize your own side, and when is it harmful to the cause, giving aid to the other side. Their answer is always, “Never!” The the notion of two sides, of a dualism in policy, of clearly divided teams, is dangerous to any advancement. If there is an issue, one consider it for a time to reach the correct outcome, and then seek to solve it, through action and criticism. That's why this series criticizing Obama exists. Not because he was worse than the Presidents who served before or after him, but because even though he was better, he was still active and complicit in harming peace, transparency, freedom, citizens of the United States, innocent people in other countries, minorities, the poor, and the United States itself.

Analyzing the debate between Coates and West, people compared them to the heroic African American figures of the past. Booker Washington vs. W.E.B. Du Bois. W.E.B. Du Bois vs. Marcus Garvey. Martin Luther King Jr. vs Malcolm X. The debate over African American scholarship, which I don't pretend to fully know, is a deep argument including more than these few figures. But Coates writings inspired this series.

Let's return to the final third of issues. Those the Bush Administration began, the Obama White House continued, and the Trump Presidency enhanced.

Of all the topics Awkward Mixture considers in this series, there is almost too much, and too much United States citizens still don't know, about the surveillance state in which we live today. What is clear is the recent outline. After 9/11 George W. Bush passed the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, also known as the Patriot Act. This was done with the bipartisan support of 98 Senators in 2001, and was reauthorized by 89 Senators in 2006 (including Senator Obama). The most significant series of events relating to this Act, under Obama, began with Ron Wyden's questioning of Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, on March 12th, 2013, about whether the NSA collected metadata on United States citizens. In response to the question, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”, Clapper answered, “No sir, not wittingly.”

While Clapper brazenly lied, already Edward Snowden was in communication with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras about revealing the truth. On May 20th, 2013, he fled to Hong Kong to escape persecution, and the publication of the NSA documents began under The Guardian, The Washington Post, and others. The expanse of surveillance is too much to detail here, but a few links, and a few words are appropriate. The United States government collects records of phone calls, of who called who, and how long they spoke. They collect emails, who they are sent from and who they are received by. They intercept google searches, and much more.

While these practices were instituted by the Bush Administration, Clapper and Snowden occurred during Obama's tenure. In spite of his lies to Congress, President Obama never fired Clapper, and allowed him to serve until the end of Obama's second term. In response to Clapper's lie and Snowden's revelation, Obama at first supported Clapper, but then offered a lofty speech on reforming the NSA, but with only minimal changes, as a means of calming the public. He had the opportunity to end it, and he demurred. There is broad concurrence that Obama expanded the US surveillance state, (with minor reforms) and then handed it over to someone even less trustworthy than himself, President Trump.

What has President Trump done with it since? 

He extended “the National Security Agency’s warrant-less surveillance program for six years with minimal changes, rejecting a push by a bipartisan group of lawmakers to impose significant privacy limits when it sweeps up Americans’ emails and other personal communications.” Unlike prior authorizations this was done with less, but still significant, bipartisan support. While little else has become public, statements by members of the Trump White House, including Cabinet members should generate alarm. In this video, Ron Wyden (again) questions then U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo about his plans for surveillance. Wyden read an Op Ed by Pompeo declaring, “Congress ought to pass a new law, establishing the collection of all metadata, and combining it with publicly available financial and lifestyle information into a comprehensive, searchable database.” This sounds terrifyingly like China's intrusive plan to score each of its citizens and control their behavior. Pompeo was briefly the director of the CIA, and is now Secretary of State. The incoming AG, Barr, seeks an expansion of surveillance as well. One of the most significant fears about Trump (but also any president) is that the public may never be aware of actions taken using the powers of the surveillance apparatus, because programs like these are inherently secret.

Immigrants have been crossing the border for decades. Bush deported quite a lot of immigrants. And Obama sent home even more. Or did he? Apparently there's some nuance to the issue. Bush removed more immigrants from the country, while Obama applied a more serious set of removal procedures, but on fewer people. What is clear: he maintained a policy similar to Bush, and Trump used Obama's record to both bash him, but also to support an expansion. On Awkward Mixture's Events of 2018, the attempts by the Trump administration to expand deportations, and to treat immigrants with cruelty is well documented. While Obama never separated children from their parents, he did place independent children in Border Patrol lock-ups when too many crossed the border simultaneously. Whether Bush or Obama deported more immigrants, or was harsher on them, seems a matter of quibbling over insignificant details. But they both used bad policies which President Trump has made even worse.

Most of the issues explored so far were international, foreign policy features. This final issue focuses exclusively on domestic arraignments.

Obama came to power as the economy was in free fall, caused by the deregulation of banks which began with Ronald Reagan and continued straight through to today. The Bush certainly contributed, with his own deregulation legislation.

Then Bush signed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 which spent at least seven hundred billion dollars on purchases to protect banks, and to give cash directly to banks. George W. Bush also used some of this money to rescue General Motors and Chrysler. When Obama was elected shortly after the EESA of 2008, he used the Troubled Asset Relief Program (already created by President Bush) to distribute the $700 billion. Simultaneously, eight million citizens were under the threat of foreclosure. Of the massive TARP bailout, the Obama White House authorized between twenty-eight and fifty billion to fund the Home Affordable Modification Program. The purpose of this program was to reduce the monthly payments of homeowners to their banks. President Obama touted it as likely to aid four million homeowners, but instead only 1 million were even accepted, with 70% of applications rejected, while 33% of people in the program still failed to meet their payments. The program was complex, and easily sabotaged by the same banks which were rescued by the TARP bailout. In short, the HAMP was a colossal failure, unlike the TARP rescue of the banking system. In spite of the numerous complains against banks during HAMP, no punishment was ever levied. 

Some citizens questioned why the Obama White House didn't do more to save homeowners. It was estimated that homeowners were holding seven hundred and fifty billion in negative equity. That number sounds awfully similar to one mentioned earlier. They decided it couldn't be justified to spend that amount of money on homeowners. And the real cost of the bank bailout is still being debated. Beyond the initial $700 billion, most of which went to banks, there were the social costs. Banks became too big to fail, forever. Instead of solving the problem, by breaking them up, the Obama administration merely postponed the issue. Also, some people dispute the final value. Did Ben Bernanke use creative and deceptive math to hide how much was spent bailing out the banks? Trillions of dollars? Even if this last bit is false, the clear issue here is how the banks were saved, while a miserable amount of cash was used to rescue one million homeowners, while another seven million defaulted and lost their homes.

Next week, a wrap up of this series.

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