Black Agenda Report

Should the auto industry get a Wall Street style blank check bailout? Or is this the ideal time to make US auto and other industrial jobs globally competitive by enacting the kind of single payer health care system every other wealthy industrial nation on the planet uses?

As I have said before, it is not a coincidence that the chief sponsor of single payer represents Detroit.

warning: heavy snark ahead

What a crazy idea, eh? Go ahead and take a gander, it won't hurt! Here, I'll give you a warm up:

GLEN FORD: Well, Dr. Dyson doesn't seem to know what a rightwing interest is. An expanded US military, 100,000 new troops, isn't a rightwing interest? An expanded military budget that sucks up all of the money for healthcare, for revitalization of the cities, for a rebuilding of America's infrastructure, for all the projects that black folks hold dear, all of which would go down the tubes, will be postponed indefinitely with the kind of expanded military budget that clearly follows from Barack Obama's proposal for 100,000 new troops. And so, it is not in black folks' interest. It's really not in anyone's interest, of course. But it is diametrically opposed to the historic black political consensus on domestic development to be proposing expanded military activities and budgets for the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: We only have thirty seconds. Michael Eric Dyson, your response?

MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: Well, listen here. I think that that is a legitimate comment to be made in terms of the critique of a potential Barack Obama presidency. Let's see it get here first. I think that a Barack Obama presidency at least holds out the possibility of engaging these forms of critique, engaging the form of the black political consensus about which Mr. Ford has spoken, but also to deal with the fact that we have to be bifocal. The presidency-the people who are making critiques of the system, if he's part of the system, he will be critiqued legitimately. And African American people will be able to enjoy the victory of the grassroots being able to speak, while at the same time being part of a political process that includes us in a very serious way. I think a Barack Obama presidency-