Tag: Leviathan

Well, OK, maybe Stupidak, but not Obama and his part in this. Even Al Sharpton knows socialism when he sees it. (The surprising part is that he’s willing to say it:)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqojWrtnieI&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&w=640&h=505]

But long before that, the evidence was out there. Before the election, Bill Whittle tried to call attention to it, using evidence dredged up by the New Media:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&w=640&h=505]

I doubt many heard it, though.

Now, given Obama’s understanding of the Constitution as expressed in that last clip, and the fact that his oath of office requires him to swear to uphold and defend that document, can it not be argued that his advocacy through legislation for “redistribution of wealth” violates that oath?

If it doesn’t, what would?

He understands what the Constitution means. It doesn’t matter to him. In fact, it’s an obstacle to be overcome. He has stated so in plain language, and now we have incontrovertible evidence that he has acted on his beliefs. He is in violation of his oath of office, and, I’d argue, so are the majority of the members of Congress who voted for this abortion bill.

Actually, I pulled this post so I could edit it and add to it. As usual, I have more to say. Back before the election even, it was pretty obvious what was coming:

But really that’s not the case. This is true, though:

And it began before Obama was elected. In October of 2008 Syd at Front Sight, Press wrote The Suicide of Capitalism, which began:

A coup d’état took place in this country during the past two weeks. If you didn’t notice, perhaps you were distracted by the Dolphins whipping the Chargers, or Tina Fey’s grotesque parodies of Sarah Palin, or perhaps you were immersed in blogs trying to prove that Barak Obama is a domestic terrorist. Regardless of the distraction, while our attention was diverted, a revolution took place. No shots were fired, but plenty of blood was shed. The United States ceased to be a capitalist economy and became a managed socialist state. The nation’s financial system has been nationalized. The government now calls the shots on who sinks or swims, who will have credit, where money is to go, and how much the robber barons of Wall Street will be compensated for their tender ministrations. The odds are good that the government owns the mortgage to your house. If you receive a paycheck a month from now, it will likely be possible only because the government insured the business loan that allowed your employer to cut your check.

The coup d’état began with the Fed-managed fire sale of Bear Stearns. Then came the collapse of Lehman Bros., and the liquidation of Merrill Lynch. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the government. AIG was bailed out with a massive guarantee program. Washington Mutual fell to another Fed-orchestrated fire sale. Wachovia went down in flames, and Citigroup and Wells Fargo are fighting over the corpse. Then came “The Bailout” — $800 BILLION worth of government purchases and guarantees of “illiquid” loan baskets, with boatloads of pork to buy the votes of recalcitrant legislators. Today, the Federal Reserve began buying commercial paper, again to pump “liquidity” into the system. This amounts to a nationalization of the American financial system. There is no significant area of the financial markets that is not currently under the management of the federal government.

The supreme irony here is that capitalism has committed suicide.

When that Newsweek issue came out, though, Michael Ledeen of Faster, Please! wasn’t afraid to, well, call a spade a spade. In his essay We Are All Fascists Now, he hit the nail on the head (and affirmed what Jonah Goldberg had been saying since January of ’08 in Liberal Fascism) when he wrote:

There’s a element of truth to the basic theme (although not to the headline): the state is getting more and more deeply involved in business, even taking controlling interests in some private companies. And the state is even trying to “make policy” for private companies they do not control, but merely “help” with “infusions of capital,” as in the recent call for salary caps for certain CEOs. So state power is growing at the expense of corporations.

But that’s not socialism. Socialism rests on a firm theoretical bedrock: the abolition of private property. I haven’t heard anyone this side of Barney Frank calling for any such thing. What is happening now – and Newsweek is honest enough to say so down in the body of the article – is an expansion of the state’s role, an increase in public/private joint ventures and partnerships, and much more state regulation of business. Yes, it’s very “European,” and some of the Europeans even call it “social democracy,” but it isn’t.

It’s fascism. Nobody calls it by its proper name, for two basic reasons: first, because “fascism” has long since lost its actual, historical, content; it’s been a pure epithet for many decades. Lots of the people writing about current events like what Obama et. al. are doing, and wouldn’t want to stigmatize it with that “f” epithet.

Second, not one person in a thousand knows what fascist political economy was. Yet during the great economic crisis of the 1930s, fascism was widely regarded as a possible solution, indeed as the only acceptable solution to a spasm that had shaken the entire First World, and beyond. It was hailed as a “third way” between two failed systems (communism and capitalism), retaining the best of each. Private property was preserved, as the role of the state was expanded.

But Jonah had already identified the problem with Fascism:

Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the “problem” and therefore is defined as the enemy.

—

This has been the liberal enterprise ever since: to transform a democratic republic into an enormous tribal community, to give every member of society from Key West, Florida, to Fairbanks, Alaska, that same sense of belonging – “we’re all in it together!” – that we allegedly feel in a close-knit community. The yearning for community is deep and human and decent. But these yearnings are often misplaced when channeled through the federal government and imposed across a diverse nation with a republican constitution. This was the debate at the heart of the Constitutional Convention and one that the progressives sought to settle permanently in their favor. The government cannot love you, and any politics that works on a different assumption is destined for no good. And yet ever since the New Deal, liberals have been unable to shake this fundamental dogma that the state can be the instrument for a politics of meaning that transforms the entire nation into a village.

That work now proceeds apace. As evidence, read this piece at Moneynews.com:

One of the nation’s largest labor unions, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is promoting a plan that will centralize all retirement plans for American workers, including private 401(k) plans, under one new “retirement system” for the United States.

In effect, government pensions for everyone, not unlike the European system and regardless of personal choice.

The SEIU, which was integral to the election of Barack Obama as president, is working with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI), and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, on SEIU’s plan, called “the Retirement USA Initiative.”

—

The proposed retirement system would be operated under the following parameters:

• Benefits that move with you, even if you change jobs

• Payouts only at retirement

• Shared responsibility among employers, the government and employees

• Pooled assets, controlled by professional investment managers

“The financial crisis and the economic recession have shone a spotlight on the inadequacies of today’s system,” said Stephen Albrecht, director of benefits for SEIU.

And we all know that you should never let a crisis go to waste, right? The head of SEIU is Andy Stern, one of the most frequent guests of the White House since the election. I seriously doubt they spend their time together playing Parcheesi. And we’ve already heard rumblings of the .gov wanting our 401(k) money.

I am more and more convinced that Rev. Donald Sensing was prophetic when he said back in 2003:

I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free.

When I asked him if his outlook had changed in October of 2008, he responded:

Yes, most definitely it has. The demise of freedom in this country has accelerated even faster than I imagined back in 2003.

And on Sunday it accelerated faster still.

Socialism, fascism, either way we no longer have anything even resembling capitalism in this country. The Constitution is toilet paper for our elected officials, their oaths mean nothing. Both parties have been active participants in this, and now we have proof that at least the Democrats aren’t adverse to defying their constituents now that they think they can get away with it.

Where is my country, and what have they done to it?

Cheap? I want to mail a copy to each member of Congress with a note:

Dear Sir or Madam:

Please find attached a copy of the U.S. Constitution and its 27 Amendments.

READ IT.

MEMORIZE IT.

DISCUSS IT WITH CONSTITUTIONAL LAW PROFESSORS. (Obama doesn’t count.)

THERE WILL BE A TEST COME NOVEMBER.

Thank you for your attention.

UPDATE: On second thought, perhaps I should send them each a roll of this.

They’d be more likely to actually open it.

And the Stupid Party is gleefully rubbing their hands together, expecting to benefit from it.

Nazzofast, Guido.

As Randy Barnett noted,

If John McCain had been elected, we would have had something like this bill enacted last year in a bipartisan fashion – as was Social Security and Medicare. Such a bill would have been irreversible.

I’m not sure this one isn’t. Not by a long shot.

On the news all evening (as my wife kept flipping channels) there was story after story of how people had been denied care by insurance companies, or had lost their insurance and then come down with cancer or other disease, and this law was going to end all that! It’s a full-court press – the Media is selling this as the greatest thing since, well, MEDICARE! (Never mind that Medicare is insolvent.)

So, what happens if the Stupid Party wins a solid majority in the House and a supermajority in the Senate?

I’m betting on “not much.” Because if the last twenty years has taught us anything, it’s that the Republicans’ only response to the Progressive Left is to offer half of whatever it is they want. In this, the Republicans seem much like they did in the fight against gun control – half again, half again, half again onward!

Eric Scheie of Classical Values said today:

I was born in 1954, and ever since my brain began laying down memories of what was going on, I have watched the relentless, steady, constant growth of Big Government — regardless of which party was in power.

Yet in all that time, this country has never had an honest debate over socialism. The word has been avoided for decades, but now that it is upon us, there is no avoiding it.

We need to have this debate. Badly. It’s so long overdue that I could scream.

With gun control we’ve stopped that, and rolled it back, and we’ve done it by taking the initiative rather than rolling with the punches. We had the debate, and we educated people. Now when an anti-gun editorial hits the web, the comments are overwhelmed by people countering with facts – at least until “Reasoned Discourse™” prevails.

Bill Whittle today made the point we all need to keep in mind – in real estate it’s location, location, location. In politics it’s the message, the message, the message. The Left dominates the legacy media, but they hold no such stranglehold over the New media, and the message must be something other than “half again, onward!” Bill said this:

What’s in a Big Mac? Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun! That’s what’s in a Big Mac. We have got to understand that saying NO! to this socialism is admirable and essential, but that from now on there has to be a counter-narrative to what these Marxists are selling, because like it or not the human brain is wired for stories — that’s how we learn (and why the real fight is not for Washington but rather Hollywood — but that’s a story for another time.)

If we want to win on health care, or any other issue, we need to have an answer to what they are selling and that answer needs to be as simple and comprehensive as the Big Mac slogan.

Our position on health care? Two tax incentives, health accounts, crossing state lines, tort reform, competition on an auto insurance bun. And if we don’t learn how to do this we will lose.

I think he’s right. And it will be our job to ensure that whoever gets elected does so either on this message, or they pick it up and run with it once in office.

No compromises, no half-measures. Repeal the damned thing, deal with the damage it caused, and pass something useful.

But with the Stupid Party?

I’m not holding my breath. I’m not being cynical, I’m being a realist.

Last Friday I posted If You Want More of Something, Subsidize It about a report that stated that most federal government employees make more than their private-sector counterparts, not including the average fourfold higher benefit package that federal workers receive. Now a report has come out that state and local government employees are generally better off than private sector workers:

Govt. workers feel no economic pain

The recession and the ongoing jobless recovery devastated much of the private-sector work force last year, sending unemployment soaring, but government workers emerged essentially unscathed, according to data released Wednesday by the Labor Department.

Meanwhile, the compensation for state and local government employees continued to easily outdistance the wages and benefits for workers in private business, a separate Labor Department report showed.

Private-industry employers spent an average of $27.42 per hour worked for total employee compensation in December, while total compensation costs for state and local government workers averaged $39.60 per hour.

The average government wage and salary per hour of $26.11 was 35 percent higher than the average wage and salary of $19.41 per hour in the private sector. But the percentage difference in benefits was much higher. Benefits for state and local workers averaged $13.49 per hour, nearly 70 percent higher than the $8 per hour in benefits paid by private businesses.

RTWT, particularly where the topic of retirement benefits are concerned. Many state, county, and municipal governments are in deep trouble because of the retirement benefits they’ve promised their workers, and the fact that the money to pay those benefits just doesn’t exist.