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Wednesday, January 25, 2012 - Volume 3, Number 1 © Copyright 2012, The
Ultrapolis Project – May be used freely with
proper attribution. All other rights
reserved. |
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BARAK
HUSSEIN OBAMA
RE-ELECTED IN 2012
The Republicans Fail to Bridge Party & National
Ideological Divide Our biggest prediction of 2011 remains unchanged by the president’s ‘good enough’ State of the Union address delivered last night. For more on this and other predictions of 2011, please see below. |
IN THIS ISSUE:
·
Manifestations of Ascendant Power
·
Barak Obama to Win Re-Election in 2012
·
Other Predictions of 2011 and 2010 Reviewed
·
New Cartoonist Joins Ultrapolis World Forecast &
Review
·
Observations
From Shanghai: The Republicans Will Not Save Us
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Manifestations
of an Ascendant Super Power
Forests of Rising Towers Signal New World to Come
As with other great powers of the past, including the United States a century ago, developing cities and public infrastructure reflect growing economic might that is eventually exercised in many non-economic ways. Many scoff at the notion of a serious challenge, and even possible danger, that a rising authoritarian superpower poses for the U.S., and breezily dismiss concerns of what the real impact of a major power shift will be on American daily lives. They are like the ancient Greeks who looked at the expanding Persian Empire with dull eyes, concerned only about their immediate and personal concerns, wishing away the need for preparations. Fortunately for them, leaders who could see into the future led them to prepare for what came, and so were able to preserve their freedom. Sure, today’s power struggles take place in different ways, but they do take place and do have real consequences. Complicating this challenge is the economic stagnation that has actually been affecting most Americans for the better part of twenty years, even if it only exploded into a full-blown economic crisis in 2007-08. Be on the lookout for our new series of articles on this topic.
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OBAMA WINS IN 2012
Republicans Fail to Bridge Ideological Divide October 28, 2010 Prediction Re-Stated
We made our first tentative prediction of President’s Obama re-election prospects on the eve of the massive Republican victory at the polls in 2010. We re-affirmed it a few days later, on November 4. This was in the wake of the conclusion of our 2008 prediction that Obama would have a very difficult and ineffective two years (which we say the 2010 elections, and his record-low ratings offered as much proof as is possible). While we were not publishing most of last year, right after President Obama succeeded in having Osama Bin Laden captured and killed, we predicted again more certainly on Facebook that he would win re-election. We stand by that prediction today, admitting even now that predicting presidential election outcomes is a risky and not very profitable exercise (easy to get wrong, not much credit if you get it right). Truth is, predicting election outcomes is extremely difficult because of the many constantly varying factors at play, and the disproportionate effect one unique individual (Gingrich?) can have at critical moments, upending any given societal or political trend. Nevertheless, based on our success in predicting developments (in Facebook) regarding the Republican race for the presidential nomination, we remain confident in this forecast (confidence level: modest). We do also expect the election to be close if the Republican candidate is former Governor Mitt Romney, and less so if it is former Speaker Newt Gingrich or another more conservative candidate. Republicans,
a House Divided The Republicans are experiencing an intra-party division that parallels the hardening ideological divisions of the country, making a Republican candidate that is enthusiastically supported by unified party an unlikely outcome. In contrast to their Democratic counterparts, core Republicans are less forgiving of ideological impurity among their own, even after a nomination is sealed. Talk Radio does not help. The hard-line conservatives are absolutely certain the country on the whole is clamoring for total free-market capitalism, even in the face of numerous polls and studies painting a much more mixed and complex picture. These Republicans are the ones that are more driven and likely to show up at rallies, donate money, and vote. They are also more likely to pick up their marbles and go home if they are convinced by many Rightist loud voices on the radio and TV that the Republican “establishment” has once again thwarted their will. Added to this division is a growing divide between a ‘diaspora’ of Libertarians inside the Republican movement that differs greatly on several key issues from both the usual Republican social and economic conservatives in the party as well as the moderate Republicans. One cannot win a Republican nomination (or a national one, for that matter), claiming that 9/11 is America’s fault, and that the Iranian and the Taliban leaders are simply misunderstood agents of goodwill (this policy stand would be eviscerated by President Obama’s campaign, and actually improve Obama’s re-election prospect, just as it divides the party further). The
Republican Blind Spot Lastly,
there is the fundamental issue of what Americans want. No matter how much the Republicans can and
do point to the real and deep dissatisfaction that exists with President
Obama throughout the country, it does not eliminate the reality that
Americans across both parties believe that most of them have gotten a bad
deal from the so-called “1%.” Even Tea
Partiers are decrying corporate greed and cronyism. In fact, disgust with the current big
corporate capitalism is one thing the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street share,
notwithstanding the pronouncements of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael
Berry, and all the other über-capitalists who continue to benefit under the
current economy. For our critique of
the Republican Party, first published on July 21, 2011 on Facebook on this
issue please see below. Regrettably, developments are likely to only strengthen the hard-line conservative perceptions of where the country’s majority leanings lie. A defeat of Mitt Romney in 2012, whereby conservative Republicans fail to enthusiastically support Romney at the polls, will be seen as proof by hard-line conservatives that only a conservative like themselves could have won, when in fact, a hardliner would have been more soundly rejected and the defeat was of their own making. Last
Minute Tidbit Tweeting Ad Nauseam; Now in Presidential Debates In the last Presidential debate, the NBC corporate executives felt that their product would be enhanced by the occasional posting of some unknown person’s ‘tweet,’ selected by some unknown NBC staffer, both with unknown perspectives or credentials, in real-time reactions to remarks made by the candidates. If you care the slightest bit what was in the for-all-we-know randomly selected off-hand, 140-or-less-character reaction from one of any possible seven billion people on the planet on any subject, let alone the U.S. presidential debates, you are wasting your time reading this newsletter. |
Other Predictions of 2011
Obama’s Libya Policy
Ramifications Perry & Gingrich
Prospects; The Arab Spring UWFR – March 15 - We identified President Obama’s first announced course on Libya’s rebellion as seriously flawed and in need of change, but predicted that he was unlikely [emphasis added] to reverse course on his initial hands-off Libya policy. Mostly Wrong. Obama did temporarily (and thankfully) reverse course, with considerable success. We are consoled by the fact that the president did come closer to our view of the proper course of action. Ultrapolis Twitter – March 28 – We predicted that President Obama was okay with a temporary stalemate in Libya. Restated on April 7 that president was opting away from quick resolution, favoring a slower, consensus-based outcome. Somewhat True. Of course, we didn’t specify the difference between quick resolution and temporary stalemate, but most experts agreed at the time that even a modestly robust effort by US could have ended the conflict in a matter of two or three weeks. Instead, as stated by The New York Times “six months of inconclusive fighting” followed until a confluence of Turkish and Qatari support and a major internal rebel force reformation began to produce the sudden unraveling of Qaddafi’s regime. UWFR – March 18 – Obama’s Libya policy will reduce our negotiation leverage with the Libyans and others once there is success. So Far Likely True. From The
Wall Street Journal, right after the Libyan rebel victory: “Qatar to Reap
Rewards From Its Rebel Aid,” August 25.
"The Libyan people are very proud people, they will never forget
their friends," Aref Ali Nayed, the Libyan ambassador to the United Arab
Emirates. Reports have also surfaced
that American companies are not getting the favorable treatment that Qatari
and Turk companies are getting (Turkey was big donor to the rebels). Facebook
– February 28 – In response to an expressed worry about Rick Perry running
for president, we predicted that if he ran for office, he would implode as
soon as he was exposed to the much harsher national spotlight. So Very True. Facebook
– January 16 – In response to a NewsHour story on PBS reporting on the
dramatic flight from Tunisia of just-deposed President Zine al-Abidine Ben
Ali, we predicted that the fall of the one dictator would send shock waves
and destabilize dictatorships throughout the Middle East in an unprecedented
way. Bulls Eye.
Of course, perhaps it wasn’t such
a hard prediction to make, but we don’t know of anyone else who predicted it
sooner. We do admit that at the time
we did not expect the revolutions to be so successful. Facebook
– December 20 – Newt Gingrich will never be president, Not unless it's after an
awkward political marriage, an unlikely Republican victory, followed by an
untimely death of Romney. Then, all bets are off. Not Yet Determined. Just re-stating for the record. Of course, Ginrichis
the kind of actor that can upend everything. Predictions
of 2010 Resolved
Google Vs. China UWFR – January 13 – After Google clashed with China, and refused to continue its usual services under Chinese censorship, we predicted that Google would ultimately lose the fight. True. A March 21, 2010 WSJ story headlined “Google Losing Ground in China.” On January 12 of
this year it was reported that Google was reversing course, and would renew its push to expand in China, “in an acknowledgment
that it can't afford to miss out on the world's biggest Internet
market.” Of course. A business corporation cannot do anything
but what will maximize profits for its executives and majority owners. All, and we do mean ALL other
considerations are irrelevant, meaningful only
insofar as they affect the bottom line. |
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REPUBLICAN
VALENTINE ©2012 All Rights Reserved. |
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Main Index of the Weekly Forecast & Review
Comments may be
directed to contactproject@ultrapolisproject.com, or if you receive the
newsletter email, also via a reply to the email address from which you receive
it.
© Copyright 2012, The
Ultrapolis Project
Observations from Shanghai: The Republicans Will Not Save US
Originally posted on Facebook, from Shanghai, on July 21,
2011
By
Marco Antonio Roberts
Over the last few months, if not years, I
have watched, read, and listened at the barrage of news reporting and opining
that is so plentiful, on what ails our country - hoping to find, at last, that
new insight heretofore absent from all public discussion as to where the answer
lies to our country’s worsening economic, and ultimately national security,
conditions. I have not found it. Instead, I have only seen again and again the
same boilerplate solutions that have been offered by the opposing parties for
decades now – and now often offered even more simplistically and crudely
ideologically than ever.
From the declared (and not) Republican
presidential candidates, conservative and neo-con editorialists, and
entertainment news conservative pundits, we have what amounts to this (but
redoubled): Go back to the Bush years.
We Did
That Already
As a morally and economically centrist
conservative I am no Obama supporter, and reject most of his ideologically
leftist principles of governance.
Moreover, even many Obama supporters are beginning to openly worry about
the president’s ability to lead us out of what appears to be an inexorable, if
slow, descent into third world conditions.
Yet, when it comes to Republican proposals, I have to agree with one
thing the president has said: “We
already did that.” It was, after all,
during and after eight years of Bushian policies that we had two economic
crises, first with the dot-com bubble implosion, then the housing boom
collapse. And while it is true there was also the government intrusion into,
and distortion of, the market place, strongly supported and advanced by liberal
Democrats like Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, much of that was also
done with tacit, under-the-table Republican approval.
It was also during the Bush years that we had
an acceleration of the transfer of wealth from the American middle class to the
shores of Shanghai and Dubai; it was during those years when American
technological advantages further eroded or were co-opted by our likeliest and
most dangerous future rivals; and it was then that the failure to plan for a
vitally important American presence in space occurred, leaving us, as of 5:57
AM EDST today, vulnerable to political blackmail to a regime run by a former
KGB agent, a regime that has not been friendly to the U.S., one that cut gas
supplies to European countries in the middle of a harsh winter for political
gain, and has in recent years openly invaded other countries with brutal force.
A
Well-Travelled Road
People need to understand that the freedom
and prosperity we enjoy today, which is still plentiful, did not come by
anything we are doing today. It exists
only because of what was done before by our predecessors. Still, it is very difficult for people who
have grown up in relative prosperity and comfort to understand that, even if
that prosperity was not personal, but societal.
Maybe that is why great corporations and empires always eventually fall. But, if we cannot get the American working
people, especially the young, to peel their eyes and ears away from Snooki and
Gaga, and get serious – and educated – now, about the nation’s future (not just
their own personal careers), then we will follow the great nations of the past
all too closely, and our legacy will be disgrace.
I categorically say now, with the confidence
of a student of history with some empirically demonstrated logical reasoning
and predictive capabilities, that with the way our economy and political discourse
is structured now, we can look forward to the continuation of the decades-long
decline of the American middle class, and a creeping upward expansion of that
decline into the upper middle classes, along with loss of technological and
military might that will inevitably follow.
And, with the loss of security that might provides, we can further
expect a serious threat to our liberty and the prospects for future advancement
that we have enjoyed as a nation since the founding of our republic.
The reasons are many, but for now, if you
will permit me, let me suggest three things:
·
This is not the end
of history. All systems of government and trade must be
substantively reformed from time to time because a subset of highly motivated
human beings always eventually find a way to game the system for their own
advantage, at the expense of others. The
Republicans (is anyone?) are not offering any truly new approaches to
re-establishing employment and wage gains at the individual level on the main
streets of America. Instead, they seem
to perpetually assume (against obvious and persistent evidence), that as long
as the rich and the corporations do well, so will everyone else. It’s true that those at the top, and the
corporations they run, need to do well for the rest to prosper, but it does not
follow that we will all automatically prosper when those at the top do
well. The last 20 years prove that. As the very rich have gotten richer and
richer, the rest of us, on average, have lost ground. (Many Americans on the losing end don’t
notice it because they are looking at their own circumstances, and only in
current dollars. But you can’t compare
your gains at age 45 to what they were at 35, with today’s dollars at the dollars
you earned ten years ago. Instead, you
have to look at what a 45 year-old in your same career and circumstances earned
ten years ago, compared to what you make today in inflation-adjusted
dollars.) A radical change may now be in
order, the kind that has reinvented past great nations, allowing them to extend
their years of progress and prosperity.
Exhibit A: China.
·
Corporations are
amoral things. Corporations should be treated and considered
for nothing more than what they are: a vehicle for maximizing and funneling
profits. While they may not necessarily
be intentionally destructive actors, they are amoral ones. And, just as they have provided a basis for
prosperity, they also have a long record of justifying every abuse of
individuals, disregard of public welfare, destruction of cultural and natural
landmarks, and despoiling of the environment, with one clearly and openly
stated rationale: “we have a responsibility to maximize profit for our
shareholders.” I think it is safe to say
that all the great philosophical and religious traditions that have mused about
the elevation of the human experience, from Plato to Buddha to Confucius to
Christ, would have a problem with such a single-minded approach to
decision-making on issues that inevitably affect a nation’s culture and
socio-economic welfare. Nevertheless, it
reigns over much of our public life.
Ergo, vulgarity, misogynism, crude self-promotion, self-centered
immodesty, political extremism, are all promoted (and spread) because it is
profitable to do so. Historical
landmarks are destroyed, and shoddy new buildings are put in their place
because these maximize shareholder profits.
American and European conglomerates sell vital technology to our
potential future adversaries, including military and population surveillance
technology (as they are doing even now) because it makes money. And these are the legal things corporations
do. It is also why American corporations
are squeezing wages and outsourcing jobs on the middle to lower rungs of the
labor market even as they inflate their own executive salaries at a ratio to
the average worker that is 900% higher than it was back in 1980. Now, are these executives today intellectual
X-Men ten times smarter than their counterparts in 1980? Have they produced an economic juggernaut
that has produced unprecedented benefits to Americans at all levels? Or have they merely used their privileged
positions, as so many have before, to consistently arrogate to themselves, thru
ups and downs alike, an ever greater portion of the nation’s wealth?
·
CEOs are bleeding dry
the middle class. An economy is, at its core, about the trade
of goods and services; that is, the movement of value or income. From one day to the next, we can move from
boom to recession, even though we have the same number of able-bodied workers,
the same amount of capital goods, and the same infrastructure. So what is different? The flow of value. When the butcher stops trading with the
blacksmith, who then stops trading with the farmer, who then stops visiting the
local saloon - at that moment the total amount of hams, anvils, crops, and beer
has not changed, and neither has the productive capacity. But, if the flow of value, i.e. trade, does
not resume soon, each will stop producing, or produce less, then resulting in a
real decline in total wealth. Well, what
has been happening in our corporate economy, we have had a constriction of the
wealth flowing back to the middle class, in the form of reduced employment and
wages. While the flow of income has not stopped, it has been reduced in one
direction as it has been accelerated in the other. Short-term, each company and its top
officers, and some many of its large shareholders, may derive increased
wealth. But in the economic ‘biosphere,’
eventually the employee/consumer base is bled dry, and the flow finally stops,
with catastrophic consequences for the economy and all caught within it without
the resources to escape. This is what
has begun to happen in the last two traumatic recessions, and will only get
worse if a more balanced flow of income is not restored.
Greed
Is NOT Good
The sad truth is that while Democrats still
ignore many fundamentals of economics, and think that all you have to do to
provide benefits and goods to all is simply wave a legislative magic wand and
utter an incantation like “let there be healthcare for all,” Republicans appear
closer than ever to the caricature of them the Democrats so often portray: as
Pollyanna corporate boosters, for whom corporate profit is a goal that trumps
all others, and with nothing new to offer.
Obama is proposing to raise taxes for “struggling” families earning only
$250,000 and up, say the Republicans, including all the presidential
candidates. “Struggling?” Really? At
$250K a year? Considering that the vast
majority of American middle class households manage well on less than half
that, this is nothing but demagogic pandering to the ambitious class. But, in the book of most humans across the
earth, not being able to buy the latest, fully equipped Lexus, or go on that
fourth trans-Atlantic vacation, or attend that $500 a plate gala, or send your
kid to Harvard - in the midst of an economic retrenchment that is hitting most
people hard - that is not considered “struggling.” Struggling is being out of work for two
years, not knowing how you will survive when the unemployment benefits run
out. Struggling is losing your $150K
house because you can’t even afford that modest home. Struggling is not having enough to eat, not
having any good educational or employment prospects, and not being able to see
a doctor at all except in an emergency room.
And, struggling is where more Americans are today than ten years ago,
and where more will be in ten more years, if the executive class is allowed to
continue to profess “greed is good!” as they amass greater wealth in a
faltering economy.
A
Decline Profitable for the Few
Traveling around Shanghai I am amazed by what
the Chinese have accomplished. But, as I
am encouraged for their future, I am frightened for ours. We have stopped building great new buildings,
bridges, and transportation systems to advance the nation’s infrastructure, as
nations east rocket past us with American money. We have surrendered our
supremacy in space, and transferred our technological prowess to Chinese firms
run by China’s army in exchange for short-term profits, giving them spying
tools that they can use on their own people, and maybe eventually us: We have debased our cultural norms and ideals
that value civic duty, self-restraint, and national consciousness because these
are boring, and aren’t as profitable to promote as people willing to degrade
themselves and others in exchange for the tiniest bit of fame. And we have, in empirically measurable ways,
gone economically backwards for the majority of American people. And yet, with all this, the executive and
governing classes are doing well for themselves - in fact, hugely better than
ever, while the infotainment chattering ‘punderatti,’ all of them fabulously
wealthy by the same system, look the other way.
It is time to raise our heads, see, and prepare for what is coming. Ignore it, and we all, but especially your
children and your grandchildren, are destined for a gradual national decline,
and the loss of freedom that must go with it, managed very profitably by a
self-selected few.