Finger in the Dike

by Stephen Fleischman

Why doesn’t Barack Obama just put his finger in the dike, as the little Dutch boy did in Holland, to save the dike from crashing and flooding the countryside?

President Obama has a stimulus package. He could shove that in the dike. There’s been a lot of talk about stimulus packages lately but I haven’t heard the words “single payer” even once. Nor have I heard the words, “Employee Free Choice Act” being bandied about.

These are two options one would think would be at the top of Obama’s list to stimulate the economy. There are others, too, like “repeal Taft Hartley”.

I thought the mission here was to create jobs. Obama has been talking about creating four million of ‘em in the next two years. Lots of luck! Especially if he is trying to do it without lifting the burden on employers of supplying health care to their workers—or of not actively supporting the rebuilding of the union movement in this country by encouraging collective bargaining, enforcing the Wagner Act and passing Employee Free Choice.

You can’t talk about jobs without talking about labor unions. Labor unions protect jobs and are important to job holders because that’s the way higher wages are won. And higher wages stimulate the economy because that’s the way working families get some purchasing power, some money in their hands so they can buy the stuff that they make.

A good capitalist should know how capitalism works. Just as he has to make sure he has the raw materials to make his product, he has to make sure he has the labor power on hand, no matter how efficient and hi-tech his plant may be. He has to make sure his workers get paid enough to reproduce themselves or he’ll have no workers. He also needs them because that’s where his profit comes from, the surplus value created by workers. That’s the way the system works, Brother. Get used to it, because you’re going to hear a lot more about that as the depression deepens. What depression? The one we’re in now.

President Obama must have had a very embarrassing moment the other day when Tom Daschle fell out from under him as his Secretary of Health and Human Services—the day the lead editorial in the New York Times revealed that Mr. Daschle had failed to pay over $128,000 in taxes because his benefactor had neglected to give him a 1099 form.

The editorial also revealed that Mr. Daschle “cashed in on his political savvy and influence to earn $5 million in recent years”, two million of that from a law and lobbying firm, $2 million from a private equity firm, and “hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches to interest groups, including those representing health insurance plans, medical equipment distributors and pharmacy boards. Although Mr. Daschle was not a registered lobbyist, he offered policy advice to the UnitedHealth Group, a huge insurance conglomerate. He was also a trustee of the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.”

If there was a heavy odor of conflict-of-interest surrounding the would-be Secretary of Health and Human Services, President Barack Obama apparently wasn’t able to sniff it out—or perhaps he had a problem of his own in this area since he was the recipient of $2.2 million contribution from the health insurance industry during his election campaign.

Mr. Daschle took the advice of the New York Times and withdrew his name.

The stimulus bill didn’t receive a single Republican vote in the House. The Republicans wanted tax cuts, not a knee-jerk Democratic tax-and-spend bill. President Obama tried to convince the Republicans that stimulus meant spend. That was the point. You stimulate by spending. Don’t know if that got through or not.

His sober assessment that this financial crisis could turn into a catastrophe didn’t faze the Republicans. They’re back in the hen-house now picking away. I would bet that when they’re finished there won’t be a corn kernel or an earmark left in the bill. Maybe Obama just doesn’t know how to handle Republicans.

There is not a kid in all of the Netherlands who doesn’t know the story of the little Dutch boy who stuck his finger in the dike and saved the country. That little boy represents the spirit of the whole country.

Not a leak can show itself anywhere either in its politics, honor, or public safety, that a million fingers are not ready to stop it, at any cost.

Maybe we can all take a lesson from that.

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