Monday, January 26, 2009

Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis, Part II
Article of the Year, 2008

As originally posted in American Thinker, 9/28/2008 (updated in Whistleblower Magazine, 1/2009) this expose' flashed a floodlight upon the corruptors of the American republic, behind the form of Barack Obama. It may have also begun to explain the "mortgage meltdown," an economic crisis which propelled this spurious candidate into the presidential and constitutional crisis which we now suffer.

by Jim Simpson

America waits with bated breath while Washington struggles to bring the U.S. economy back from the brink of disaster. But many of those same politicians caused the crisis, and if left to their own devices will do so again.

Despite the mass media news blackout, a series of books, talk radio and the blogosphere have managed to expose Barack Obama's connections to his radical mentors -- Weather Underground bombers William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis and others. David Horowitz and his Discover the Networks.org have also contributed a wealth of information and have noted Obama's radical connections since the beginning.

Yet, no one to my knowledge has yet connected all the dots between Barack Obama and the Radical Left. When seen together, the influences on Obama's life comprise a who's who of the radical leftist movement, and it becomes painfully apparent that not only is Obama a willing participant in that movement, he has spent most of his adult life deeply immersed in it.

But even this doesn't fully describe the extreme nature of this candidate. He can be tied directly to a malevolent overarching strategy that has motivated many, if not all, of the most destructive radical leftist organizations in the United States since the 1960s.

The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis

In an earlier post, I noted the liberal record of unmitigated legislative disasters, the latest of which is now being played out in the financial markets before our eyes. Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had sixty years of virtually unbroken power in Congress - with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable?

Why?

One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit.

I submit to you they understand the consequences. For many it is simply a practical matter of eliciting votes from a targeted constituency at taxpayer expense; we lose a little, they gain a lot, and the politician keeps his job. But for others, the goal is more malevolent - the failure is deliberate. Don't laugh. This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It describes their agenda, tactics, and long-term strategy.

The Strategy was first elucidated in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation mgazine by a pair of radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. David Horowitz summarizes it as:
The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.
Cloward and Piven were inspired by radical organizer [and Hillary Clinton mentor] Saul Alinsky:
"Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one. (Courtesy Discover the Networks.org)
Newsmax rounds out the picture:
Their strategy to create political, financial, and social chaos that would result in revolution blended Alinsky concepts with their more aggressive efforts at bringing about a change in U.S. government. To achieve their revolutionary change, Cloward and Piven sought to use a cadre of aggressive organizers assisted by friendly news media to force a re-distribution of the nation's wealth.
In their Nation article, Cloward and Piven were specific about the kind of "crisis" they were trying to create:
By crisis, we mean a publicly visible disruption in some institutional sphere. Crisis can occur spontaneously (e.g., riots) or as the intended result of tactics of demonstration and protest which either generate institutional disruption or bring unrecognized disruption to public attention.
No matter where the strategy is implemented, it shares the following features:
  1. The offensive organizes previously unorganized groups eligible for government benefits but not currently receiving all they can.
  2. The offensive seeks to identify new beneficiaries and/or create new benefits.
  3. The overarching aim is always to impose new stresses on target systems, with the ultimate goal of forcing their collapse.
Capitalizing on the racial unrest of the 1960s, Cloward and Piven saw the welfare system as their first target. They enlisted radical black activist George Wiley, who created the National Welfare Reform Organization (NWRO) to implement the strategy. Wiley hired militant foot soldiers to storm welfare offices around the country, violently demanding their "rights." According to a City Journal article by Sol Stern, welfare rolls increased from 4.3 million to 10.8 million by the mid-1970s as a result, and in New York City, where the strategy had been particularly successful, "one person was on the welfare rolls... for every two working in the city's private economy."

According to another City Journal article titled "Compassion Gone Mad":
The movement's impact on New York City was jolting: welfare caseloads, already climbing 12 percent a year in the early sixties, rose by 50 percent during Lindsay's first two years; spending doubled... The city had 150,000 welfare cases in 1960; a decade later it had 1.5 million.
The vast expansion of welfare in New York City that came of the NWRO's Cloward-Piven tactics sent the city into bankruptcy in 1975. Rudy Giuliani cited Cloward and Piven by name as being responsible for "an effort at economic sabotage." He also credited Cloward-Piven with changing the cultural attitude toward welfare from that of a temporary expedient to a lifetime entitlement, an attitude which in-and-of-itself has caused perhaps the greatest damage of all.

Cloward and Piven looked at this strategy as a gold mine of opportunity. Within the newly organized groups, each offensive would find an ample pool of foot soldier recruits willing to advance its radical agenda at little or no pay, and expand its base of reliable voters, legal or otherwise. The radicals' threatening tactics also would accrue an intimidating reputation, providing a wealth of opportunities for extorting monetary and other concessions from the target organizations. In the meantime, successful offensives would create an ever increasing drag on society. As they gleefully observed:
Moreover, this kind of mass influence is cumulative because benefits are continuous. Once eligibility for basic food and rent grants is established, the drain on local resources persists indefinitely.
The next time you drive through one of the many blighted neighborhoods in our cities, or read of the astronomical crime, drug addiction, and out-of-wedlock birth rates, or consider the failed schools, strapped police and fire resources of every major city, remember Cloward and Piven's thrill that "...the drain on local resources persists indefinitely."

ACORN, the new tip of the Cloward-Piven spear

In 1970, one of George Wiley's protégés, Wade Rathke -- like Bill Ayers, a member of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) -- was sent to found the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now. While NWRO had made a good start, it alone couldn't accomplish the Cloward-Piven goals. Rathke's group broadened the offensive to include a wide array of low income "rights." Shortly thereafter they changed "Arkansas" to "Association of" and ACORN went nationwide.

Today ACORN is involved in a wide array of activities, including housing, voting rights, illegal immigration and other issues. According to ACORN's website: "ACORN is the nation's largest grassroots community organization of low-and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in 110 cities across the country," It is perhaps the largest radical group in the U.S. and has been cited for widespread criminal activity on many fronts.

Voting

On voting rights, ACORN and its voter mobilization subsidiary, Project Vote, have been involved nationwide in efforts to grant felons the vote and lobbied heavily for the Motor Voter Act of 1993, a law allowing people to register at motor vehicle departments, schools, libraries and other public places. That law had been sought by Cloward and Piven since the early1980s and they were present, standing behind President Clinton at the signing ceremony.

ACORN's voter rights tactics follow the Cloward-Piven Strategy:
  1. Register as many Democrat voters as possible, legal or otherwise and help them vote, multiple times if possible.
  2. Overwhelm the system with fraudulent registrations using multiple entries of the same name, names of deceased, random names from the phone book, even contrived names.
  3. Make the system difficult to police by lobbying for minimal identification standards.
In this effort, ACORN sets up registration sites all over the country and has been frequently cited for turning in fraudulent registrations, as well as destroying republican applications. In the 2004-2006 election cycles alone, ACORN was accused of widespread voter fraud in 12 states. It may have swung the election for one state governor.

ACORN's website brags: "Since 2004, ACORN has helped more than 1.7 million low- and moderate-income and minority citizens apply to register to vote." Project vote boasts 4 million. I wonder how many of them are dead? For the 2008 cycle, ACORN and Project Vote have pulled out all the stops. Given their furious nationwide effort, it is not inconceivable that this presidential race could be decided by fraudulent votes alone.

Barack Obama ran ACORN's Project Vote in Chicago and his highly successful voter registration drive was credited with getting the disgraced former Senator Carol Moseley-Braun elected. Newsmax reiterates Cloward and Piven's aspirations for ACORN's voter registration efforts:
By advocating massive, no-holds-barred voter registration campaigns, they [Cloward & Piven] sought a Democratic administration in Washington, D.C. that would re-distribute the nation's wealth and lead to a totalitarian socialist state.
Illegal Immigration

As I have written elsewhere, the Radical Left's offensive to promote illegal immigration is "Cloward-Piven on steroids." ACORN is at the forefront of this movement as well, and was a leading organization among a broad coalition of radical groups, including Soros' Open Society Institute, the Service Employees International Union (ACORN founder Wade Rathke also runs a SEIU chapter), and others, that became the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. CCIR fortunately failed to gain passage for the 2007 illegal immigrant amnesty bill, but its goals have not changed.

The burden of illegal immigration on our already overstressed welfare system has been widely documented. Some towns in California have even been taken over by illegal immigrant drug cartels. The disease, crime and overcrowding brought by illegal immigrants places a heavy burden on every segment of society and every level of government, threatening to split this country apart at the seams. In the meantime, radical leftist efforts to grant illegal immigrants citizenship guarantee a huge pool of new democrat voters. With little border control, terrorists can also filter in.

Obama aided ACORN as their lead attorney in a successful suit he brought against the Illinois state government to implement the Motor Voter law there. The law had been resisted by Republican Governor Jim Edgars, who feared the law was an opening to widespread vote fraud.

His fears were warranted as the Motor Voter law has since been cited as a major opportunity for vote fraud, especially for illegal immigrants, even terrorists. According to the Wall Street Journal: "After 9/11, the Justice Department found that eight of the 19 hijackers were registered to vote..."

ACORN's dual offensives on voting and illegal immigration are handy complements. Both swell the voter rolls with reliable democrats while assaulting the country ACORN seeks to destroy with overwhelming new problems.

Mortgage Crisis

And now we have the mortgage crisis, which has sent a shock wave through Wall Street and panicked world financial markets like no other since the stock market crash of 1929. But this is a problem created in Washington long ago. It originated with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), signed into law in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. The CRA was Carter's answer to a grassroots activist movement started in Chicago, and forced banks to make loans to low income, high risk customers. PhD economist and former Texas Senator Phil Gramm has called it: "a vast extortion scheme against the nation's banks."

ACORN aggressively sought to expand loans to low income groups using the CRA as a whip. Economist Stan Leibowitz wrote in the New York Post:
In the 1980s, groups such as the activists at ACORN began pushing charges of "redlining"-claims that banks discriminated against minorities in mortgage lending. In 1989, sympathetic members of Congress got the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act amended to force banks to collect racial data on mortgage applicants; this allowed various studies to be ginned up that seemed to validate the original accusation.
In fact, minority mortgage applications were rejected more frequently than other applications-but the overwhelming reason wasn't racial discrimination, but simply that minorities tend to have weaker finances.

ACORN showed its colors again in 1991, by taking over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA. Obama represented ACORN in the Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 1994 suit against redlining. Most significant of all, ACORN was the driving force behind a 1995 regulatory revision pushed through by the Clinton Administration that greatly expanded the CRA and laid the groundwork for the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac borne financial crisis we now confront. Barack Obama was the attorney representing ACORN in this effort. With this new authority, ACORN used its subsidiary, ACORN Housing, to promote subprime loans more aggressively.

As a New York Post article describes it:
A 1995 strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to find ways to provide mortgages to their poorer communities. It also let community activists intervene at yearly bank reviews, shaking the banks down for large pots of money.

Banks that got poor reviews were punished; some saw their merger plans frustrated; others faced direct legal challenges by the Justice Department.
Flexible lending programs expanded even though they had higher default rates than loans with traditional standards. On the Web, you can still find CRA loans available via ACORN with "100 percent financing . . . no credit scores . . . undocumented income . . . even if you don't report it on your tax returns." Credit counseling is required, of course.

Ironically, an enthusiastic Fannie Mae Foundation report singled out one paragon of nondiscriminatory lending, which worked with community activists and followed "the most flexible underwriting criteria permitted." That lender's $1 billion commitment to low-income loans in 1992 had grown to $80 billion by 1999 and $600 billion by early 2003.

The lender they were speaking of was Countrywide, which specialized in subprime lending and had a working relationship with ACORN.

The revisions also allowed for the first time the securitization of CRA-regulated loans containing subprime mortgages. The changes came as radical "housing rights" groups led by ACORN lobbied for such loans. ACORN at the time was represented by a young public-interest lawyer in Chicago by the name of Barack Obama. (Emphasis, mine.)
Since these loans were to be underwritten by the government sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the implicit government guarantee of those loans absolved lenders, mortgage bundlers and investors of any concern over the obvious risk. As Bloomberg reported: "It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit."

And if you think Washington policy makers cared about ACORN's negative influence, think again. Before this whole mess came down, a Democrat-sponsored bill on the table would have created an "Affordable Housing Trust Fund," granting ACORN access to approximately $500 million in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac revenues with little or no oversight.

Even now, unbelievably -- on the brink of national disaster -- Democrats have insisted ACORN benefit from bailout negotiations! Senator Lindsay Graham reported last night (9/25/08) in an interview with Greta Van Susteren of On the Record that Democrats want 20 percent of the bailout money to go to ACORN!

This entire fiasco represents perhaps the pinnacle of ACORN's efforts to advance the Cloward-Piven Strategy and is a stark demonstration of the power they wield in Washington.

Enter Barack Obama

In attempting to capture the significance of Barack Obama's Radical Left connections and his relation to the Cloward Piven strategy, I constructed following flow chart. It is by no means complete. There are simply too many radical individuals and organizations to include them all here. But these are perhaps the most significant.



The chart puts Barack Obama at the epicenter of an incestuous stew of American radical leftism. Not only are his connections significant, they practically define who he is. Taken together, they constitute a who's who of the American radical left, and guiding all is the Cloward-Piven strategy.

Conspicuous in their absence are any connections at all with any other group, moderate, or even mildly leftist.
They are all radicals, firmly bedded in the anti-American, communist, socialist, radical leftist mesh.


Saul Alinsky

Most people are unaware that Barack Obama received his training in "community organizing" from Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation. But he did. In and of itself that marks his heritage and training as that of a radical activist. One really needs go no further. But we have.

Bill Ayers

Obama objects to being associated with SDS bomber Bill Ayers, claiming he is being smeared with "guilt by association." But they worked together at the Woods Fund. The Wall Street Journal added substantially to our knowledge by describing in great detail Obama's work over five years with SDS bomber Bill Ayers on the board of a non-profit, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, to push a radical agenda on public school children. As Stanley Kurtz states:
"...the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago."
Also included in the mix is Theresa Heinz Kerry's favorite charity, the Tides Foundation. A partial list of Tides grants tells you all you need to know: ACLU, ACORN, Center for American Progress, Center for Constitutional Rights (a communist front,) CAIR, Earth Justice, Institute for Policy Studies (KGB spy nest), National Lawyers Guild (oldest communist front in U.S.), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and practically every other radical group there is. ACORN's Wade Rathke runs a Tides subsidiary, the Tides Center.

Carl Davidson and the New Party

We have heard about Bomber Bill, but we hear little about fellow SDS member Carl Davidson. According to Discover the Networks, Davidson was an early supporter of Barack Obama and a prominent member of Chicago's New Party, a synthesis of CPUSA members, Socialists, ACORN veterans and other radicals. Obama sought and received the New Party's endorsement, and they assisted with his campaign. The New Party also developed a strong relationship with ACORN. As an excellent article on the New Party observes: "Barack Obama knew what he was getting into and remains an ideal New Party candidate."

George Soros

The chart also suggests the reason for George Soros' fervent support of Obama. The President of his Open Society Institute is Aryeh Neier, founder of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). As mentioned above, three other former SDS members had extensive contact with Obama: Bill Ayers, Carl Davidson and Wade Rathke. Surely Aryeh Neier would have heard from his former colleagues of the promising new politician. More to the point, Neier is firmly committed to supporting the hugely successful radical organization, ACORN, and would be certain back their favored candidate, Barack Obama.

ACORN

Obama has spent a large portion of his professional life working for ACORN or its subsidiaries, representing ACORN as a lawyer on some of its most critical issues, and training ACORN leaders. Stanley Kurtz's excellent National Review article, "Inside Obama's Acorn." also describes Obama's ACORN connection in detail. But I can't improve on Obama's own words:
I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career (emphasis added). Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work. - Barack Obama, Speech to ACORN, November 2007 (Courtesy Newsmax.)
In another excellent article on Obama's ACORN connections, Newsmax asks a nagging question:
It would be telling to know if Obama, during his years at Columbia, had occasion to meet Cloward and study the Cloward-Piven Strategy.
I ask you, is it possible ACORN would train Obama to take leadership positions within ACORN without telling him what he was training for? Is it possible ACORN would put Obama in leadership positions without clueing him into what his purpose was?? Is it possible that this most radical of organizations would put someone in charge of training its trainers, without him knowing what it was he was training them for?

As a community activist for ACORN; as a leadership trainer for ACORN; as a lead organizer for ACORN's Project Vote; as an attorney representing ACORN's successful efforts to impose Motor Voter regulations in Illinois; as ACORN's representative in lobbying for the expansion of high risk housing loans through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that led to the current crisis; as a recipient of their assistance in his political campaigns -- both with money and campaign workers; it is doubtful that he was unaware of ACORN's true goals. It is doubtful he was unaware of the Cloward-Piven Strategy.

Fast-forward to 2005 when an obsequious, servile and scraping Daniel Mudd, CEO of Fannie Mae spoke at the Congressional Black Caucus swearing in ceremony for newly-elected Illinois Senator, Barack Obama. Mudd called, the Congressional Black Caucus "our family" and "the conscience of Fannie Mae."

In 2005, Republicans sought to rein in Fannie and Freddie. Senator John McCain was at the forefront of that effort. But it failed due to an intense lobbying effort put forward by Fannie and Freddie.

In his few years as a U.S. senator, Obama has received campaign contributions of $126,349, from Fannie and Freddie, second only to the $165,400 received by Senator Chris Dodd, who has been getting donations from them since 1988. What makes Obama so special?

His closest advisers are a dirty laundry list of individuals at the heart of the financial crisis: former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson; Former Fannie Mae CEO and former Clinton Budget Director Frank Raines; and billionaire failed Superior Bank of Chicago Board Chair Penny Pritzker.

Johnson had to step down as adviser on Obama's V.P. search after this gem came out:

An Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) report[1] from September 2004 found that, during Johnson's tenure as CEO, Fannie Mae had improperly deferred $200 million in expenses. This enabled top executives, including Johnson and his successor, Franklin Raines, to receive substantial bonuses in 1998.[2] A 2006 OFHEO report[3] found that Fannie Mae had substantially under-reported Johnson's compensation. Originally reported as $6-7 million, Johnson actually received approximately $21 million.

Obama denies ties to Raines but the Washington Post calls him a member of "Obama's political circle." Raines and Johnson were fined $3 million by the Office of Federal Housing Oversight for their manipulation of Fannie books. The fine is small change however, compared to the $50 million Raines was able to obtain in improper bonuses as a result of juggling the books.

Most significantly, Penny Pritzker, the current Finance Chairperson of Obama's presidential campaign helped develop the complicated investment bundling of subprime securities at the heart of the meltdown. She did so in her position as shareholder and board chair of Superior Bank. The Bank failed in 2001, one of the largest in recent history, wiping out $50 million in uninsured life savings of approximately 1,400 customers. She was named in a RICO class action law suit but doesn't seem to have come out of it too badly.

As a young attorney in the 1990s, Barack Obama represented ACORN in Washington in their successful efforts to expand Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) authority. In addition to making it easier for ACORN groups to force banks into making risky loans, this also paved the way for banks like Superior to package mortgages as investments, and for the Government Sponsored Enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to underwrite them. These changes created the conditions that ultimately lead to the current financial crisis.

Did they not know this would occur? Were these smart people, led by a Harvard graduate, unaware of the Econ 101 concept of moral hazard that would result from the government making implicit guarantees to underwrite private sector financial risk? They should have known that freeing the high-risk mortgage market of risk, calamity was sure to ensue. I think they did.

Barack Obama, the Cloward-Piven candidate, no matter how he describes himself, has been a radical activist for most of his political career. That activism has been in support of organizations and initiatives that at their heart seek to tear the pillars of this nation asunder in order to replace them with their demented socialist vision. Their influence has spread so far and so wide that despite their blatant culpability in the current financial crisis, they are able to manipulate Capital Hill politicians to cut them into $140 billion of the bailout pie!

God grant those few responsible yet remaining in Washington, DC the strength to prevent this massive fraud from occurring. God grant them the courage to stand up in the face of this Marxist tidal wave.

© Jim Simpson

After connecting the dots in this article, Mr Simpson soon filled in the colors with "Conspiracy of Lemmings; Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis, Part III," October, 2008. (Links to all the Manufactured Crisis articles.)

Jim Simpson is a former White House staff economist and budget analyst. His writings have been published in the Washington Times,
FrontPage Magazine, Whistleblower Magazine, American Thinker, DefenseWatch, Soldier of Fortune, and others. His blog is Truth and Consequences.

The views and statements expressed by Investigating Obama contributors, and in quotations and citations, are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Investigating Obama and Arlen Williams.

21 comments:

Carl Davidson said...

When all is said and done, connecting all dots, Obama remain a liberal 'high road' capitalist, and not a socialist or Marxist of any sort.

There are a number of reasons why a minority of the socialist groups in the US encouraged people to vote for Obama, but none of them were because of his alleged 'socialism' or our real thing. These had to do with getting us out of the crisis dumped on us by neoliberalism, and a opportunity to grow the left.

But this leads to the flaw in your argument. The socialist left in the US is miniscule, and has no real clout. Why in the world would Obama think it critical? Especially when a majority of the socialist groups opposed him vigorously? And stupidly, I might add.

The only way your argument makes sense is if you think neoKeynesian high road industrial policy capitalism IS socialism, rather than the best chance modern capitalism has to weather the current crisis.

I suppose one can hang on to such quaint beliefs, but if we're marginal, you're even more so. Perhaps it's just as well.

Jenn Sierra said...

Arlen, I don't think the previous three commenters actually read the article - which you have clearly indicated was written by Jim Simpson, of American Thinker.

It's ironic that it was written last Fall, before the election, and we are now seeing the undisputable evidence of what Mr. Simpson wrote.

Arlen Williams said...

To Carl Davidson,

Thank you for your comments. I agree with you that there are no grounds to think of Barack Obama as a strict socialist (neither, George Soros) nothing leading one to believe he is aiming America toward national deed ownership of all manufacturing and services. We find common ground, there.

And it does turn out you are getting closer to what I perceive, regarding neo-Keynesian policy -- and about growing the left, as you mention. But why would virtually any of those named in this article wish to leave it there? What would be the point, for this grown left, led by Mr. Obama?

Add the two up. Well, I would think you have; figure of speech. One looks at the massive effort in organizing an unprecedented proletariat and ideologue operation with Barack Obama's ascendancy. Then, one observes the overall dirction described by his numerous economc policies. What do we get? Government gains much greater influence in business, especially in big-business and strangles the entrepreneurial bourgeoisie while the "ground-up" power base is established, presumably, to use its power.

The result is not strict socialism, but it is neo-Marxist. And what would the next steps be, from there? How would the new, massive armies of the proletariat be used? What are they organized for? For that, one merely looks to the aims of those involved, including yourself.

The goal of the old, Chicago-based anarcho-syndicalist movement (or anarcho-communist, i.e., Bill Ayers, "I am an anarchist as much as I am a communist," quoted or paraphrased) turns out to be fascist, essentially. The dream of the egalitarian society lives on in the hope of workers gaining more control of "private" enterprises, perhaps ownership, while cooperating with the directives of the state (e.g., greening). This time, however, nationalist sentiment gives way to the greater global "good." And racism was never the basis of fascism; just an atrocious element practiced by unfortunate Europeans in the 20th Century.

Neo-Fascism may not be strict socialism, but it is neo-Marxist as we look around and see what the influences those such as Gramsci, Trotsky, and Alinsky, are all about doing, today. I'm sure we agree, that beats having to kill 20M or so Americans, as Mr. Ayers and colleagues were advised by the Chinese, for an old fashioned red revolution.

Feel free to give this thesis your grade. Okay, antithesis. :-) I don't think I have given you any hot tips, now have I. Your further comments would be welcome.

Arlen Williams said...

I mentioned "greening," above. But we also have banking and now, perhaps automobile manufacturing as two more examples.

Anonymous said...

Anyone who would persuade unformed minds that Coporate America has their best interests at heart would also have them believe that turkeys actually look forward to Thanksgiving - because the truth is just too awful for the innocent to contemplate...Didn't Corporate America try to persuade us that cigarettes were good for our throats as they loaded them with addictive and carcinogenic chemicals ? Didn't Corporate America try to persuade us that cheap fastfood was a social service as they loaded it with bloating addictive transfats ? Didn't Corporate America try to persuade us that for-profit television was harmless fun as it brainwashed our families with tranquilizing addictive freakshows ? (Can I still say this ? Is it still legal ? (See what I mean: who would want which lawyers to stomp discussion ?)

The corruption and megalomania that has propelled King Obama into a criminal usurpation of OUR power as the Sovereign Citizens of this country has also characterized the insatiable and sinfully deadly avarice of Corporate America. Totally unconnected ? Or, as they said during Watergate, "follow the money" ? Here's what will you find: at one end of the sewer is Corporate America, at the other end BOTH politcal parties, Congress, and various Presidents - you know who they are. That sewer is flowing both ways and they all stink. This is no accident, it didn't just happen: it was policy. The nineteenth-century robber barons of slaves, opium and railroads didn't go away: they diversified, just like Godfather Corleone's family: that was what they meant when they said they wanted to get government out of business and put business into government. While we were watching their junk tv, eating their junk food, they (all of 'em) were jacking up taxes, subverting regulation, eviscerating government, farming-out contracts, hiring illegal workers, outsourcing jobs abroad, hiding profits offshore, and turning the US into world's largest sub-prime borrower. (What happens to sub-prime borrowers ?)

And they didn't just do it to us: it worked so well here they they decided to inflict it on other nations. They (Corporate Government disguised as various players) called it a policy of managed crisis. Guess what happened to Chile, Argentina, Russia and other places the Corporate Media didn't tell you about ? Yeah, that's right...in orchestrated crises they were robbed blind by Corporate America, usually at gunpoint, and their economies melted down just like ours. This is NOT a party-political point: think 90s, think Clinton, think King Obama's Clinton-retro administration. Or try it like this: Federal Reserve Bank=Government, right ? Wrong: Fed=Corporate America=Government=what's the difference. As in: when Corporate America sells private data to government and governmment shares data with Corporate America, what in the sweet bye-and-bye IS the difference between them ? Or maybe, as barely-POTUS Clinton said: depends on what "is", is...

You'd better believe there were 1960s whackos dreaming marijuana dreams of undermining traditional American values by perverting democratic institutions; and you'd better believe they had their evil twins in the Corporate Government psychos dreaming dollar dreams of exactly the same thing. They have been using either the educational system or the Corporate Media to promote their anti-American ideologies. We the people are the meat in the sandwich. That's why we have the Constitution and law: to protect ourselves from these whackos and psychos. Make no mistake: they may be whackos and psychos but this is very very very serious. We must enforce our Constitution against the Congressional and Judical aristocracy through avenues they cannot control (eg Grand Juries) or we the people are going down like a banana republic or an ex-Communist basket-case...and then Corporate America will buy us up real cheap and we'll kiss their boots like the grateful peasants we'll be.

Where is King Obama in all this ? Work it out: who are most likely to supply a calculating sociopath with delusions of grandeur the power and adulation he cannot live without ? Who have promoted his career ? Who paid for his campaigns ? Who sustain his criminal monarchy ? Who get the bailout trilions ? Who have brought other democratic constitutions down in pursuit of profit ? Unwashed students, bedraggled professors, and welfare hustlers cloaked in the sweet smell of weed ? Or the power elite of Corporate Government, whose ultimate nightmare is a free market and a free people, cloaked in the sweet smell of success ?

PdeB

Anonymous said...

"...Corporate Government disguised as various players..."

Start with IMF, World Bank, Investment Banks, a shark school of giant to middling corporations etc...

PdeB

Anonymous said...

Re Carl Davidson's comment, I am hardpressed to think of which socialist groups opposed Obama. The DSA supported him (largest socialist organization in the U.S. and part of the Socialist International), they even claimed credit for the success of his ground game. The CPUSA supported him, the New SDS supported him, the Movement for A Democratic Society supported him, Progressives for Obama, well... what more can I say? No doubt Carl knows of more socialist groups than I do, but these are the main ones.

To suggest most socialists opposed Obama is mere misinformation, Carl. I know it and you know it.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus is made up of over 60 House members brave enough to put their names to it. Of course the group as a whole was too cowardly to let its connection to the DSA remain public for too long. Nancy Pelosi has also removed her name from the roles. But these are only the tip of the iceberg.

The entire Congressional Black Caucus is hardcore leftist, I would say communist but they themselves say that connection is unnecessary, for they ascribe to the beliefs without bothering to join the party. No doubt some have anyway, but we'll never know about it.

Most Democrat congresspeople, senators, state senators and delegates know who butters their bread. They may not be strictly socialists, but they legislate socialism nonetheless.

Carl, you are too modest. The socialists have made huge advances. It is just that until now, there was no Presidential candidate who felt confident enough about public acceptance of socialist concepts (whether they recognized them as such or not), to state them as boldly as Obama has.

I would like to believe you that Obama remains a "high road" capitalist, whatever that means, but I don't. The best that could be said about him is that he is attempting to ram these socialist New, New Deal policies down our throats for the more mundane purpose of cementing a Democrat majority with mega-pork, rather than because he is a socialist ideologue. But if his words are any judge, that doesn't seem to be the case either.

Meanwhile, all of his bi-partisan mumblings are just a tactical maneuver to enlist Republicans in this "economic stimulus" ripoff. They will then find it nearly impossible to oppose him in the next election cycle, while Obama meanwhile is unlikely to give them much, if any political capital by supporting him. Republicans are just being outmaneuvered, as usual.

I am an economist. You are obviously not. Difficult to remain a socialist if you genuinely understand economics. FDR style grand pork, which you call "neoKeynesian high road industrial policy" marries the ideology of socialism with the imperative of electoral politics. It is probably what makes socialism so attractive to all these self-serving scum. But this is the natural consequence of socialism. It's true attractiveness is power. There is no other, except in the fantasies of people like you, who, while living in the relative affluence and comfort provided by a capitalist society, conspire to bring it to an end.

No matter what you call it, Obama's policies will not bring us out of this mess. They aren't even designed to. And I think you know it.

How do you sleep at night?

Anonymous said...

Harry Hopkins, Oppenheimer, Fonda: "useful idiots" of Soviet intrigue; naifs drawn from the media, college, politics etc., digging their own intellectual and spiritual grave. Jim Simpson (nothing personal, don't know him) has really opened my eyes to the fact that, of course, they must exist on the right too. Simpson has castigated Carl Davidson for claiming King Obama is no socialist (horizontal integration of society, class-consciousness, egalitarianism). To be fair, Davidson was hardly to know that Simpson considers socialism ANYTHING which "distorts" the market in favor of labor: the kind of analysis a ruggedly-individualistic billionaire would appreciate. Actions and policies which distort the market in favor of Corporate America (ie "socialism for capital, competition for everyone else") are entirely reasonable to such men. This gets very close to the vertically integrated, authoritarian, "classless" nationalism founded by Mussolini, which he called corporatism (!) or fascism.

(In what follows please understand: I am NOT repeat NOT a socialist or communist; I support traditional conservative American values, but not the "revolutionary market".) Let's see what socialism (as distinct from communism) does look like when we sometimes find it abroad: free education to PhD level; free healthcare; high unemployment compensation; substantial welfare payments; long parental leave and state child-care; utiliites and strategic economic sectors (eg coal, steel, railroads, airlines, telecommunications) in Government ownership; publicly funded broadcasting; generous support for arts, theater, music; modest military expenditure; relaxed drug laws; low incarceration rates, family visitation, prison alternatives, no death penalty; free or low-rent housing; near-endwage pensions etc. or permutations thereof.

What do we see in America: consistently falling real salaries over decades; consistently reduced social services over decades; welfare cutoffs; consistently rising bills for education, health, retirement, housing, food; concentrated ownership in media and industry; limitless defense budget; world-record inarceration rates and death penalty; draconian drug legislation; corporations writing legislation and reducing environmental, financial etc standards; agency rundowns, then rehiring employees from contract firms; vast lobbying industry using ex-politicians and administrators; predatory debt industry with enhanced property loans filling earnings-aspirations gap, maxed-out and lifelong repayers; no parental leave or funded childcare; blind-eye to massive illegal immigration, reducing wages; profits-first low quality media; high cost, badly maintained public transportation, where it exists; literally collapsing infrastructure etc. (and the Republic overthrown - suprised ?).

To call this American socalism is a joke in very bad taste or the maunderings of idiot useful to Corporate America. It's certainly not a shining catalog of achievements for all those socialists Simpson claims are thronging the halls of Congress. That King Obama has duped the unelectable left into supporting him only means that in a two-party system they have nowhere else to go; indeed, if you look at the Senate history of King Obama and his minion Biden you will not see a brave record of fighting Corporate America ditch by ditch: they have often worked and voted in the interests of Corporate America, against we the people. The disgusting irony is that market-revolutionaries would have us believe (via Corporate Media propaganda) that "keeping the US low tax" means a high wage, cost efficient,and competitive economy: anyone who has lived abroad in other developed economies knows the shocking truth: America is a high tax, low wage, high price, grossly inefficient and overextended economy with a ruthless politico-corporate elite in a saddle on its back and just about to ride very very hard. Let's hope suppliers will still take dollars for oil (would you ?) otherwise we may soon be brought to our knees...never get up.

PdeB

Arlen Williams said...

PdeB,

Let me address two lines of your commentary in a bit of an adversarial, hopefully, corrective way.

1. I have not read Jim Simpson arguing against conservative populism. He (and I) are revealing the neo-Marxist (socialist, not necessarily strict socialist) bent of the Barack Obama iceberg, him being the tip thereof.

2. Further fascist corporatism is precisely where we are going with Obama, along with many of the other statis elements which you describe under the heading of socialistic. He is proceeding to exercise "ministerial" control over banking, energy, automobile manufacturing, etc. That is corporatism. Favoring free enterprise is not "corporatism," a revisionistic misnomer of the radical left (ranking with "homophobe," "anti-choice," and the aforementioned ,"fascist,").

Fascism is a blood-nephew of Marxism. It is state, ministerial control of manufacturing and services, whomever owns them by deed. Some fascistic models encroach upon business ownership, e.g., forcing shared ownership with workers. Some do not. It is my strongly held and informed opinion that many of the "community organizations" behind Obama want to impose this, which is anti-free enterprise. It is, I believe, the longer-term future to which Obama referred in his eerie election night speech.

And ministerial control thereof is corporatism; it is usually vertical control by various ministries.

Additionally, Obama is presenting a set of plans for huge direct-government employment and "volunteership." That is ineffably, socialist.

Now, as to your list of American ills, I believe you would agree that greed is involved; also, liberalism. Also, Sorosian (socialist/statist/fascist) globalism. I hope you would also agree with the thesis of this article: that much of the problem is also planned for America, by those who wish to "change" America.

The writings and speeches of those such as Soros, Piven, Billy Ayers, Alinsky, etc. are self-explanatory. Also, their track records of destruction (Piven calls it "disruption.") That is to be used for further "progress" toward the "egalitarian society," which is a state-controlled society.

As to your last paragagraph, "socialism" or "neo-Marxism" are broad headings. They subsume fascism/corporatism.

I don't know all of Mr. Simpson's economic standards, but I would not heap the ills of unbridled greed and corrupted capitlism upon the heads of laissez faire, Freidman economics. We have hardly been experiencing that, in these last few decades.

Just one example of Amrerica's liberal, corporatist policies standing against those of free-market conservatives are the current, paternalistic semi-fascistic health benefits plans in America. Free enterprise conservatives (and McCain, to his credit) favor instead, the empowerment of the individual, as to their health plans. "Liberals" and most "moderates" prefer some fascistic or socialistic approach, whether finance is dispensed by employer businesses or the state. Accountability to the individual is lost and healthcare becomes competition to take financial advantage of what money is "in the pot," instead of competition to provide value to the individual.

As for myself, I believe in the morality and ethic which Adam Smith wrote of in his seminal work, "Wealth of Nations." (I voted for Huckabee ;-) Or, to put it in the lost terminology of the 1990's, all in a business are "stakeholders," who are to be respected --- and the first duty under God, of national government is to respect its Citizens. (Personally, for example, I would think it helpful to allow private corporations a tax benefit or other considerations, for allowing employee ownership programs, but never, ever, proscribed.)

Unfortunately, some labor unions became necessary in America's history. And unfortunately, that movement was largely taken over by those with irrationally envious and rebellious (evil) motives: socialists, Marxists, egalitarians, communists, reds, you pick your term.

Virtue enabled freedom is paramount must be preserved.

Anonymous said...

This much we know:

1 Unlike all Presidents, Usurper Obama has refused to release any personal records; and records for his mother and grandparents are "unavailable"...very strange.

2 Many claims made by Usurper Obama concerning his nationality and citizenship, religious belief and practice, and educational and professional attainments are unverifiable, exaggerated, or untrue...very strange.

3 As a lawyer Usurper Obama has been fully aware (see Point 1) of the unconstitutional, illegal, and contemptuous nature of his quest for political office and yet has no moral qualms about his criminal deception...very strange.

4 The Usurper Obama has had a very murky, confusing career, with many early subversive, radical, and corrupt associations; and then a meteoric rise, being promoted and sustained by the power elite (Corporate, Congressional, Judicial) in full knowledge of his ineligiblity...very strange.

A reasonable person would conclude that whatever the Usurper Obama says should always be discounted as the proven lies and manipulation characteristic of a confidence trickster. The foolproof method to expose a scam is to reverse what you're being shown or told; or, with a slight change of emphasis, to compare what King Obama "seems to suggest" against what he actually does. For example, Ahmadinejad says he is not developing nuclear weapons, is not assisting anti-American forces in Iraq, has not aided international terror...Putin says he supports democratic institutions, is not stamping out foreign investment and influence, is not maintaining a reign of terror in the Caucasus and elsewhere...

So what does King Obama say and do ? (Conclusion from following: I am unable to discern a socialist mole - he's a fake. For example, he has some real friends in Corporate America: they must want that "free" money !)

March 3, 2008 Canadian memo suggests Obama's NAFTA comments 'political positioning'

Barack Obama's threat to withdraw from NAFTA should be viewed as "political positioning," according to a memo written after the U.S. presidential hopeful's senior economic policy adviser met with Canadian officials.

July 23, 2008 Obama is saying the wrong things about Afghanistan

....Obama wants to send 10,000 extra U.S. troops to Afghanistan, but wants to withdraw all American soldiers and Marines from Iraq on a short timetable...Obama...praised the Pakistani elections of last February, issuing a statement the next day saying, "Yesterday, a moderate majority of the Pakistani people made their voices heard, and chose a new direction."...Yet the parties elected in February in Pakistan are precisely the ones demanding negotiations with the tribes and militants of the northwest, rather than frontal military assaults.

December 2, 2008 Gates Says He and Obama on the Same Page on Iraq

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates expressed confidence on Tuesday that he and President-elect Barack Obama were in no way on a collision course over Iraq...Mr. Gates, whose reappointment was announced on Monday...

January 22, 2009 Obama approves missile strikes in Pakistan

On the fourth day of Barack Obama’s presidency, he approved missiles strikes in Pakistan...begging the question why more strikes if America voted for change...

January 27, 2009 Economic stimulus? Feds want your medical records:

Electronic database to include lawsuit, mental health, abortion, sexual details

A little-discussed provision in President Obama's economic stimulus plan would demand that every American submit to a government program for electronic medical records without a choice to opt out, and it has privacy advocates more than a little alarmed...

January 28, 2009 Fema Camps to be constructed on Military Bases:

A new bill has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives called the National Emergency Centers Act or HR 645. This bill if passed into law will direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish national emergency centers otherwise known as FEMA camp facilities on military installations...

January 28, 2009 Report Gives America’s Infrastructure a ‘D’

It’s no news that many liberal critics of the Democrats’ stimulus plan are wondering why so much would go toward tax rebates and so little, relatively speaking, would target infrastructure projects. And those voices found new reason to be critical today.

A report released by the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that America’s aging bridges, roads, sewers and other structures will require $2.2 trillion in maintenance and repairs over the next five years just “to meet adequate conditions.” If the country’s infrastructure were to be graded, the ASCE claims, it would get a “D.”

In December, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee recommended $85 billion...Obama administration’s blueprint provides just $63.5 billion for those same projects...Obama economic advisor Larry Summers was behind the move to trim infrastructure spending in favor of tax cuts, which the administration included to entice GOP support...

January 28, 2009 Top CEOs show support for Obama's economic stimulus plan

The U.S. House of Representatives was expected to approve President Barack Obama's $825 billion economic stimulus package that supporters say could help create nearly 4 million new jobs and keep the nation out of a depression.

"The American people expect action," Obama said between meetings with House and Senate Republicans on Tuesday. "I don't expect 100-percent agreement from my Republican colleagues, but I do hope that we can all put politics aside and do the American people's business right now."

Obama met this morning with several top corporate leaders to discuss the economy.

"They understand that when it comes to rebuilding our economy, we don't have a moment to spare," Obama said.
Obama was surrounded this morning by several chief executive officers who are supportive of his economic stimulus plan...

"These are people who make things, who hire people. They are on the front lines in seeing the enormous problems in our economy right now," Obama said. "Their ideas and their concerns have helped to shape our recovery package, and I'm grateful that they're here today to talk about why it's so important that we act, and act swiftly, in order to get this economy back on track."

The House bill includes $275 billion in tax cuts for individuals and businesses to go with $523 billion in direct spending.

January 28, 2009 The Ugly Truth: America's Economy is Not Coming Back

...If the methodology used in 1980 [to assess unemployment] were applied, it would be 17% today, or one in seven workers...What we are now seeing is the beginning of an inevitable downward adjustment in American living standards to conform with our actual place in the world. As a nation of consumers, and not producers, with little to offer to the rest of the world except raw materials, food crops, military hardware and bad films (none of which industries employ many people), we are headed to a recovery that will not feel like a recovery at all...It would be better if the new administration would be honest about this.

December 3, 2008 Stimulus Malpractice and the Trillion Dollar Deficit

...recently, Japan adopted an aggressive infrastructure building program to counter its deep economic slump in the 1990s. It had the same experience as America under Roosevelt in the 1930s, the sad economy continued for more than 10 years.


PdeB

Anonymous said...

"...compare what King Obama "seems to suggest" against what he actually does..."

15 January , 2009 Obama vows to go after Al Qaeda

Washington: US president-elect Barack Obama vowed on Wednesday to go after Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and prevent the terrorist organization from using safe havens along the Afghan-Pakistani border to carry out attacks...

January 28, 2009 Barack Obama's Al Qaida initiative began months before his election

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama was working with Arab intermediaries to establish an unofficial dialogue with Al Qaida long before his election as the 44th U.S. president. Al Qaida has offered what has been described as a truce in exchange for a U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan...Obama's initiative has been endorsed by much of the U.S. intelligence community..


PdeB

Arlen Williams said...

Pde8,

Is this your own compilation?

Anonymous said...

Arlen,

All quotes sourced from web.

PdeB

Arlen Williams said...

PdeB,
If you would like to take the time to provide embedded or attached links for documentation, I.O. would examine and likely publish as or in an article.

Anonymous said...

Arlen,

Links and interpretation:

March 3, 2008 Canadian memo suggests Obama's NAFTA comments 'political positioning'

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/03/03/obama-canada.html

Means: As I have consistently said: when the facts change, I change; and as I change, so...therefore...must the facts...change...

Obama is saying the wrong things about Afghanistan

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/07/23/obama/

Means: Come to the market-place and see the wizard ! See the rope as it stays in the air ! Look up at Obama-of-kings as he ascends! [Soft]...assistants are passing among you for his reward...[Softer]...they will help themselves...

Gates Says He and Obama on the Same Page on Iraq

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/washington/02cnd-gates.html?_r=1

Means: In any pack you can always tell the alpha-male: he's the one making the decisions...

Obama approves missile strikes in Pakistan

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4280.shtml

Means: The quickness of the hand deceives the eye...nobody (least of all radical comrades) saw it coming.

Economic stimulus? Feds want your medical records

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=87322

Means: What socialist radical wants to hand over to the Feds (and Corporate America assuredly) information that can be used against his comrades (and traded around) ? Obama ?

Fema Camps to be constructed on Military Bases

http://www.roguegovernment.com/Congress_Seeks_To_Authorize_&_Legalize_FEMA_Camp_Facilities/14007/0/13/13/Y/M.html

Means: They're make-work projects for Obama's loyal socialists ! Yep, there's a place for everyone in Obama's America...and they're arriving by train.

Report Gives America’s Infrastructure a ‘D’

http://washingtonindependent.com/27774/report-puts-americas-infrastructure-in-the-crapper

Means: If you're dumb enough to put off repairs to your car 'til it's a backfiring clunker, don't count on a paint job to fix it up...but if you want one, my brother-in-law can use the cash.

Top CEOs show support for Obama's economic stimulus plan

http://www.biztimes.com/daily/2009/1/28/top-ceos-show-support-for-obamas-economic-stimulus-plan

Means: Corporate America told Obama what they wanted...a friend in need is a friend indeed.

The Ugly Truth: America's Economy is Not Coming Back

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Ugly-Truth-America-s-by-Dave-Lindorff-090128-659.html

Means: The stimulus package will never work as "intended", but Corporate America wins; however you cut it, they get the money - courtesy of Obama.

Stimulus Malpractice and the Trillion Dollar Deficit

http://spectator.org/archives/2008/12/03/stimulus-malpractice-and-the-t

Means: Whatever you may call Japan's economy (competitve, authoritarian, corrupt) you can't call it socialist. Ditto Obama.

Obama vows to go after Al Qaeda

http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14837101

Means: ALL options are being considered to eliminate Al-Queda as a threat to our security...

Barack Obama's Al Qaida initiative began months before his election

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2009/ss_terror0079_01_28.asp

Means: As we told fellow citizens... some considerable time ago...and maintain...there is nothing we would not do...to stop Al-Queda...posing a threat to our security...


PdeB

Anonymous said...

Some of the clues required to piece together an understanding of America's crisis and the King Obama I monarchy follow:

January 29, 2009 DeMint: Stimulus Is a 'Mugging'

http://briefingroom.thehill.com/2009/01/29/demint-stimulus-is-a-mugging/

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said that he likes President Obama but has no love for his stimulus plan.

"This bill is not a stimulus, ladies and gentlemen; it is a mugging. It is a fraud," DeMint said during a speech at The Heritage Foundation on Thursday, TalkingPointsMemo reported.

DeMint said that the bill was "the worst piece of economic legislation Congress has considered in a hundred years..."

DeMint, one of the upper chambers most conservative members...has already shown himself to be one of the Obama administration's staunchest opponents...


January 30, 2009 Senate Republicans May Use Filibuster to Block Stimulus

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/Content/Article.aspx?rsrcid=42754

Republican senators who oppose the $819 billion economic stimulus plan passed in the House Wednesday declined to say whether they personally would lead a filibuster to try to stop the legislation in the Senate. But they said a filibuster is an option and they are developing a strategy to stop the bill...

Comment: DeMint and Congressional Republicans can take down Obama any time they want: they can force King Obama to abdicate because he's an illegal alien; prosecute [ex-King] Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Emanuel and numerous other Democrats for electoral and campaign fraud; have the "stimulus package" declared illegal, null, and void; and vanquish the Democratic Party for a generation. Why won't they do that ?

January 31, 2009 Republican Governors Urge Congress to Pass Stimulus Bill

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/01/31/republican-governors-urge-congress-pass-stimulus/

Most Republican governors have broken with their GOP colleagues in urging Congress to swiftly pass President Obama's economic stimulus plan.

Most Republican governors have broken with their GOP colleagues in Congress and are pushing for passage of President Barack Obama's economic aid plan that would send billions to states for education, public works and health care

...Clyde Frazier, a professor of political science at Meredith College in North Carolina, said it wasn't politically inconsistent for Republican governors and members of Congress to part ways on the stimulus plan. "For governors, it's free money... "


Well, the Republican Governors are happy...

January 05, 2009 ‘We Need Stimulus Now!’ American Steel Makers Tell Obama

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=41421

...The U.S. steel industry, with demand for its products in the doldrums, has joined the chorus of beleaguered domestic industries jostling for position on President-elect Barack Obama’s list of projects in his promised multi-billion dollar national economic stimulus plan.

Facing a 51.6 percent decline in manufacturing production, seen almost entirely since September, representatives of the nation’s steel producers are working with Obama’s transition team to identify projects that are steel-intensive and ready to go.


US steel is happy...

January 23, 2009 The stimulus package: What’s in it for business

http://washington.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2009/01/26/story2.html?b=1232946000^1765770

...State and local governments, which could use [Jack L. Massie Contractor Inc's] expertise in road construction, “don’t have money to spend,” [Massie] said.

All of this could change if Congress passes the economic stimulus package...

...Businesses of all types see the stimulus package as a potential lifeline and are lobbying for provisions that would help them survive a recession that put 2.6 million people out of work in 2008...

...Some economists doubt whether tax incentives make much difference in business investment decisions, but Giovanni Coratolo, director of small business policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, disagrees.

He offers numerous cases of business owners who said the 2008 investment incentives enabled them to buy equipment they otherwise could not have afforded...

...Americans strongly support infrastructure investments, said pollster Frank Luntz, who conducted a survey for Building America’s Future, a coalition of state and local officials.

In fact, 81 percent of Americans said they are willing to pay 1 percent more in taxes to modernize the country’s infrastructure — “as close to universal support as you’ll ever get for any issue,” Luntz said.

...A survey by the Associated General Contractors of America indicated that 85 percent of its members could begin work on infrastructure projects within a month...

...The National Association of Home Builders and the National Association of Realtors want Congress to give all homebuyers a tax credit to spur housing sales...

...Realtors estimate that dropping the repayment requirement and extending the credit to all homebuyers would create an additional 550,000 home sales...

...“We have the potential to put millions more Americans back to work,” said Rhone Resch, CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association...

...The National Roofing Contractors Association is pushing for tax incentives...


US business is happy

February 1, 2009 Obama, Pentagon pull in different directions on no nukes goal

http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/latest_news.php?nid=14734

President Barack Obama has set a goal of a "world without nuclear weapons" but the Pentagon is leaning in a seemingly contradictory direction: a modernised nuclear arsenal.

The new administration has signalled its intent to swiftly engage Russia in negotiations on deeper cuts in their respective arsenals, with the ultimate aim of reducing them to zero.

But US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been leading another kind of charge, arguing in the final months of the previous administration that deeper cuts must be underpinned by production of a new warhead to replace an ageing nuclear stockpile.

....former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former defense secretary William Perry and former Senator Sam Nunn say that nuclear weapons are increasingly ineffective as a deterrent...They called for a "world free of nuclear weapons" in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece two years ago.


The CFR are happy...

January 31, 2009 Obama lets CIA keep controversial renditions tool

http://news.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=16&a=383104

WASHINGTON -- The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.

But even while dismantling these discredited programs, President Barack Obama left an equally controversial counterterrorism tool intact.

Under executive orders issued by Obama last week, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, or the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the U.S.


And even the CIA are happy...

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much...
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a [King], my son! [Rudyard Kipling]

ALL HAIL KING OBAMA ! Or is there someting we're missing ?

January 31, 2009 Geithner's China blunder could spark trade war

http://www.dcexaminer.com/opinion/columns/IrwinStelzer/Geithners-China-blunder-could-spark-trade-war38690682.html

Tim Geithner has by now settled into his new job at the Treasury...What might be ahead is a trade war. At least, that’s what many observers believe Geithner had in mind when he brought smiles to the face of New York senator and China-basher Chuck Schumer, by telling the Senate during his confirmation hearings that he believes China is “manipulating” its currency to maintain it at a low value so as to stimulate its exports...This was no casual blunder by Geithner...

For the past decade, China has shipped us goods, in return for which we have shipped China bits of paper with pictures of American presidents. China has shipped trillions of those dollars back to us to buy the IOUs our deficit-ridden government is selling.

Now, the Treasury is stepping up its borrowing to fund the stimulus, the auto industry, the banks, a partial government takeover of the health care industry, and items long on liberals’ wish lists.

If China, already angry at the losses it has incurred on its American investments, decides it doesn’t want to buy the new IOUs, interest rates here will climb, offsetting the effects of much of Obama’s stimulus package.

Geithner might find that he can’t peddle the billions in IOUs he will soon be issuing, and regret sticking a thumb in his Chinese friend’s eyes...


January 30, 2009 US-EU trade war looms as Barack Obama bill urges 'Buy American'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/4389597/US-EU-trade-war-looms-as-Barack-Obama-bill-urges-Buy-American.html

The EU trade commissioner vowed to fight back after the bill passed in the House of Representatives late on Wednesday included a ban on most purchases of foreign steel and iron used in infrastructure projects.

The Senate's version of the legislation, which will be debated early next week, goes even further, requiring that any projects related to the stimulus use only American-made equipment and goods.

The inclusion of protectionist measures has quickly raised hackles in Europe...


February 2, 2009 Protectionism could destroy us all

http://www.todayonline.com/articles/299869.asp

If the United States reneges on free trade and goes ahead with the “Buy American” clause in its stimulus package — despite the lessons of the Great Depression, when protectionism instigated by America helped destroy the world trading system — we could all be done for.

Protectionism is a disease that contaminates everything and is a cure for nothing. To resist it, governments will need huge reserves of political will and an internationalist spirit, both currently in short supply.

A major reason President Barack Obama’s election was welcomed across the world was his pledge to make America less isolationist-minded. But if his first major economic act ignores the needs of the global economy and provokes a trade war with the European Union, how likely is it that China or Russia or India or South America will play by the rules?


January 29, 2009 Warning over collapse in capital flows

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/4361570/Warning-over-collapse-in-capital-flows.html

The Institute of International Finance, the global organisation of major banks, predicted an almost unprecedented collapse in world economic growth and capital flows.

It became the first major global institution to forecast a full-scale global contraction in 2009, predicting that the economy would shrink by 1.1pc.

IIF chief economist Philip Suttle said: "This is the worst period since the interwar years..."

He also expects rich economies to contract by 2.1pc – the worst peacetime output since the 1930s.

...Asia is likely to suffer a worse downturn than during the Asian financial crisis, the report indicated.

Mr Rhodes warned that the growing concern this year was the rise in protectionism. He said: "There is a tremendous need to keep trade lines open. If you start seeing – with everything else we're talking about – the reduction of trade lines on top of that, then you really have a problem... and the last thing we need is to break the world apart in that way."


September 26, 2008 Former Kissinger Policy Planner, CFR Member Calls For New Global Monetary Authority

http://healtheland.wordpress.com/2008/09/28/jeffrey-garten-former-kissinger-policy-planner-cfr-member-nixon-and-clinton-administration-figure-lehman-brothers-director-calls-for-new-global-monetary-authority/

A Council on Foreign Relations member and former policy planner under prominent Bilderberger Henry Kissinger has penned a piece in the Financial Times of London calling for a “new global monetary authority” that would have the power to monitor all national financial authorities and all large global financial companies.

“Even if the US’s massive financial rescue operation succeeds, it should be followed by something even more far-reaching – the establishment of a Global Monetary Authority to oversee markets that have become borderless,” writes Jeffrey Garten, also a former managing director of Lehman Brothers.

Garten, now a professor of business at Yale, served on the policy planning staff of Kissinger during his time as Secretary of State. He also served on the White House Council on International Economic Policy under the Nixon administration and went on to become the Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade under Bill Clinton.

What he describes is nothing less than a global financial dictatorship, operating across borders and forcing nations and corporations to register and adhere to strict monitoring and obey the same regulations. The implementation of such a system would represent total interventionism and the absolute final nail in the coffin of the free market.

Garten’s call for a GMA echoes a piece published in the FT back in June by Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Fresh from attending the Bilderberg conference in Chantilly, Virginia, Geithner called for a globalized banking system with “appropriate requirements for capital and liquidity”.


December 19, 2008 Kissinger Calls For New International System Out Of World Crises

http://www.oilforimmigration.org/facts/?p=626

Bilderberg luminary Henry Kissinger has repeated his routine call for a new international political order, stating that global crises should be seen as an opportunity to move toward a borderless world where national interests are outweighed by global necessities.

Speaking with Charlie Rose earlier this week, Kissinger cited the chaos being wrought across the globe by the financial crisis and the spread of terrorism as an opportunity to bolster a new global order.


Garten (CFR), Geithner(CFR), Kissinger (CFR), Republicans and Corporate America all supporting King Obama....they're not interested in freedom, democracy, law, capitalism, socialism or any other of the pabulum they put out to bamboozle and brainwash the masses: they want money and the political and macro-economic control necessary to it keep flowing their way. Do not believe anyting they say, that allows them to set the agenda, manipulate thinking, and turn opponents against one another: keep your attention fixed on what they do. One thing "they" have done is place on the throne of America a colaborator (puppet ?) whose illegal status means he can also be controlled; the poor and ethnic constituencies he sprang from, those most likely to be crushed by "unfree enterprise", have been maneuvered into fanatical consent to their further impoverishment...The enemy is very very smart.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity...
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born ? [WB Yeats]

PdeB

Anonymous said...

Leo Donofrio on February 1, 2009:

"There was no "competition". McCain was NEVER opposing Obama. He was facilitating Obama's election..."

http://naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com/2009/01/31/active-military-potus-eligibility-suit-advocates-should-not-be-instructing-soldiers-to-disobey-orders/#comments

PdeB

Anonymous said...

January 6, 2009 Obama picks RIAA's favorite lawyer for a top Justice post

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10133425-38.html?tag=nl.e703

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama won applause from legal adversaries of the recording industry. Stanford law professor Larry Lessig, the doyen of the "free culture" movement, endorsed the Illinois senator, as did Google CEO Eric Schmidt and even the Pirate Party.

That was then. As president-elect, one of Obama's first tech-related decisions has been to select the Recording Industry Association of America's favorite lawyer [Tom Perrelli] to be the third in command at the Justice Department. And Obama's pick [David Ogden] as deputy attorney general, the second most senior position, is the lawyer who oversaw the defense of the Copyright Term Extension Act--the same law that Lessig and his allies unsuccessfully sued to overturn...

Campaign rhetoric aside, this should be no surprise. Obama's selection of Joe Biden as vice president showed that the presidential hopeful was comfortable with someone with firmly pro-RIAA views. Biden urged the criminal prosecutions of copyright-infringing peer-to-peer users and tried to create a new federal felony involving playing unauthorized music.

Ogden's biography at Wilmer Hale says only that he represents the "media and Internet industries..."

Perrelli, on the other hand, went out of his way to recruit the RIAA as a very lucrative client: his law firm bills some partners' time at a princely $1,000 an hour...

It will also be instructive to see if this week's news prompts some of the RIAA's longtime adversaries to moderate their enthusiasm for Obama's technology policies.


...and oh yeah, Corporate Media happy.

PdeB

Anonymous said...

Crash Course In TheEconomy by Chris Martenson

http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse

Every road, every bridge, and every marketplace on every corner of every town; every boat and every building, from the first colony until 1973, required a trillion dollars of money stock.

Our most recent trillion dollars? That was created in the last four-and-a-half-months. My questions to you are, “What will it be like to live here when our nation is creating a trillion dollars every four weeks? How about every four days? Every four hours? Four minutes? Where does it stop, if not in hyperinflation and the destruction of the dollar, and, by extension, our nation?”

...inflation is not a mysterious law of nature, like gravity, but rather an extremely well-characterized matter of policy...Inflation is, everywhere and always, a monetary phenomenon. Flipped a bit, we can say that inflation is a deliberate act of policy...

...Given that our debts are now over 340% of GDP there is an explicit assumption here that the future GDP is going to be larger than today’s. A lot larger. More cars sold, more resources consumed, more money earned, more houses built – all of it – must be larger than today just to offer the chance of paying back the loans we’ve ALREADY taken on. But each quarter we see that new debts are being made at a rate five times to six times faster than growth in the underlying economy. Even with a fairly optimistic assessment of future growth, this trajectory is unsustainable.

Our banks, pension funds, governmental structure and everything else tied to the continued expansion of debt has an enormous stake in its perpetual growth...Our debt markets assume that the future will be (much) larger than the present. But what happens if that’s not true? [...] the debts must be diminished somehow, and that could happen either by a process of debt defaults or by inflation...In the default scenario, your money is still worth something, but you don’t get it back. In the inflation scenario you get it back but it hardly buys anything. In both cases your future was diminished, so the impact is very nearly the same but the means of achieving it are wildly different...

...The Fed famously likes to claim that you can’t spot [a property bubble] until it bursts. But actually you can, and the definition is pretty simple: A bubble exists when asset price inflation rises beyond what incomes can sustain. [...] this bubble did not suddenly begin in 2004; it began in 1998 and had eclipsed the past two by 2000. You might ask yourself, “If the Federal Reserve had access to this data, and knew we had a property bubble on our hands as early as 2000, why did they continue to aggressively lower interest rates to 1% and hold them there for a year between 2003 and 2004?”

...we have no historical precedent for the gap between income gains and house prices...Based on income gains alone, how much would house prices have to fall to bring these lines back together? The answer is 34% - nationally - indicating that there’s a long way to go yet. Given the propensity of bubbles to overshoot to the downside, we can’t discount that a 40% to 50% decline is in store....

...Total credit at the end of 2000, when the stock bubble was bursting, stood at $27 trillion dollars. By the end of 2007, it stood at an astounding $48 trillion dollars. This $21 trillion increase in borrowing is five times larger than the increase in US GDP over the same period of time. Any attempt to understand the housing bubble has to be viewed against the backdrop of this massive increase in debt....

...The Austrian school of economics has a very crisp and historically accurate definition of how a credit bubble ends. According to Ludwig Von Mises: “There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”

...Dealing with a bursting housing bubble is hardly the sort of challenge we need at this particular moment in history, but here we are. The stewardship and vision displayed by the Federal Reserve and Washington, DC in bringing this all about have been utterly atrocious.




"...a deliberate act of policy..." ?

"...If the Federal Reserve had access to this data..why did..." ?

"...bringing this all about..." ?

"...voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved...” ? Stimulus=CRASHCRASHCRASH

PdeB

Arlen Williams said...

PdeB,

Thank you. Interesting posts. I'm still not sure how I might handle them here. Maybe you could email me, please at arlenwilliams / at / yahoo / dot / com?

AW

Egy Azziera said...

First off we would like to congratulate you on your fine public speaking skills. It looks like those who said the Obama Administration would strike while the iron is hot may have been correct, and the Administration may be doing it in a way that does not require them to even get a vote in Congress.