A Dilemma for Obama

If some power has the United States electoral system in its grips, it is the transparency of economic investments. And although certain traps still persist in order to harbor or hide these investments, it’s possible to know, just by logging on to the Internet, who contributes, how much they contribute and whether it is to a determined party or candidate.

Thus, the political preferences of business groups, among other things, and the agendas they will promote or block from the seats of political power, can be known.

North American society, capitalist and liberal to the core, does not object to these practices. It is an accepted norm that business groups have direct representatives in elected offices. Otherwise said, citizenship concedes to electoral capital rights.

Thanks to that, the political affinity of certain economic sectors is no secret for the Republican Party, particularly those identified as “big capital.” Although for now they have ceded the majority in the Senate, who are sufficient in number to block actions and keep Obama in check.

Their enormous influence has already manifested in the boycott of government initiatives in favor of a lukewarm environmental agreement at the Copenhagen Summit. The powerful pollution industries were not able to see themselves threatened by the demands of global environmental controls. Now, as a result, the ecological destiny of the planet is in the hands of a small group of Republican senators from the United States.

A second initiative where they have operated following this logic is the hindrance of the emblematic proposal of health care reform. The shame that the most powerful economy in the world condemns 40 million people to marginal health care doesn’t matter to them. The interests of the pharmaceutical corporations, the insurance companies and the private networks of hospitals are untouchable.

The latest move is the direct pressure against the restructuring of the collapsed financial system. According to some prestigious economists and scholars, recently reunited in New York, there is a latent risk of a new financial “crack” because the measures taken by the government don’t amount to more than the bubbles that burst a year ago.

This is akin to covering up cat or dog excrement. In the background, it is no more than the defense of the old and powerful banks anointed of an unjust sacredness.

The Republican hindrance to the politics of Obama reflects an unprecedented virulence in other Democratic administrations. Could it be that these ultramontane hawks consider the actions of a young, post-modern black man trying to propose some change to be intolerable?