VI. Grabbing a Senate Seat with a Little Help from his Trilateral Friends 263and miss the opportunity to document the abuses of the Bush regime. (Matt Gonzalez, “The
Obama Craze,” Counterpunch)
In the final analysis, Obama emerges as a demagogue and word monger of a new and dangerous
type. González concludes:
Once I started looking at the votes Obama actually cast, I began to hear his rhetoric differently.
The principal conclusion I draw about “change” and Barack Obama is that Obama needs to
change his voting habits and stop pandering to win votes. If he does this he might someday
make a decent candidate who could earn my support. For now Obama has fallen into a
dangerous pattern of capitulation that he cannot reconcile with his growing popularity as an
agent of change.OBAMA IN THE POCKET OF THE COAL LOBBY
One of the most grotesque contradictions which has emerged from Obama is relentless pursuit of
corporate sponsorship has been the Perfect Master’s relationship with the coal industry in Illinois
and beyond. After the primaries were over, Obama announced that an energy policy capable of
dealing with the pseudo-problem of global warming and climate change would represent one of his
three top priorities, and this is precisely what we would expect from such a deeply Malthusian
mentality. But, at the same time, Obama continues his loyal service to the holding companies that
control the coal industry, even though it is by now clear that coal is much more valuable when used
as an indispensable feedstock for the modern petrochemical production, rather than being used as a
fuel, where it is hopelessly outclassed by nuclear power. Nevertheless, Obama has attempted to
straddle this issue as well:
Reflecting the interests of southern Illinois coal producers, he sponsored legislation to provide
tax breaks and other incentives for refineries that turn coal into liquid fuel, generating criticism
from environmental groups that say the coal-based technology would contribute to global
warming. (Chicago Tribune, June 12, 2007)
The Washington Post has attempted to make a mockery of this important issue and get Barky off
the hook that way:
“Who, but who,” writes the Post, ‘would soil the environmental reputation of Barack Obama?
The Democratic senator from Illinois gets stellar marks from greens. Just a few months ago he
was calling global warming “real,” saying: “It is here.... We couldn’t just keep burning fossil
fuels and contribute to the changing atmosphere without consequence.” Sen. Barack Obama (D-
Ill.) has reintroduced the Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Promotion Act of 2007. It’s a development that
has the coal crowd cheering. (Charles Dharapak, AP)
So why then, environmentalists ask, is Obama backing a law supporting the expanded use of
coal, whose emissions are cooking the globe? It seems the answer is twofold: his interest in
energy independence — and his interest in downstate Illinois, where the senator’s green tinge
makes the coal industry queasy... (Elizabeth Williamson, “The Green Gripe With Obama:
Liquefied Coal Is Still... Coal,” Washington Post, January 10, 2007^116
One way to make sense of this picture is to recall that the Rockefeller-Trilateral interests that
controlled the Carter administration were obsessed at that time with the notion of increasing US
coal production, and indeed with making domestic coal the central element of a national energy
policy for many decades to come. This lunatic project, like so many others, disappeared in the