Barack Obama: Radical Centrist, Responsible Leader in Difficult Times

Barack Obama is not your typical Democratic politician. He is not your typical politician, for that matter. In so many ways, some subtle, some resounding, he is unique. But what is perhaps the most important attribute of his politics is that his thinking is not rooted in relentless commitment to an ideological agenda. He is a centrist; he is a pragmatist; and, where he arrives at progressive policy solutions, he does so because he has reasoned through the value of those solutions.

In many ways, this has made him an ally to the progressive movement throughout his career, but it does not mean he will always follow the instructions of the progressive movement. He is a thinker, and that means he understands and benefits from a genuine comprehension of intellectual contributions to our deeper understanding of the world; that does not mean he is beholden to any particular intelligentsia. He believes public service is about thinking through real, human solutions to human problems.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Joseph Robertson is Executive Director of Climate Civics International (climatecivics.org). He represents CCI in the UNFCCC negotiations and other United Nations processes, and in the Earth Diplomacy Leadership Initiative. He is Chief Strategist for Resilience Intel and the Climate Value Exchange, and a member of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition Advisory Group. Joseph is a principal in the Good Food Finance Network, co-leading efforts to establish a new co-investment platform for food systems transformation and the Integrated Data Systems Initiative. He previously served as Interim Director for the Food System Economics Commission, during its start-up phase, and as Senior Advisor, Sustainable Finance, for the EAT Foundation. He is the founder of Geoversiv (earthintel.org) and The Navigator (navigatornews.net).

Hofstra Debate: Obama wins with facts, passion, leadership

Romney’s ill-informed bullying worries women, shames candidate, his party

In last night’s debate at Hofstra University, Pres. Barack Obama demonstrated why he won more votes than any other candidate in US political history: astonishing comprehensive engagement with a wide range of issues, and the ability to synthesize—to bring together into one coherent, inclusive vision of what is—disparate realms of policy and practice in governing, always with a genuine focus on what is right and dignified about putting the people first.

Mitt Romney, by contrast, demonstrated a callous, petty and aloof, air, motivated by a near total disregard for the rules, for general decorum or for any sense of basic respect for the tragic significance of issues like poverty or war. To what must have been the shock of millions, Romney behaved as if no rules applied to him, and acted as both a rhetorical and physical bully toward the moderator, the President of the United States, and the people who were there to ask questions.

Posted by J.E. Robertson

Lincoln Chafee Speaks to DNC (video)

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Lincoln Chafee, former Republican senator for Rhode Island, now that state’s independent governor, spoke last night to the Democratic National Convention, where he laid out the case for independents of principle, and moderates more broadly, including “true conservatives”, to support the re-election of Pres. Barack Obama. Chafee explained how the party of Bush and Romney, with the support of votes from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), exploded the budget deficit and national debt, leaving behind core principles of true conservatism, like conservation of the natural environment, and the prioritizing of quality of life for families, quality of education, and real opportunity for the middle class.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

On the Inestimable Value of Citizenship

There are speech acts that negate their own validity. For example, the defense or promotion of violence in service of the sacred, or the notion that to oppose marginalization and stereotyping, specific groups need to be treated as inherently and universally hostile to one’s aims, no negotiations allowed. To be a citizen is about choice and responsibility, but it is never a valid choice—or an expression of any genuine personal freedom—to refuse it.

To refuse citizenship is a self-negating performative speech act, intended in every case to serve as a kind of comment on the state of affairs—”that’s not for me”, “my interests lie elsewhere”, “they’re all corrupt”, “I would replace the whole system”, etc., or, sometimes unwittingly (subconsciously, as a way of sloughing off the burden of responsibility): “I want those in power to have free rein”. To refuse citizenship is an act of cruel self-sabotage the bad effects of which seep out into the rest of society and undermine the health and wellbeing of the whole citizenry.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Stop the Violence Now

After the dignity and inspiration of the Arab Spring, what we are now witnessing in the United States has been an inspiration to millions of people who long to have a voice in their society. Yet some city governments are ordering the use of paramilitary assault tactics against unarmed civilians engaged in constitutionally protected peaceful assembly and free expression. In Oakland, we have now seen two displays of overwhelming, deliberate, combat-style police actions against unarmed civilians exercising their basic rights.

Video has emerged clearly confirming eyewitness reports that Oakland police fired directly into crowds of unarmed demonstrators with tear gas and flash-bang grenades. Scott Olsen, now famous the world over, was shot in the face when police fired “non-lethal” rubber bullets directly at protesters’ heads, at close range. Video shows a combination flash-bang/teargas grenade being fired directly into the middle of a crowd of people attempting to tend to him as he lay bleeding on the ground.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

What is the Meaning of This?

The Occupy Wall Street movement—now being called “the American Autumn”, after the Arab Spring, or the September 17th movement, after the day it got started in lower Manhattan—is now completing four weeks on the scene. Yet we can still be astounded to hear so many incredulous “experts” unable to understand how a grassroots movement, infused with the zeitgeist of very problematic times, is working toward anything constructive. What is the meaning of this? Why don’t they have a ready-to-go list of demands? What are they asking us to think?

It’s actually very simple. It’s self-evident, but if you’re at a loss, you can also go to Zuccotti Park, or to any of the Occupy Together protest sites, and just talk to people, and what did not seem evident will rapidly become so. The meaning of the Occupy Wall Street movement that is spreading across the United States like wildfire is: democracy. The unifying sentiment, which is actively put into practice every day at Occupy encampments, is that citizens have a right to participate. They are building a participatory process to restore the principle of informed citizen participation to our political system and our economy.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Bad Tax Policy Has Tragic Consequences

For the last three decades, we have heard that transferring wealth to the top of the income pyramid—to what used to be called “the supply side” of the macroeconomic equation, and is now referred to by the supply-side party, collectively, as “the job creators”—would make everybody else more affluent. We have been told that the natural result of pushing wealth in the direction of the wealthy would be massive hiring, and the “trickle down” effect, as wealth from the top eventually flows to everyone else.

The result has been a steady decline of the American middle class. Median household wealth, when excluding the wealthiest 1%, has declined. The income gap between CEOs and the average worker at their own firms has now leapt from a ratio of about 24:1, in the 1960s to well over 200:1 today. The entrepreneurial class—or rather, those best positioned to motivate major investment in entrepreneurial activity—were given huge amounts of money, and so saw less urgency in investing it.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

9/11 Should be a Day of National Reflection & Reaffirmation

The four coordinated hijackings, resulting in three deliberate attacks and one downed passenger jet, took 2,977 innocent lives and sowed fear and dismay across the world. They were acts of unconscionable evil intended to not only harm innocents and terrify the wider population, but to destabilize American democracy itself, and derail a people’s journey through history, possibly to erode its most virtuous contributions.

It was a clear, sunny morning and the first plane crashing into the North Tower of the World Trade Center had sparked a sustained global news flash, bringing hundreds of millions of eyes to the television footage. There was confusion and disbelief, and just as it was becoming clear there must have been a devastating loss of life, a massive fireball engulfed the top half of the South Tower, clearly signaling a deliberate terrorist attack was underway.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

The Mystery of the Progressive Open Market

Why is a struggling open market so hard to turn around? The answer is really quite simple: A centrally planned, totalitarian economy is easy to predetermine; in fact, that’s the point. An open market for the trade of goods and services cannot be predetermined, because its governing dynamics depend entirely on the manner in which goods and services are traded, at what volume and by whom, and direct command-and-control is likely an obstacle, not a source of efficiency.

Open markets, in their most virtuous state, foster the optimal distribution of resources, goods and services, and produce generalized value for all involved. It is at this point, where the middle class is the focus, and where it expands by inviting (and making possible) more membership from the less affluent segments of the socio-economic web, that open markets are democratizing in their effects. Intervention, then, needs to be subtle, and favor democratic outcomes, so less central control.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

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