[img]583|left|Eric L. Wattree||no_popup[/img]President Obama is undoubtedly a very intelligent man. I am sure it wasn't lost on him why he found himself walking on eggshells when the Egyptian people rose up against the corruption and human rights abuses of President Hosni Mubarak. The incident demonstrates two points. First, we need to stop trying to talk out of both sides of our mouths. Nobody is fooled. Secondly, while compromise generally is good, compromising with the devil is not compromise. It is collusion, regardless of whether talking about dictators abroad or corporatists at home.
It was embarrassing having to watch the President struggle to find the right tone for his response, especially after the way we're always foaming at the mouth about freedom, justice and democracy. Truth has no tone. It is simply truth. If the United States government is truly in support of justice and democracy, as we claim, why couldn't the President say so instead of tap dancing?
The reason is clear for his tepid response. While we love to pay lip service to freedom, justice, and democracy when the spotlight is upon us, we have a long history of playing footsie with people like President Mubarak and dictators around the world when the lights are out. We have been in collusion with dictators who subjugate their people throughout our history,, and now with international corporations in the subjugation of our own people.
Here is unmistakable evidence. In spite of record profits by major corporations, unemployment remains high. The primary reason: Corporations are purposely sending our jobs overseas and the banks are refusing to give loans to small businesses to get the middle class accustomed to accepting a lower standard of living. The tactic also is used to restore the GOP to power, thus the status quo.
A History of Economic Failure
If people would think instead of allowing the corporate noise machine to think for them, they would recognize the GOP claim that by pampering the top 10 percent, it will create jobs and enhance the middle class. They have had 30 years to prove the theory. Yet every Republican administration from Ronald Reagan on has been an abject failure managing the economy. President Obama has created more jobs in his first two years than Bush during his entire Presidency.
That is why Obama's base is so frustrated by his accommodationist attitude. While the GOP is aggressively destroying the country and chipping away at the middle class — sending away jobs, passing ridiculous rulings like Citizens United, assaulting our educational system, polluting our environment, taking over our media — he is talking comprise. He doesn't seem to understand some issues are worth fighting for, like the rule of law.
People need to stop being blinded by GOP public relations’ manuals. Here is one example of gross hypocrisy: In a speech in Cairo in June 2009, President Obama said the following:
“But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: The ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. These are not just American ideas; they are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere.”
“Everywhere,” Mr. President? Why don't we start here in your Postal Service? Unless President Mubarak is physically torturing his citizens, he couldn't possibly be treating his people worse than your agency is treating its employees. If what's currently going on in the Postal Service were not so tragic, your words would be laughable.
Abuse Is Rampant
In your Cairo speech you said all people yearn for confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice. Yet you improperly intervened in the administration of justice by preventing your attorney general from holding Bush and Cheney accountable for their war crimes, rendering them a class above the law. In your Postal Service, while you have craft employees being fired for accepting one coupon from a customer, you have executives falsifying government documents to steal millions of dollars a day in wages from gainfully employed workers with impunity. In addition, the failed postmaster who reigned over the employee abuse walked away from a nearly bankrupted Postal Service as a multimillionaire. How does that differ from what President Mubarak is engaged in?
Some say you must not know what is going on. I find that hard to believe. Our country has embraced a new business model to accommodate corporate greed. That is why the poor and middle class are suffering while the top 10 percent are living higher than at any time in our history. They no longer even feel obliged to help defend the nation. Dying for our country is a job for the little people.
Listen to an objective view of what you are allowing to happen on your watch. In his book, Beyond Going Postal, Dr. Steve Musacco, a therapist and organizational psychologist with 30 years’ experience in the postal service, said the following:
“On the morning of June 2, 2009, a city letter carrier went to work and reportedly fatally shot himself in the head in the locker room at a postal facility in Gastonia, North Carolina . . . Prior to my retirement from the USPS, at a former district I worked for, there were three suicides within a two-year period that I concluded were contributed to in significant part by how these employees were treated in the workplace. The third employee, a city letter carrier, fatally shot himself in a postal jeep and left a letter stating that he could no longer take the job. The night before he committed suicide he told his wife he did not know if he would be able to handle his job anymore. How do I know? His wife told me this one day after his suicide.
“In order for the U.S Postal Service to become a safe and healthy organization and thereby prevent future workplace tragedies, which have been at an epidemic level over the past three decades, there is an urgent need for congressional intervention and legislation to address its toxic postal culture. Dr. Gary Namie and his wife, Dr. Ruth Namie, along with their colleague Dr. David Yamada, have for years pushed for such legislation at the state and federal level. In order for national legislation for the prevention of workplace bullying to have the intended impact, it would require sanctions to employers or their representatives who are in violation of a new workplace statute that defines workplace bullying as a harmful and illegal activity.”
In another case addressing the Postal Service's routine practice of falsifying documents to steal pay from its employees, arbitrator Sherrie Rose Talmadge said in her Dec. 2, 2009, decision that “management’s violations were so egregious over a period of many years that punitive damages were awarded to deter the service from further clock ring violations.”
Mr. President, we need to start practicing the virtue of defending human rights at home before lecturing others abroad. The only thing that rivals the horror of what this government agency is doing to its employees is what it's doing to your stature and credibility in the eyes of people who want very much to respect you.
I suggest that you get out in front of this issue before the GOP propaganda machine latches on to it. It is a scandal with the potential to bring you down. Remember, you heard it here first.
Eric L. Wattree is a writer, poet and musician, born in Los Angeles. A columnist for the Los Angeles Sentinel, the Black Star News, a staff writer for Veterans Today, he is a contributing writer to Your Black World, the Huffington Post, ePluribus Media and other online sites and publications. He also is the author of “A Message From the Hood.”
Mr. Wattree may be contacted at wattree.blogspot.com or Ewattree@Gmail.com
Religious bigotry: It’s not that I hate everyone who doesn’t look, think, and act like me – it’s just that God does.
