Forum Post: SOTU 2012

"...The axis of Obama’s speech was his invocation of the auto bailout as the greatest vindication of his economic policies. “This blueprint begins with American manufacturing,” he said. “On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse… In exchange for help, we demanded responsibility. We got workers and automakers to settle their differences.”

By “responsibility” Obama was referring to the White House demand that auto workers take a 50 percent pay cut, along with the destruction of tens of thousands of jobs, major cuts in pension and health benefits for retired workers, and a ban on strike action, cementing the role of the United Auto Workers union as the company police force inside the plants…

Obama’s State of the Union address: War and wage-cutting

By Patrick Martin 
25 January 2012

The State of the Union Speech delivered by Barack Obama Tuesday night was memorable only as a further milestone in the decay of American democracy.

While billed in advance by the White House and media pundits as a “populist appeal” by the Democratic president, effectively kicking off his reelection campaign, there was virtually nothing in the speech that even acknowledged the acute social crisis in America, let alone offering any solution.

The annual presidential addresses to a joint session of Congress have taken on an increasingly empty and ritualistic character—the same empty phrases, the same perfunctory ovations, the same gimmick of individuals placed in the First Lady’s box to serve as cameos, the laundry list of proposals, either insignificant or overtly reactionary, the sickening appeals to national unity and militarism.

Four years after the official onset of recession, three years after the biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression, the US economy remains mired in slump and the world economy is rapidly approaching a new cataclysm. Yet neither Obama nor his Republican opponents can acknowledge the overriding fact being experienced by hundreds of millions of working people: the desperate crisis of the capitalist system…

…Equally ominous and reactionary were the brief opening and longer closing sections of the State of the Union speech devoted to foreign policy. Obama began and ended the speech by invoking what he clearly regards as his trump card, the assassination of Osama bin Laden by a team of US Navy Seals….

…In his conclusion, Obama returned to his vision of a society run along military lines when he again invoked the raid that killed bin Laden. For Barack Obama, the cohesion of a team of trained assassins is the highest form of human solidarity.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jan2012/sotu-j25.shtml