Sarah Palin’s Thoughts on Solving Government Corruption

Many Americans are realizing that the United States government is ineffective due the drastic levels of corruption that plague our electoral system and heavily impact the decisions and statements our candidates make as they run for Congress and the White House.  Washington’s policies are absurd because big campaign donors only give money to get political favors, and those favors are paid by our elected officials when they allow the rich to avoid paying taxes, demand ever-increasing amounts of government subsidies, and get away with causing environmental disasters.  Our politicians are not stupid and weak; they are actually strategic and strong, but so heavily corrupted by their need for campaign cash that they sell their votes to the highest bidder.  Both frequent political phenomena over the past few years, the conservative Tea Party and the liberal Occupy Movement, openly recognize and criticize the existing system.  Former Alaskan governor and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin gave a surprisingly clear portrayal of the corrupt system in a September 2011 speech titled “Restoring America.”  (the transcript can be located on her website at http://www.sarahpac.com/posts/governor-palins-speech-at-the-restoring-america-tea-party-of-america-rally-in-indianola-iowa-video-and-transcript and a video of the speech can be viewed athttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0-CLyI8BIE)  Palin described her ideas for ending such corruption, though those ideas are not likely to have much impact on the central problem of money dominating our elections.

After some introductory words of thanks to her audience, Palin quickly launched into a description of current U.S. economic problems.  “Today, one in five working-age men are out of work. One in seven Americans are on food stamps. Thirty percent of our mortgages are underwater. In parts of Michigan and California, they’re suffering from unemployment numbers that are greater than during the depths of the Great Depression.” (Palin, “Restoring America,” September 3, 2011)  Nothing is mysterious about such statements;  even the Princeton economist Paul Krugman agrees with the use “Depression” to describe current circumstances in his book End This Depression Now (W.W. & Norton and Co., Inc.: 2012).  Palin also described how the Depression has been caused by political corruption.  “We sent a new class of leaders to D.C., but immediately the permanent political class tried to co-opt them – because the reality is we are governed by a permanent political class, until we change that.” (Palin, “Restoring America”)  It is unclear whether she referred to the Democratic Party’s victory in the 2008 elections or the Republican Party’s resurgence in 2010 elections.  Either way, nothing much has changed politically because voters are far less powerful than the “permanent political class” of rich donors, lobbyists, and corporate executives that largely decide which candidates win by controlling political advertising money.  Palin is correct to describe our national leaders as co-opted and controlled by money, and that we must change the ability of money to dominate our elections if we hope to ever affect real political change.

Palin next drew a clear connection between the rich that control politicians and how those politicians give in to the rich.  She continued to call the rich and powerful the Permanent Political Class.

Yeah, the permanent political class – they’re doing just fine. Ever notice how so many of them arrive in Washington, D.C. of modest means and then miraculously throughout the years they end up becoming very, very wealthy? Well, it’s because they derive power and their wealth from their access to our money – to taxpayer dollars.  They use it to bail out their friends on Wall Street and their corporate cronies, and to reward campaign contributors, and to buy votes via earmarks. There is so much waste. And there is a name for this: It’s called corporate crony capitalism. This is not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk. No, this is the capitalism of connections and government bailouts and handouts, of waste and influence peddling and corporate welfare. (Palin, “Restoring America”)

Palin revealed that the rich are often rich because they get government favors.  They spend a part of their income to influence candidates and choose which candidates go into Congress or the White House.  The newly-elected leaders quickly move to give more government favors to their own financial supporters – a financial give-and-take that leaves the rich wallowing in wealth and power, and the rest of the taxpayers wondering where their votes and their money went.  In short, the use of money in politics controls later government decisions, which in the end hurts government efficiency, economic growth, and the general public.

Unfortunately, Sarah Palin then went on to attack President Obama and the Democrats for many of their corrupt deals while largely overlooking the details of her own Republican Party’s similar deals with oil companies and other corporate interests.  Even as she says the American voters must overturn the whole system, she does not name Republican leaders as participating in corrupt bargains.  “So, this is why we must remember that the challenge is not simply to replace Obama in 2012. The real challenge is who and what we will replace him with. It’s not enough to just change up the uniform. If we don’t change the team and the game plan, we won’t save our country.” (Palin, “Restoring America”)  Her statements are still focused, though, on changing the money and advertising systems that largely choose which candidates win elections – she still advocates changing the “game plan” in a fundamental way.

However, she fails to give any ideas likely to change the existing system.  Instead, she begins her plan with a general statement on supporting capitalism but hating corruption.  “I believe in the free market, and that is why I detest crony capitalism.” (Palin, “Restoring America”)  Palin fails to see that crony capitalism is the direct result of what one might call “free market politics.”  Capitalism is the theory of investment, risk, and profit as a reward.  Allowing free market economic ideas into political campaigns naturally allows the rich to invest the most money and, therefore, dominate the election results.  That is how Free Markets create Crony Politics.  Palin fails to see that obvious connection, and therefore fails to understand that giving all candidates equal funding and making it illegal for any candidate to take private money are the best ways of avoiding Crony Politics.  (All of these ideas can be read in detail at www.machineryofpolitics.com)  Instead of advocating for government-funded elections that would eliminate private money, Palin calls for the following policies to end Crony Politics:

1. Reduce Federal government power

2. Create Free Market Health Insurance programs

3.Entitlement reform, but with no suggestions for changing Social Security

4. Drilling for domestic oil sources to make U.S. into an “energy superpower”

5. Eliminate Federal income taxes on corporations

6. Cut corporate loopholes to end Corporate Welfare

7. Create a fully Free Market Economy

Conservative politicians have been demanding such policies since at least the 1980s.  When looking at the outline of her ideas for ending corruption, it is clear that her program will do little to end the dominance of money in our campaigns or in political advertising, and therefore will not change government corruption or eliminate waste.  In fact, many of her ideas could make the current corruption worse by inviting the rich to spend even moreto control government policy.  Opening up all U.S. oil reserves to private drilling companies would convince those companies to spend lavishly on political candidates in order to ensure that their company would gain access to the oil.  Eliminating federal taxes on corporations would give companies even more money to spend on politics, especially if some companies fear losing the profits they currently gain from Corporate Welfare.  Demanding a fully Free Market Economy, Free Market Health Insurance coverage, and reducing government power would likely give even more wealth and power to the rich that already seek to avoid having to follow government laws and regulations designed to protect the public.

In total, Sarah Palin gave a strong description of how money corrupts our politics, how corrupted politicians make wasteful and harmful decisions, and that the existing money-in-politics system must be changed if we hope to save the United States from catastrophe.  She clearly understands the problems that plague government today, but seems to have little idea how to solve those problems.  She powerfully called for a change to the “game plan,” but her conservative ideas distracted her from what the game is and confused her plan for changing it.

Plan for a Green Energy Economy

The world today faces economic challenges of a scale that used to be beyond imagination.  Modern industrial economies have been using oil as their major energy source since the early 1900s.  Political leaders and economists commonly believed that there was so much oil to be found, drilled, and used that worldwide supply would only run out in the distant future, if ever.  Unfortunately, researchers have been warning for the past few decades that the unexpected growth of industry has used up most of the world’s oil supply, to the point that oil is becoming scarce while the size of newly-discovered oil fields have dramatically shrunk.  Today, the world faces the harsh reality that we are running out of oil and will have to change the world economy from being driven by oil to using a new energy source.  Today’s worries over the pollution, health hazards, and climate change associated with fossil fuels makes the need for change even more desperate.

Scientists have been studying many different proposals for new energy sources over the past few decades, and these studies have picked up momentum in just the past few years.  Biofuels (liquid fuel made from vegetation), Ethanol (from corn), Natural Gas Vehicles, Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles (HFCVs), and Battery-Energy Vehicles (BEVs) have been proposed to replace our reliance on gasoline (an oil-based fuel) as the major transportation fuel.  Recent research has proven that Hydrogen (HFCVs) and Battery (BEVs) are most efficient and have the least amount of negative environmental results. (Mark Z. Jacobson, “Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security,” Energy and Environmental Science, 2009, pages 148-149.  The entire article can be read at http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2009/EE/b809990c)  However, the use of HFCVs and BEVs required the increased use of electricity, which the United States mostly generates by burning coal, natural gas, and nuclear material.  All three of these American electricity sources are dirty, contributing huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO²) that lead to pollution and climate change.  When one considers that coal and natural gas will also run out eventually, just like oil, we realize that we must also largely replace these U.S. electricity sources with clean, renewable power.

The following pages present a plan to do just that: build a renewable energy infrastructure that would supply all American energy needs projected for the year 2030.  The Plan assumes that most vehicles will be BEVs, so much of the electricity produced will go to charging electric cars.  We can generate enough electricity by relying primarily on wind, water, and solar power, all of which are natural, clean, renewable, and will never run out.  The cost for building such infrastructure will be high (about $16.5 trillion), but well worth the investment.  When compared to U.S. government spending during World War II, the last time the American nation faced a national crisis and successfully overcame it, one realizes that the American government easily has the ability to fund Green Energy construction without breaking its budget.  In fact, after considering the psychological, military, and economic benefits of not having to rely on oil, one realizes that the United States cannot afford to avoid building the Green Energy system for much longer.

 

Meeting U.S. Energy Demand

 

Research shows that world energy demand will be 16.9 trillion watts (also known as “terawatts” or TW) by the year 2030.  Research further reveals that U.S. energy demand will be 2.8 TW, or 16.5% of total world demand.  (Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi, “A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030: Wind, water and solar technologies, can provide 100 percent of the world’s energy, eliminating all fossil fuels,” Scientific American, November 2009, page 60)  Jacobson and Delucchi also argue that the total cost of building a renewable energy supply system to meet all world demand will be $100 trillion.  (Jacobson and Delucchi, “A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030,” page 64)  Therefore, we can reasonably estimate the cost of building such a system in the United States alone from these three vital statistics, as the table below shows.

Energy Demand and Infrastructure Costs

Measure                                                   World                     U.S.

Energy Demand in 2030                 16.9 TW             2.8 TW

Percentage of World Demand        100%                   16.5%

Infrastructure Costs (trillion)        $100                    $16.5

According to recent projections, building a worldwide renewable energy system would cost $100 trillion.  If the United States demands 16.5% of world energy, then it will probably cost about $16.5 trillion to construct in the U.S. alone.  That is a huge cost, but within reach once we start planning on how to get the money.

 

Raising the Money for Green Energy Investment

 

$16.5 trillion is an intimidating amount of money, about the size of the entire U.S. economy today.  The Federal government is the only body capable of raising so much cash, but the government’s total Debt is already 100% of its economy – which worries many economists.  Therefore, government should not attempt to borrow the money.  Government must find other means of paying for building the massive Green Energy infrastructure, even when we consider that we could break the $16.5 trillion up into ten years of spending at $1.65 trillion per year.  Several options to raise the money exist.

The best funding option is to raise taxes on a group of people that can afford to pay a slight increase and who have enough overall wealth to fund the Green Energy project.  We could raise a 2% tax on Wall Street transaction that would give the government an estimated $1.4 trillion per year.  That leaves $250 billion.  That last amount can be found by creating a $20 tax on every metric ton of carbon pollution created by the fossil fuel industry – which would raise about $118 billion per year while also giving an incentive for energy companies to move away from burning fossil fuels to generate electricity.  That would leave about $132 billion in money to be found per year, which could be taken from the estimated $1.179 trillion per year in revenue raised from a Fair Tax code proposed in the Plan for a Rational Budget (pages 39-42).  In total, we can fully fund the Green Energy project by creating the following system:

Sources of Green Energy Funding

Source                                           Tax Rate                 Revenue (billions $)

Wall Street Tax                              2%                                    1,400

Carbon Tax                            $20/metric ton                        118

Fair Tax Contribution                                                               132

Total                                                                                              1,650

The Wall Street Transaction Tax is capable of raising the $1.65 trillion per year needed to building the Green Energy infrastructure in ten years.  A 2% tax will not destroy the Wall Street class of wealth that currently dominates much of American politics while paying little in current taxes.  Most of the rest of the country pays about 7% in sales taxes, so Wall Street should not complain about paying a 2% tax for 10 years.  In fact, a 2% tax on Wall Street Transactions would mean that an investor looking to buy $10,000 worth of stock would only have to pay $200 in tax!  Such a small fee is obviously affordable to for the rich and will pay most of the cost of building a renewable energy system that will benefit all Americans.  The remaining $250 billion per year can be raised by a new carbon emissions tax and by taking the last leftover amount from the increase in federal revenue if we implement a new, fair tax system suggested in the Plan for a Rational Budget.

The money is there.  We just need to build the political will to tax it and use it for a Green Energy project that will improve the lives of all Americans.  We know that such national will exists because we have seen examples of it during past national emergencies, most clearly and powerfully during World War Two.

 

The Nation at War

 

The United States won World War II so decisively because its population largely believed that the war was forced upon them and that it was necessary to rid the world of dictatorship.  Building an expensive and ambitious renewable energy system will require a similar amount of motivation and dedication from most Americans.  American soldiers fought World War II on real battlefields while the American “homefront” fought on a moral battlefield against enemies they viewed as evil.  Americans were particularly motivated by a rage against Japan for its sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in December 1941 (which many still use to justify the destruction of 67 major Japanese cities during the war and the atomic bombings of two more Japanese cities in 1945).  Americans understand that the United States today is faced with similar sneak attacks in the form of international terrorism that struck on September 11, 2001.  Middle-Eastern terrorists are obviously motivated by a desire to force the U.S. to end its meddling in Middle-Eastern countries.  Such meddling is only done to guarantee American access to Middle-Eastern oil reserves, so the best way to end that meddling is to build a domestic U.S. energy production network.  In short, we can defeat Middle-Eastern terrorism by investing in the Green Energy Plan, building an internal energy system, and withdrawing from the Middle-East – which would be far easier, productive, and humane than simply bombing terrorist groups into surrender.

Americans believed in the 1940s war effort because they wanted to save the world from Fascism and dictatorship.  Similarly, today’s Americans should realize that the oil economy creates possibly larger threats to human freedom because reliance on oil has clearly created nearly all of the United States’ current wars.  Oil is also getting more scarce, which means that energy prices (particularly gasoline) will rise dramatically.  Using oil has harmed humanity through pollution’s effects on human health and climate change.  Like World War Two, Americans should view the creation of a Green Energy system as a battle for the future of human freedom from war, scarcity, poverty, and health and environmental damage.

These ideas have been pointed out for many years, even by political leaders.  Even a U.S. president made these comparisons as far back as 1977.  President Jimmy Carter called energy conservation and rebuilding proposals “the moral equivalent of war” (Jimmy Carter, Address to the Nation on Energy, April 18, 1977, which can be read and watched at http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3398).  We can and must win that war in the next 10 years.  We know how much energy we will need, we know the technology already exists to meet those needs, we know how to pay for building the infrastructure, and we know that Americans have risen above similar national challenges in the past.  We only lack the ability to force our political leaders to put the plan into effect.  We may have to change the U.S. electoral and budget systems to gain that power over our politicians.  My suggestions for such changes can be read for free at www.machineryofpolitics.com

The Incredible Shrinking President

Barack Obama represented many aspects of progressive politics in the 2008 election, and he promised several solid economic policies: a Health Care “Public Option,” an end to President Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, a renegotiation of Free Trade Agreements, an end to U.S. support for foreign dictators that have propped up the U.S. economy, and movement toward ending the U.S. “addiction” to foreign oil imports.  These were his major platform promises in 2008, but he has failed to implement any of them.  In fact, when conservative politicians attacked these logical policies, President Obama repeatedly gave up his platform and caved in to their demands.  Progressives should be outraged at President Obama.  They need to make their demands even clearer during his re-election campaign if they expect to influence the president beyond 2012.  Americans in general also need to overhaul the electoral system that has clearly corrupted his judgment as president.

Health-care was one of the overwhelming topics of debate in the 2008 election.  Barack Obama was a major proponent of changing the existing system to make it more equal for the mass majority of Americans.

If you don’t have health insurance, then what we’re going to do is to provide you the option of buying into the same kind of federal pool that both Sen. McCain and I enjoy as federal employees, which will give you high-quality care, choice of doctors, at lower costs, because so many people are part of this insured group. . . .  This will cost some money on the front end, but over the long term this is the only way that not only are we going to make families healthy, but it’s also how we’re going to save the federal budget, because we can’t afford these escalating costs.  (Third Presidential Debate, held October 15, 2008 in Hempstead, New York.)

Obama here proposed what came to be known as the “public option” in health care: allowing un-insured Americans to purchase coverage in the same pool as federal employees.  Economists estimated that this would, indeed, lower the costs of health insurance due to the pool’s large size, which would allow it to collectively negotiate the best prices.  This is largely already in place in Japan, whose citizens are generally amongst the healthiest in the world.  (For more on Japan and other national health insurance systems, see T.R. Reid, The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, New York: Penguin, 2010).  Candidate Obama’s proposal was logical and well-proven, but President Obama completely abandoned it in the health care debates of 2009.  He continued asking for a “public option” even in September 2009, when gave a joint address to Congress.  (Barack Obama, Address to a Joint Session of Congress, September 9, 2009)  However, he completely abandoned this demand as Congress approached an actual vote in winter 2009.  The “public option” was not included in the eventual law, and President Obama signed off on this failure in March 2010.   (The final laws that reorganized the health insurance system are H.R. 3590 “The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act of 2010” and H.R. 4872 “The Health Care Education Reconciliation Act of 2010).  The law today requires each citizen to purchase health insurance but does not provide the “public option” Obama campaigned for in 2008, which will result in many citizens being forced to buy overpriced, unreliable insurance through private corporations that are the heart of the American health care catastrophe.

Taxation was also a major debate in 2008.  Obama took a hard stand against President George W. Bush’s tax cuts, which he accused of mostly benefiting the wealthiest citizens.  Obama repeatedly promised to end such tax cuts for the wealthy and to keep taxes low for the middle class and poor.  “I will give a tax break to 95% of Americans who work every day and get taxes taken out of their paychecks every week. And I’ll help pay for this by asking the folks who are making more than $250,000 a year to go back to the tax rate they were paying in the 1990s.”  (Remarks by Senator Barack Obama on November 2, 2008 at Columbus, Ohio)  Obama proposed that tax rates for the rich should return to pre-Bush levels, saying that the government needs revenue to invest in its infrastructure.  “[N]obody likes taxes. I would prefer that none of us had to pay taxes, including myself. But ultimately, we’ve got to pay for the core investments that make this economy strong and somebody’s got to do it.”  (Third Presidential Debate, held October 15, 2008 in Hempstead, New York)  The Bush tax cuts were set to expire at the end of 2010, which would have sent all taxes back to the 1990s levels.  Conservatives demanded that all tax cuts continue, including the tax cuts for people making over $250,000 per year that Obama had specifically campaigned against in 2008.  President Obama surrendered again to conservative demands in December 2010, permitting tax cuts for the rich to continue until the end of 2012.   (The 2010 tax cut extension was included in H.R. 4853, “The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010”)  Somebody’s got to pay for future investments, but Obama is unwilling to force the wealthy to do it.

Free Trade Agreements, which open international trade by eliminating taxes on imports, was mentioned in the Third Presidential Debate.  Obama focused on the shortcomings of Free Trade Agreements, even agreeing with long-held progressive and union stances that labor rights and environmental protections should be included in such treaties.

I believe in free trade. But I also believe that for far too long, certainly during the course of the Bush administration with the support of Sen. McCain, the attitude has been that any trade agreement is a good trade agreement. And NAFTA doesn’t have — did not have enforceable labor agreements and environmental agreements. . . .  [W]e have to stand for human rights and we have to make sure that violence isn’t being perpetrated against workers who are just trying to organize for their rights, which is why, for example, I supported the Peruvian Free Trade Agreement which was a well-structured agreement.”  (Third Presidential Debate, held October 15, 2008 in Hempstead, New York)

Candidate Obama approached a demand to renegotiate NAFTA and other Free Trade Agreements in his support of labor and environmental standards.  However, President Obama avoided such discussions.  Perhaps most disturbingly, his avoidance of new talks comes without counter-demands from conservatives.  Instead, President Obama appears to have made this decision on his own.  In other words, on the topic of free trade, President Obama cannot even be accused of surrendering to public pressure.

Another major problem is that many of these tax reducing deals are made with the agreement of foreign dictators.  The United States has used and abused foreign nations in order to create cheap products for its own economy since the end of World War Two.   (For more on this history, see John Perkins, Secret History of the American Empire: The Truth About Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and How to Change the World, New York: Plume, 2008, and Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, New York: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2004)  Some examples are the coups against Iran in the 1950s and support for dictatorships in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iraq beginning in the 1970s – and these are merely the countries that the U.S. targeted for oil reserves!  The U.S. government’s stance for the last 60 years has been to support dictatorships if they are friendly to the United States.  Barack Obama took a clear stand against such policies in 2008, even promising to personally end such foreign relations.

[T]he problem, John, with the strategy that’s been pursued was that, for 10 years, we coddled [Pakaistani dictator Pervez] Musharraf, we alienated the Pakistani population, because we were anti-democratic. We had a 20th-century mindset that basically said, ‘Well, you know, he may be a dictator, but he’s our dictator.’ . . .  That’s going to change when I’m president of the United States.  (First Presidential Debate, held September 26, 2008 in Oxford, Mississippi)

Sadly, that has not changed since Obama became president.  The most stunning example is Egypt, where the Obama Administration has reportedly given $1.5 billion per year to a clear military dictatorship that tortures its own citizens in order to stay in control, but which also supports many U.S. foreign policies in the Middle East.  The Obama Administration refused to support the Egyptian democratic protests in early 2011, and Obama himself did not clearly call for the end of that disgusting regime until after its leader had already resigned.  President Obama has been a major disappointment for those who found hope in his promise to end U.S. support for destructive, but pro-Western, dictatorships, and voters should remind him of that in 2012.

Obama seems to understand that the United States has historically supported brutal dictators largely to guarantee American access to oil reserves.  He repeatedly stated in 2008 that his energy policy would focus on relieving and eventually ending U.S. dependence on Middle-Eastern oil.  He proposed two means of accomplishing that lofty goal within 10 years.  First and foremost, Obama promised to invest heavily in renewable energy technologies.  “I’ll invest 150 billion dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy — wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and 5 million new jobs that pay well and can’t ever be outsourced.”  (Barack Obama, Nomination Address. Delivered August 28, 2008 in Denver, Colorado)  Not only would this long-term plan end reliance on foreign energy sources, but it would also help the U.S. economic recovery because it would create a massive new internal energy infrastructure that largely has to be built from scratch.

Sadly, the yearly federal budgets that President Obama has signed fall short of his campaign’s promise to invest $150 billion over ten years.  That figure averages out to $15 billion per year, but the first two budgets that President Obama singed fell far short of that promise.  The Budget for Fiscal Year 2010 provided only $2.3 billion renewable energy programs, and that only increased to $2.4 billion in the 2011 Budget!  (Budget of the U.S. Government: Fiscal Year 2011.  The entire Budget can be downloaded at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BUDGET-2011-BUD/content-detail.html.  The $2.4 billion figure appears under the Energy Department’s descriptions of spending on page 70.)  That is a long way from the $15 billion per year that he to implement if elected in 2008.  $2.4 billion is only 16% of his promised $15 billion, and only 8.4% of the overall Energy Department’s Budget in 2011.  That is an unacceptably low amount, and a badly broken promise.  Progressives should give voice to their disappointment in 2012.

Obama’s secondary energy proposal was to increase oil production from reserves already existing in the United States, particularly along its coastlines.  In order to end foreign reliance on Middle-Eastern oil, he said “that means, yes, increasing domestic production and off-shore drilling, but we only have 3 percent of the world’s oil supplies and we use 25 percent of the world’s oil. So we can’t simply drill our way out of the problem.”  (First Presidential Debate, held September 26, 2008 in Oxford, Mississippi)  Obama clearly showed in 2008 that he supports offshore oil drilling, but only within a larger plan of developing renewable energy sources.  Obama promised that new domestic drilling would only be one small piece of a larger solution.  President Obama has held to his promise to increase offshore drilling, notably by opening new areas to offshore drilling beginning in late March 2009.  At the time, he noted that this would be a short-term solution to the nation’s energy needs, but that the long-term solution lies with renewable energy development.

…I want to emphasize is that this announcement is part of a broader strategy that will move us from an economy that runs on fossil fuels and foreign oil to one that relies more on homegrown fuels and clean energy. And the only way this transition will succeed is if it strengthens our economy in the short term and the long run. To fail to recognize this reality would be a mistake.  (Obama’s March 31, 2009 announcement can still be read on Democracy Now!’s website at http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/1/gas_drill)

Unfortunately, Obama has given up on his demands for renewable energy even while allowing offshore drilling to increase.  Obama’s inability to push for renewable energy was best revealed by the failure of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, which passed the House of Representatives but was hardly even discussed in the Senate. (There were actually two different bills proposed in June 2009: H.R. 2454 and H.R. 2998.  Both were abandoned within weeks of being introduced in the Senate.)  Even with a so-called “super-majority” in 2009, President Obama did not support the Act heavily enough to push its passage into law.  The result is that offshore drilling, which he wanted to be a minor piece of the solution, has become the major focus of U.S. energy policy.

President Obama has not fought to fulfill the promises he made in 2008.  He has given up, given in, and surrendered his promises for a “public option” in health care, ending tax cuts for the rich, renegotiating labor and environmental protections in Free Trade Agreements, stopping support for foreign dictators, and investing in renewable energy technology.  The only piece of the 2008 platform that President Obama has actually enforced is the promise to increase offshore oil drilling, which conservatives mostly support.  Therefore, President Obama has succeeded in one promise, but given up on five others.  Progressives should send him a clear signal of their disappointment in 2012 if they hope to have an impact on future presidential decisions.

Beyond that, Americans should realize that Obama has repeatedly shown us how ineffective a popular, recently-elected politician is when they are forced to work within an overwhelmingly corrupt electoral system.  We cannot only blame Obama personally for his many political failures since winning the 2008 election; we must also accept the need to change our electoral system if we hope to change our most important government policies.