Instead of grieving for the past, or focusing on whether world leaders laughed at or with President Trump at the United Nations, grassroots progressives should be searching for a new deal with the world.

During his visit to the UN in September 2108, the President’s stated vision and priorities for multilateral action got little discussion. While the majority of world leaders used their time at the UN dais to speak of “common threats” and “universal values,” President Trump, for a second year in a row, expounded on the urgency of patriotism, rejecting the multilateral process, the vaulted “ideology of globalism.” This approach is hardly surprising from a leader who campaigned on the promise of “America First.”

Two years into the Trump presidency, we are quick to dismiss the President’s rhetoric as mere theatrics. Yet, his vision of the world, greatly influenced by veteran war-hawks around him such as the current National Security Advisor John Bolton, currently set the tone of U.S. foreign policy. They shape America’s relations with its neighbors and overseas nations alike, and in turn the safety, well-being and prosperity of Americans at home.

Few question the current state of affairs on the foreign policy front. Many have accepted it as a part of the ongoing reality show that the American political process has become. Others grieve for the past administration which, in its dealings with foreign nations and multilateral institutions, typically called on America’s better angels. We would be better off searching for new ideas about alternative means of American engagement with the world — a sort of New Deal with the world.

Historians are quick to point out that the popular consensus on U.S. foreign policy has undergone little change following the fall of the Berlin Wall, regardless of the party in power. Rather, leaders have mainly prioritized policies with a singularly pro- war, surveillance, and exploitative business focus.

The progressive wing, the mainstream-kind, has rarely dared to challenge the status-quo. Often, they are busy with advocacy on domestic issues. There are also no ongoing robust discussions in the D.C. think-tank circles about alternative U.S. foreign policy practices. The funders for such projects are scarce. According to some reports, there are not even enough policy experts to staff administrations that deviate from the mainstream foreign policy consensus. The American foreign policy elite follows a cookie-cutter approach, namely because most of them came of age in the same institutions of higher-learning.

However, the blueprints for an alternative foreign policy are slowly emerging. They include proposals that would both honor and  advance the ideals of justice upon which the U.S. was founded, and would guarantee the well-being of others and the planet.

These policy proposals are being sketched out by scholars and foreign policy experts. They are also championed by a small group of politicians unafraid to take on the establishment. One of these people is long-term Vermont Senator and former Democratic-party nominee candidate Bernie Sanders.

Earlier this month, Sanders took the spotlight at D.C.’s premier international relations university to outline what some have dubbed, “Bernie’s New Internationalist Vision” for U.S. engagement with the world.

The ideas outlined were less of a battle cry to resist, and instead, a call for a new international movement “to create a decent life for all people.” Standing up to authoritarians of all stripes, controlling unchecked greed and eliminating corrosive corruption is a first step in this endeavor.

Sanders’ political vision has yet to be translated into specific policy proposals. Right now, it would only play well at political rallies. Other progressive elected or aspiring officials have yet to fully come around to this way of thinking and offer their take on how America should conduct its foreign affairs. Though, with a presidential campaign just around the corner, this too might change. The electorate and social movements, preoccupied with domestic resistance struggles, likewise have yet to show genuine concern for or interest in transnational debates. Though, their struggles have often been framed in transnational ideals and with the suffering of marginalized people across the world in mind.

Therefore, this is an opportune time for progressives to get more seriously involved and begin imagining new ways of U.S. engagement in the world. Similar to domestic battles for social justice, American dealings with the world should reflect the aspirations of grassroots progressives: blue-collar workers concerned about climate change; college students calling for justice in Syria; and religious leaders crusading for a reduction of nuclear armaments.

Ultimately, it is these people who will experience the most direct consequences of the country’s foreign policy, whether it’s when their loved ones are sent to war, or when profits drop due to ongoing trade wars, or when crops fail from the lack of sustained global action on climate change.

The post A New Deal for US foreign policy appeared first on Occasional Planet.

President Barack Obama’s speech before Congress on September 8 regarding jobs may have been his most effective remarks since his speech on race in Philadelphia in April 2008, when he was still running for the Democratic nomination for president.

One word that he did not use in this speech was “stimulus,” but Republicans were quick and accurate to point out that his American Jobs Act has the look and feel of a stimulus. If that were true, and if the proposal were to pass intact (doubtful), then after a year’s lag, Stimulus I would be followed by a smaller Stimulus II.

What’s a shame is that may never have been a need for a Stimulus II, if the first stimulus had been the real thing. Granted, the $700 billion cost of Stimulus I was significant, but hardly excessive. Opponents stated that additional spending and debt would set off a spiral of inflation. An inflation rate of less than 2%, which is what we have had, hardly qualifies as out of control, or even significant.

The state of the American economy was dire in 2009 when President Obama asked for the stimulus, and a Democratic Congress passed it. The “fierce urgency of now” was very much in play as money needed to be pumped into the economy, and pumped in quickly. When President Obama indicated that the program would focus on shovel-ready jobs, many indicated that few projects would be shovel-ready upon passage of the bill. Big projects need planning and assessment, including important criteria such as environmental impact studies. So, the president was forced to go with relatively small tasks that were already in the works.

The Obama Administration hoped that a one-shot stimulus would jump-start the economy and generate massive hiring in the private sector. It helped, but not enough. Conservatives may have been correct in arguing that businesses would be reluctant to hire if uncertainty was what lay beyond this quick-fix stimulus.

As economists such as PBS’s Paul Salmon pointed out, the stimulus was not to be confused with a New Deal program. 1930s programs such as the CCC, WPA, CWA, NRA and TVA were designed to last as long as they were needed. That meant that a project could go through all the necessary steps of development with the agency in place. First there would be planning, then review, then construction, and finally evaluation.

The TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) was a huge program that brought electric power to impacted areas of Appalachia. The TVA was primarily a series of dams that produced hydroelectric power. It now serves over 9 million customers. The Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River and the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River were two other massive water projects in the New Deal. Hundreds of courthouses, post offices, schools, hospitals and parks were built during the New Deal.

Even though America did not come out of the Great Depression until it entered World War II, Roosevelt was able to cut unemployment in half and instill renewed spirit in the American people. Perhaps most relevant to President Obama is that FDR satisfied the needs of his political base and was re-elected in 1936, 1940, and 1944.

As inspiring as President Obama’s September 8 speech was, it can be argued that it would have been unnecessary had he successfully promoted an initial stimulus that was similar in magnitude to the beginning of FDR’s New Deal. Such a program would have initially put hundreds of thousands or millions of unemployed people to work. It would have initiated the planning for a series of projects that would have been phased in for as long a period as was necessary to regenerate private hiring and also meet basic social needs of the country.

It is true that, when President Obama entered office, he had far less of a majority in Congress than FDR did. The House was solidly Democratic, but many of the “Blue” were “blue dogs” – Democrats who were leery of excessive federal spending. However, many of the “blue dogs” represented economically depressed areas, such as West Virginia and southern regions of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. Additional spending would have had a direct and positive impact on the constituents of these representatives. Additionally, Nancy Pelosi was a very savvy Speaker of the House who was eager to advance progressive policies.

With independents Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman, the Democrats theoretically held fifty-nine of the one hundred seats in the Senate. One more would have been needed to make their majority veto-proof. However, some of the Democrats were either DINOs (Democrats in Name Only) or more interested in pork for their states than good policy. The shenanigans of Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana in the debate on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act were both cynical and deplorable.

However, had President Obama taken a page from Lyndon Johnson’s playbook, he may well have brought Nelson, Landrieu and others along without paying a heavy penalty. Johnson had been a master at getting both southern Democrat and Republican votes for the series of civil rights acts that were passed in the 1960s. President Obama needed one or two Republican votes as well, but one state, Maine, with Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, might have given him a veto-proof majority. Had the president traveled to Maine to explain to the voters how a state with aging industry would have benefited from full-scale stimulus, he may well have gained their votes.

Even had President Obama not been able to persuade Congress in 2009 to pass a comprehensive stimulus bill, he would have put the arguments on the table, and it would have been much easier now to explain now how much more was needed.

All of that is history. What is important now is the future. President Obama’s proposed $450 billion stimulus (of which half is tax reductions) is short-range. If he is fortunate enough to get Congress to pass his current proposals (somewhat of a longshot), the stimulus will end in short order. The private sector knows that, and it will be reluctant to assume the risks of large-scale hiring if they are staring an uncertain future in the face.

It is not enough for us to take President Obama’s advice and urge our representatives to pass what he has proposed. We need them to pass the real thing – a stimulus that is of such a critical mass that it is powerful enough to overcome the horrible damage inflicted upon our economy by eight years of George W. Bush.

President Obama is now acting like a Democrat. It is incumbent upon us as citizens to let us know that that is not enough; we need a strong Democrat. He can be that person. It will be good for both his political and presidential legacy.

The post How Stimulus One could be working for us now appeared first on Occasional Planet.