November 9, 2008

OBAMA WIN HISTORIC

Barack Obama’s win of the United States presidency is a sea change in American politics.

It breaks the “color barrier” set in place when Black slaves from Africa were imported to tend English Carolina cotton fields in 1670.

President-elect Obama is not black-black. According to “Family Tree and Genealogy,” he was born to a white American mother, Ann Dunham -- and a black, Kenyan father: Barack Obama, Sr. Both parents were young college students at the University of Hawaii.

When Barack was two years old, his parents divorced. His father moved to Connecticut to continue his education at Harvard before returning to Kenya.

Barack Obama, Sr. and
Ann Dunham

When young Barack was six, his mother married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian oil company manager attending Hawaii University. In 1967, when young Barack was in first grade, the family moved to Jakarta, Indonesia.

Four years later, young Barack’s mother sent him to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham. She died – at age 86 – a day before Barack was elected.

Barack, junior, was graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School where he met his future wife, Michelle Robinson. They have two daughters, Malia and Sasha.

ELECTION RESULTS

Barack Obama won the presidential election handily – garnering 65,340, 608 votes (53%.) John McCain received 57,358, 053 votes (46%.)

The president-elect hit the ground running – choosing four-term Congressman Rahn Emanuel from Chicago -- as his chief of staff.

Emanuel was a former, senior official in the Clinton White House. The Chicago Tribune newspaper describes him as a “brutally effective taskmaster.”

HURRY UP ECONOMIC PLAN

Obama moved swiftly last Friday -- at a hurriedly arranged press conference -- to outline a major economic-stimulus program. He seemed to be back-peddling from his campaign proposal to “share the wealth” by taxing money of earners making $250,000 or more (mostly small businesses) and giving it to the half of Americans paying no taxes.

This alarmed tax earners and savvy economists. Historically, nations go bankrupt when half the wage earners cease working when they learn they will be fed and sheltered by the government.

Russia and China went bankrupt during the First World War and got ruthless dictators. France and Germany were saved from bankruptcy and dictatorship by generous United States taxpayers after the Second World War.

HOW ECONOMIC CRISIS BEGAN

Obama’s economic proposal to save us from bankruptcy was somewhat brazen for a president-in-waiting. It attempts to pre-empt efforts of the sitting President Bush to calm the jittery banking crisis.

The present fiasco was seeded by defaults of government-financed Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac home loans. These were created to persuade commercial banks to accept “sub-prime” (below market value) home mortgages from poor people.

This was a noble gesture, but self-defeating.

Reports of near bankruptcy for General Motors, Chrysler and Ford automobile companies, alarmed Obama. He faces the prospect of taking the reins of government after the horses had fled the barn.

OBAMA’S QUICKIE BOARD

Obama became alarmed when he met for the first time Friday with his Transition Economic Advisory Board in Chicago. Those members expressed serious concern about American automobile manufacturing companies.

The president-elect called a hurried press conference, and lined up behind him a Who’s Who of politicians and advisors.

Among them were Vice-president-elect Sen. Joseph Biden, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and a bevy of former politicians and advisors.

Among the latter were Treasury Secretaries Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin; Commerce Secretary William Daley; Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission William Donaldsom; Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker; and several chief executives of Xerox Corp, Google Inc., and Time Warner.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffet is said to have “attended” the advisory board by speakerphone.

AUTO INDUSTRY HARD HIT

Obama declared:

“The auto industry is the backbone of American manufacturing -- and a critical part of our attempt to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

“I would like to see the administration do everything they can to accelerate the re-tooling assistance that Congress has already enacted.”

He followed this presumptive remark with his patented antidote:

“I pledge that I will do nothing between now and January 20 to undercut the outgoing chief executive. We only have one president at a time.”

PLEASE – no rude retorts.

By Lindsey Wilger Williams, retired newspaper publisher and syndicated columnist