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Dublin: 10 °C Monday 20 May, 2013

VIDEO: Obama’s former Harvard professor says he shouldn’t be re-elected

Roberto Unger – a former Brazilian minister under whom the current President studied – says Obama’s lost his way.



(YouTube: )

A BRAZILIAN POLITICIAN and Harvard lecturer who once taught Barack Obama has said that his former student should not be re-elected as US President – because his approach to solving the economic crisis has been ill-thought out.

Roberto Unger, who himself twice ran for the Brazilian presidency and who teaches at the Harvard Law School, says Obama’s economic policies have been mostly based on “financial confidence and food stamps”.

In a lengthy YouTube video, Unger slams his former student for spending “trillions of dollars to rescue the moneyed interests” while leaving homeowners and ordinary workers without any new levels of financial aid.

“The Democratic Party has no new direction,” he says, saying Obama had “failed to advance the progressive cause”.

This is less a project than it is an abdication… nowhere in the world is there more energy and ingenuity infused through the population than in the United States.

The deepest cause of the financial and economic crisis… is that the country stopped producing, at competitive prices, enough goods and services that the rest of the world wants.

Yet, he says, Obama has done nothing to correct this but has instead acted as if the problem had never existed to begin with.

Unger stops short of an outright endorsement of Obama’s opponent Mitt Romney, however – saying Republicans would be little different if they won election this November, and saying a Republican administration would have caused greater inequality than that which exists at present.

Obama took two classes under Unger, who only teaches for one semester a year in order to concentrate on Brazilian domestic politics. He studied two modules, ‘Jurisprudence’ and ‘Reinventing Democracy’.

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Comments (25 Comments)

  • Despite the perpetration in the US of the excess of opportunity one is afforded their, it5 is in fact one of the lowest of countries in the developing world in affording its citizens an opportunity of social mobility. The many criticisms of a general reliance on statistics acknowledged, it is a matter of fact that social mobility in the US is now one of the lowest in the developed world and when one looks at the draconian cost of healthcare and education even for those alone who can earn or borrow enough to pay it and a tax system completely operated to further enrich the most enriched it is not hard to see why the US is now such a poor place for anyone to reach their potential. You will rarely see any acknowledgment of this in the mainstream media in the US as it is a fact that is completely at odds with the image of itself that the powers that be in the US have continually attempted to portray to the world and its own citizens. As bad as things are in Europe one must be grateful not to live in a society as deceitfully unfair and perverse as that that exists in the US.

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    • Ah yes, the american “dream”.

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    • The American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. Kudos to George Carlin.

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    • And how in any way does your post relate to the article, or were you just desperately waiting for an opportunity to bash America with your tripe.

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    • There are certainly problems with the US, but it’s still the land of opportunity for those who are prepared (and able) to work. They haven’t lost sight of the difference between entitlement and opportunity. A lot of the media reports that you see in Europe (and the comments too) remind me of Pravda. I think the US will solve its problems faster than Europe.

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    • This has been reported in the USA. How else could you have read this. I live here and have read it in a mainstream american newsmagazine!

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    • The initial comment is obviously relevant to the article and the video attached, certainly am not looking for an opportunity to bash the US, it is a great country full of great people but is sadly got perversely unequal and affords less of an opportunity to its citizens to achieve their potential than any other developed nation as the fact attest, if you accept the facts than it is a shocking indictment in contrast to the alleged promise of income advancement that the US prides itself on. The old adage that hard work alone is a guarantee of success in the US is patently untrue, check the facts for yourself, look at Joseph Stiglitz’s book for the source of the facts on social mobility in the US. The truth is at such stark odds with the conventional political ethos and social contract in the US that it ought to be more well known and it is clearly in the genuine interests of US citizens to be aware of it. I can’t see how I am bashing the US , I am certainly bashing the policies and vested interests responsible for its current sad state which is verging on totalitarian inequality and manipulation. Is the Harvard Law professor also bashing the US or any other critic of its inequality. Its in company with Russia and Iran in terms of inequality, check the facts.

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    • I never stated that these facts aren’t stated in the media in the US they just aren’t acknowledged in the mainstream media as being of any significance when clearly they are of enormous significance, watch any debate on the largest networks in the US and see if the fact that the average US citizen is significantly worse off in terms of their opportunity to advance in society than the average citizen of any other developed nation is at all acknowledged.

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    • Oaklane 1, what tripe are you speaking. Someone speaks about a subject, and you don’t like there response, and you call it America bashing tripe. Wise up.

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    • “The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.”
      P. J. O’Rourke

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  • It doesn’t matter who is elected it is all an illusion. Corporations run the show lads they throw money behind the candidates and influence legislation. It is a shame.

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  • Anybody who says that Obama shouldn’t be reelected. I say look at the alternative. Mitt Romney is like Bush but with the folksy Texan charm replaced with a weird rich man robotic manner

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  • People said from the very start that Obama wouldn’t be able to fulfil the insanely inflated expectations the world had of him – remember the Nobel peace prize. However, he’s also had to deal with some pretty huge opportunities, and has flubbed almost 100% of them. Obama fiddles while the world burns, but Romney would be even worse.

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  • “In theory, communism works” -Homer J. Simpson

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  • The Americans should get their self respect together and not vote for any of the 2 criminals. If less than 40% of the pop. vote the government is illegitimate and they can no longer get away with their crimes. Then the American people can vote on issues because these candidates represent bankers and oiligarchies plain and simple.

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  • Sure from day one he had not got what it takes, elected on a highly expensive emotional campaign

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  • someone’s looking for a bit of publicity … good teachers are proud of their students achievements – this guy if he was a half decent man would keep his negative views about his former student – private …

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  • paul 18/06/12 #

    ha I love it

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