Obama and McCain tout American values. But US capitlaism can't even feed its own people so we know it won't help Arab workers

US president, Barak Obama says that, "Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different,"  His class brother, John McCain says that the US is, the greatest force for good."  in the world.

Using these arguments, Obama and McCain agreed to invade Libya.  So the US has now invaded three third world countries when we include Iraq and Afghanistan.  This excludes all the other countries where it props up dictators and thugs and arms them to the teeth in order to keep the population at bay.  The US is  the greatest force for good McCain says but anyone that bothers to investigate this claim knows different, but we don't just have to look beyond our borders. What is US capitalism doing domestically?

The US capitalist class is waging a vicious war against its own workers and the middle class.  The first thing we should point out is that US capitalism has some two million  people in prison, almost 50% of these people belonging to one ethnic group, African Americans.  It's biased and racist justice system executes children and the mentally impaired except those that hold political office.  It refuses to employ some 30 million people because there's no profit in it.  It is dismantling public services and smashing trade Union wages, benefits and rights with the cooperation of organized Labor's hierarchy.

This is the main reason for the attack on public sector workers as the public sector is about 35% unionized compared to less than 6% of the private sector.  There would be hardly anyone in Unions in the US were it not for the public sector.

The 2007 crash has driven more and more of us in to poverty and despair.  A study published this month by the Food Research and Action Center, based in Washington DC found that in 2010, one in five Americans experienced "food hardship".  The authors of the study defined this when people answered "yes" to the question, "Have there been times in the past twelve months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you and your family needed." California, one of the leading agricultural economies in the world due to the easy access it has to imported and super exploited cheap Labor, has some of the "hardest hit metropolitan areas in the country." says the San Francisco Chronicle. 

In 2008, a record 49 million Americans complained about the lack of access to adequate food, with some of them claiming they were often forced through financial hardship to skip meals or cut portions, the study claims.  Researchers expect the numbers to be even higher when the results for 2010 come in.  The food banks also confirm the huge increase in hunger since the market induced austerity.  Paul Ash, of the San Francisco Food Bank says that his organization gave away 44 million pounds of food in 2010, up from 33 million pounds in 2008 after seeing a 27% increase in those seeking help.  "I have about $100 to spend on food every two weeks" one woman who depends on the food bank for her family of five tells the Chronicle. Anyone who lives in urban California understands that this is a pitiful amount.

California, the "Golden State" is ranked 16th in the nation for food hardships, the study finds, with Riverside in the south and Fresno, in the central valley ranking 1 and 2 in when it comes to large metropolitan areas. I am including again some figures pointing to the extreme wealth that exists in California as a small example of where the money is.  We wrote on this blog last September: California is home to 95 Billionaires, out of 946 total worldwide, according to Forbes 2007 Index of World Billionaires, and the state is home to many millionaires. Los Angeles County had 268,136 millionaire households as of 2006, the largest number of millionaires among the counties in the U.S. and 23 % of the total for the state. Orange County had 116,157 millionaire households and San Diego 102,138. Santa Clara County has 74,824 millionaires. *

These figures about hunger and poverty in the US are most likely conservative and the situation is much worse. The job and home losses have been particularly severe in western states like California. California’s 56,229 foreclosure filings accounted for 25% of the nation’s total in February, according to RealtyTrac’s data and  almost 300,000 homes had been foreclosed upon as of August 2010. In Nevada, another home to billionaires and the gaming industry, one in every 93 homes received a foreclosure filing in January, more than five times the national average, RealtyTrac said.

It is not, as the Chronicle article about this points out, as severe a situation as the slums of Mumbai parts of Africa and other areas that the free market refuses to develop because of low profitability. But it is a mounting crisis and is of some concern to the more astute sections of the US capitalist class. They will not be able to contain the anger at this capitalist offensive to ineffective protests, recall elections and the electoral process for ever.  And at some point the ability of their allies at the helm of organized Labor will not be able to hold the movement back.

The indebtedness of US society with very little light at the end of the tunnel given that the US capitalist class is waging three wars on borrowed money, is driving a dangerous and weakened global empire on to the offensive. Threatened by revolt from all sides, domestically by an increasingly angry working class, by the victims of its stooges throughout the Middle East and beyond, and by its competitors like China that is slated to bypass the US in the scientific field before the end of the decade, the US capitalist class will respond violently.  The US, like British imperialism before it, can no longer provide for a privileged layer of the US working class a standard of living that keeps it passive and is driven to wage wars abroad in order protect its profits and to maintain domestic calm if it can. The American Dream always was a myth for most people and for the youth of the country there is only a nightmare if things continue.

Obama's praising of American values, what he means is the worship of the so-called free market, and his class brother McCain talking of the US being the force for the greatest good in the world falls on a lot of deaf ears these days and as many empty stomachs. As the crisis intensifies they become further exposed as nothing but the pimps of the corporations.

*  http://www.missionbayrealestate.info/real_estate_articles/where_do_millionaires_live.html