Obama: I Am Not a Socialist, Because Bush Expanded Medicare!

Matt Welch | March 9, 2009

President Obama was asked by New York Times reporters last week, "Are you a socialist as some people have suggested?" His first answer:

You know, let's take a look at the budget – the answer would be no.

The Times followed up, hilariously:

Is there anything wrong with saying, 'Yes'?

According to the Washington Times, Obama responded like so:

"Let's just take a look at what we've done," Obama said, ticking off efforts his administration has made to stabilize the economy. But he acknowledged that, as he told Joe the Plumber, he plans to try to spread the wealth around.

"If you look on the revenue side what we're proposing, what we're looking at is essentially to go back to the tax rates that existed during the 1990s when, as I recall, rich people were doing very well. In fact everybody was doing very well.... We said that we'd give a tax cut to 95 percent of working Americans. That's exactly what we have done."

Unhappy with this garbled response, the president later called back reporters to clarify. What he said, I think, is telling:

I did think it might be useful to point out that it wasn't under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. It wasn't on my watch. And it wasn't on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement -– the prescription drug plan -- without a source of funding. And so I think it's important just to note when you start hearing folks throw these words around that we've actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles and that some of the same folks who are throwing the word 'socialist' around can't say the same." [...]

Well, I just think it's clear by the time we got here, there already had been an enormous infusion of taxpayer money into the financial system. And the thing I constantly try to emphasize to people if that coming in, the market was doing fine, nobody would be happier than me to stay out of it. I have more than enough to do without having to worry the financial system. The fact that we've had to take these extraordinary measures and intervene is not an indication of my ideological preference, but an indication of the degree to which lax regulation and extravagant risk taking has precipitated a crisis.

Obama will get no argument from me when it comes to Bush's disaster socialism. But this new he-did-it-too argument does run counter to another, Hendrik Hertzberg-applauded narrative that Obama has been running with since before inauguration: That his administration's economic policies represents a sharp break from the policies of his predecessor. As people like Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson have begun to point out, Obama is running high on the contradiction-meter.

Comments

Josh|3.9.09 @ 2:58PM|#

"And it wasn't on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement -- the prescription drug plan -- without a source of funding."

So we can expect you to end this program, Mr. President?? Yeah, I didn't think so.

|3.9.09 @ 2:59PM|#

Yep, Bush also dallied with socialism. So what? Wait, I thought he was all free-markety and deregulatory.

I wish Obama and Congress would just say that they ♥ socialism, so we could drive the real debate to the surface. Is America really prepared to kill the golden goose to implement all of these social programs, bailouts, military jobs programs, and political payoffs? Yes? Well, okay then.

Gilbert Martin|3.9.09 @ 3:12PM|#

"And it wasn't on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement -- the prescription drug plan -- without a source of funding."

It's seems Obama is a little fuzzy on what socialism is.

It is socialist to start such a program with or without an identified source of funding as it constitutes wealth redistribution either way.

Also at the time, the democrats main complaint was that the program wasn't generous enough - i.e more expensive.

And of course Obama has been doing his best to increase entitlements every way he can get away with - expanding SCHIP, rolling back the mid 90's welfare reforms, making states expand unemployment benefits to part time workers as a condition of taking bail out money, etc.

|3.9.09 @ 3:15PM|#

If Obama were a socialist, wouldn't he want to nationalize the banks rather than keep giving them free money and get little to nothing in return while at the same time doing very little to control/alter the behavior of the parties taking taxpayer money and not want to add any significant oversight?

I don't think it's socialist to try and prevent the capitalists from having to ever take losses on their horribly bad investments/bets or to try to get people to invest money without risk but offering for the government to eat any losses in some type of "public-private" joint investment

I never knew "socialize the risk but privatize the profits" to be a socialist ideal?

Maybe people throwing around the "socialist" word need to try a litter hard and find a word for this bullshit -- cuz it ain't socialism.

ALso it would be nice if Reason spent as much time attacking the truly bad deal of bank bailouts and the behavior of these so-called capitalist (if your business model depends on the government bailing you out are you really a capitalist??) and spend less time attacking the stimulus which isn't great but is a much better deal for the taxpayer (and has a much smaller price tag) and the $410B budget.

Ward S. Denker|3.9.09 @ 3:17PM|#

"Obama is running high on the contradiction-meter"

He's still got Hillary's record to beat, but he's closing rapidly.

^|3.9.09 @ 3:19PM|#

How did Obama vote on that prescription drug plan?

Oh, it was before he was in the Senate. I am sure he would have voted against it. Fits his record, right?

Hambone|3.9.09 @ 3:20PM|#

"Maybe people throwing around the "socialist" word need to try a litter hard and find a word for this bullshit -- cuz it ain't socialism."

Obamanism

Seward|3.9.09 @ 3:21PM|#

ChicagoTom,

Many of the banks are already partly nationalized. The government owns chunks of them in other words.

|3.9.09 @ 3:25PM|#

So it has to be socialism by the book to be called socialism? Okay, what if we call it National Bocialism?

|3.9.09 @ 3:27PM|#

It's not socialism. Obama clearly believes in a strong welfare state with redistributionalist class war overtones and shit-stain streak of monstrous utilitarianism a mile-wide. I think all that is just as bad as being a industry-nationalizing socialist, but it just doesn't have a handy one-word descriptor.

</|3.9.09 @ 3:28PM|#

Maybe people throwing around the "socialist" word need to try a litter hard and find a word for this bullshit -- cuz it ain't socialism.

National Socialism
I'm not sure about the Bolshevism of whatever ProLib was struggling for

|3.9.09 @ 3:29PM|#

Regulatory socialism? Where ownership stays with businesses and individuals, but control rests in the government? Is there a better term? Anyone?

|3.9.09 @ 3:31PM|#

I don't like the sound of these 'ere boncentration bamps.

|3.9.09 @ 3:34PM|#

See? Even this problem was anticipated by 70s BBC humor. Or should I say humour?

|3.9.09 @ 3:35PM|#

Anyone else find it funny that the BusHitler / "OMG fascism!1!!" crowd is now whining that a derogatory word is being used against their Exalted One?

(This comment not to be considered an endorsement of the shamefully inept and bloodthirsty Bush administration.)

|3.9.09 @ 3:36PM|#

I think he's right about the coons, but then I'm a bit mental.

Brett Stevens|3.9.09 @ 3:38PM|#

Every government dallies somewhat with socialism.

But no one's ending the real socialism -- subsidies for parasites even though they're human.

We've got more useless people than ever before and yet they're still... useless.

|3.9.09 @ 3:39PM|#

what we're looking at is essentially to go back to the tax rates that existed during the 1990s when, as I recall, rich people were doing very well. In fact everybody was doing very well

Grrrphspltsftflxtzp!

*clutches chest, falls out of chair*

Ron Vibbentrop|3.9.09 @ 3:40PM|#

He's right, you know.

jtuf|3.9.09 @ 3:40PM|#

Well, I just think it's clear by the time we got here, there already had been an enormous infusion of taxpayer money into the financial system.

WTF! Obama is washing his hands of the TARP bill!? He was a Senator at the time, and he voted in favor of the bill.

|3.9.09 @ 3:43PM|#

Well, speaking as Conservative candidate, I just drone on and on and on...never letting anyone else get a word in edgewise, until I start foaming at the mouth and fall over backwards.

</|3.9.09 @ 3:44PM|#

You wingertarian libernuts want Obama and the country to FAIL so I have to go live in a Bushville!

Libertarian food stamps

|3.9.09 @ 3:45PM|#

Foam at the mouth and fall over backwards. Is he foaming at the mouth to fall over backwards or falling over backwards to foam at the mouth. Tonight 'Spectrum' examines the whole question of frothing and falling, coughing and calling, screaming and bawling, walling and stalling, galling and mauling, palling and hauling, trawling and squalling and zalling. Zalling? Is there a word zalling? If there is what does it mean...if there isn't what does it mean? Perhaps both. Maybe neither. What do I mean by the word mean? What do I mean by the word word, what do I mean by what do I mean, what do I mean by do, and what do I do by mean? What do I do by do by do and what do I do by wasting your time like this? Goodnight.

|3.9.09 @ 3:46PM|#

Where ownership stays with businesses and individuals, but control rests in the government

Except the government isn't actually controlling anything.

They aren't getting a seat on the executive boards, they aren't calling the shots or changing business practices.

Even in the cases where the government were granted preferred shares (with dividends and a higher priority in bankruptcy) of companies they then turned around and decided to convert them to common shares at a premium.

This is nothing but corporate welfare to the banking sector.

Geithner and Summers are doing everything they can to make sure that the people who are responsible for this mess never feel any pain or have to deal with any consequences of their actions in any meaningful way.

Many of the banks are already partly nationalized. The government owns chunks of them in other words.

In exchange for money, the government got some stock in companies. Those stocks are essentially worthless. You can call that "ownership" if you like, but the government owns in the same way that I or you would own it if we had stock in that company. The government isn't running the show, nor is it even putting restrictions on any actions of the banks.

This is not socialism. This is much worse. This is simply a give-away to monied interests in order to protect the semi-oligopolistic banking industry.

Hambone|3.9.09 @ 3:52PM|#

"WTF! Obama is washing his hands of the TARP bill!? He was a Senator at the time, and he voted in favor of the bill."

Obama relies on an ignorant populace. The Media and teachers unions are used to keep them stupid.

|3.9.09 @ 3:53PM|#

I pity AIG, the TARP whores, GM/Ford/Chrysler, and every other corporation on the taxpayer dole (including the massive weapons industry).

Don't the socialists ever think about what is best for our corporations?

</|3.9.09 @ 3:53PM|#

Geithner and Summers are doing everything they can to make sure that the people who are responsible for this mess never feel any pain or have to deal with any consequences of their actions in any meaningful way.

So ChiTom, you are saying Obama is nothing but a tool of the bankers? Well I hope you are praying for him to FAIL.

|3.9.09 @ 3:54PM|#

The government isn't running the show, nor is it even putting restrictions on any actions of the banks.

Yes they are

I'm not going to call it socialism either, but the money is coming with strings attached.

Stephen Gordon|3.9.09 @ 3:54PM|#

re: "Libertarian food stamps"

Even I'll accept that level of socialism from government.

|3.9.09 @ 4:01PM|#

The control existed before Obama ever took office. Banking is a great example of that, despite all the ridiculous talk about deregulation. I'm not saying that the government controls every aspect of running a business (or of our personal lives), but the degree of control that it has is growing precipitously.

|3.9.09 @ 4:01PM|#

Obama relies on an ignorant populace. The Media and teachers unions are used to keep them stupid.

Telling statement. A good teacher might have saved you from abject stupidity.

I understand though - public schools are "socialist" and education is the enemy of the right.

|3.9.09 @ 4:03PM|#

My new favorite pastime is watching people who could have cared less if Bush outright nationalized whole swaths of our economy now all of the sudden care about free markets.

^|3.9.09 @ 4:03PM|#

Are government cheese handouts in the works yet?

|3.9.09 @ 4:04PM|#

Are government cheese handouts in the works yet?

No. This time it will be five pound blocks of tofu.

TofuSushi|3.9.09 @ 4:05PM|#

Yum!

|3.9.09 @ 4:06PM|#

Socialistic policies are why I didn't like Bush. Not sure why the left disliked him, sometimes.

Don't mention the war.

^|3.9.09 @ 4:07PM|#

Don't mention the war.

He did not stop that yet either?

JW Gacy|3.9.09 @ 4:08PM|#

"My new favorite pastime is watching people who could have cared less if Bush outright nationalized whole swaths of our economy now all of the sudden care about free markets."

As I recall, talk radio and other right-of-center media outlets were extremely critical Medicare Part D. Not sure who you're referring to. Straw man?

|3.9.09 @ 4:09PM|#

Yes they are

I'm not going to call it socialism either, but the money is coming with strings attached.

Some of the TARP funds have some strings attached, I grant that (but even those restriction have loopholes that you could drive a truck through). But the real money is coming from Treasurey and the Fed (the Fed has said that it could reach up to 12 Trillion in outlays to fix the banking industries) -- and those monies don't have any real strings attached. TARP is a smokescreen and sure there was some grandstanding about executive compensation, but even in TARP there wasn't much autonomy lost for the banks.

robc|3.9.09 @ 4:09PM|#

This is nothing but corporate welfare to the banking sector.


Wo we are in agreement, it is socialism.

TofuSushi|3.9.09 @ 4:11PM|#

No. This time it will be five pound blocks of tofu.

And can I have a side of Jennifer with that?

|3.9.09 @ 4:12PM|#

You know, let's take a look at the budget - the answer would be no.

Is that supposed to be some kind of a zen fucking koan?

robc|3.9.09 @ 4:12PM|#

You can call that "ownership" if you like, but the government owns in the same way that I or you would own it if we had stock in that company.

Um, owning stocks is ownership. Im not sure what your point is. When they had preferred shares, then they werent really owners. Having common stock makes them real owners.

JW Gacy|3.9.09 @ 4:13PM|#

Wo we are in agreement, it is socialism.

No. I am in agreement with myself that it's nascent fascism. This crisis will feed on itself. More and more of the economy will become dependent on government spending, and thus zombified. We won't be allowed to let the brain-eating SOBs fail.

What Would Shaun Do?

|3.9.09 @ 4:13PM|#

So ChiTom, you are saying Obama is nothing but a tool of the bankers? Well I hope you are praying for him to FAIL.

Currently, he is acting that way -- as a tool for the bankers. But that isn't surprising since his picks (Geithner and Summers) are part of the reason we are where we are.

I am not praying for him to fail, i just believe that if his team's idea is that if we just throw enough money at the banks everything will be ok then he is going to fail EPICALLY.

The Obama admin. keeps trying to pretend like the problem is one of liquidity when the real problem is that these companies are insolvent. They have a bunch of worthless IOUs and no valuable assets to protect their investments, and no amount of throwing good money after bad is going to change that.

Hambone|3.9.09 @ 4:14PM|#

"I understand though - public schools are "socialist" and education is the enemy of the right."

Loved the ad hominem, bitch.

If you think the kids in public schools are learning history, you are soundly mistaken.

Jimmy Dean|3.9.09 @ 4:15PM|#

The bailout is corporatism, the budget a waypoint in the constant expansion of government, and the stimulus is pork so pure that I am weeping in my grave.

Paul|3.9.09 @ 4:16PM|#

He's got a point, you know. I mean, when a deregulatin', capitalistic, free-wheeling, let'er-all-hang-out, free marketeer like Bush did what he did for eight years, it's kind of hard really know what socialism really looks like anymore.

|3.9.09 @ 4:16PM|#

Um, owning stocks is ownership. Im not sure what your point is. When they had preferred shares, then they werent really owners. Having common stock makes them real owners.

My point was that the fact that the government received shares in companies in exchange for billions of dollars is not socialism. Thats not even nationalizing the bank.

Welfare is not socialism.

|3.9.09 @ 4:18PM|#

Mr. Bone,

shrike makes up reality as he goes along, as anyone who can say that the media isn't in love with Obama with a straight face must.

JW Gacy|3.9.09 @ 4:18PM|#

"The Obama admin. keeps trying to pretend like the problem is one of liquidity when the real problem is that these companies are insolvent. They have a bunch of worthless IOUs and no valuable assets to protect their investments, and no amount of throwing good money after bad is going to change that."

What about Mark-to-Market? I've heard some argue that the problem for "problem children" like Citi is not that they don't have assets, but that their assets aren't liquid, and therefore are assigned a value near zero under MtM. This, in turn, has forced them to attempt to seriously restructure since the rule was put in place in 2007 in order to meet liquidity requirements. But it's been difficult because the only way to get the cash on hand is sell non-liquid assets that become less liquid as other banks rush to sell similar assets.

robc|3.9.09 @ 4:19PM|#

it's nascent fascism

Fascism is socialism.

Im a believer in big-tent socialism.

The CrunkMonk|3.9.09 @ 4:19PM|#

"Welfare is not socialism."

I'm putting that on a coffee mug.

|3.9.09 @ 4:21PM|#

Don't forget the rest of the quote:

"Welfare is not socialism, but I'm still an asshole anyway."

Paul|3.9.09 @ 4:21PM|#

I don't think it's socialist to try and prevent the capitalists from having to ever take losses on their horribly bad investments/bets or to try to get people to invest money without risk but offering for the government to eat any losses in some type of "public-private" joint investment

I never knew "socialize the risk but privatize the profits" to be a socialist ideal?

You're right, ChicagoTom. Obama is a fascist.

|3.9.09 @ 4:21PM|#

The Obama admin. keeps trying to pretend like the problem is one of liquidity when the real problem is that these companies are insolvent.

I tend to agree with this statement but OTOH I have heard bright financial pros say that letting Lehman fail almost crushed the system AND if AIG had gone it would have done so.

Its not the measly $10 billion is stock cap that is the problem with a Citigroup failure.

Its the several trillion in bonds it owes OTHERS. That is what they are protecting in my opinion. Whatever they do we are on the verge of disaster.

robc|3.9.09 @ 4:22PM|#

Thats not even nationalizing the bank.

Yes it is. Not 100% nationalization, but partial.

Socialism (which is a range from 0 to 100%) is when the state controls the means of production. When they own share they control some percent of the means of production. A much larger percent than they did a year ago.

Welfare is not socialism.

Sure it is, when you tax my production to give it to someone else, you are controlling part of the means of production.

Its a range. Some socialists are more socialist than others.

BDB|3.9.09 @ 4:23PM|#

It's just plain old economic liberalism. FDR-style, American, liberalism. That's scary (and accurate) enough.

|3.9.09 @ 4:24PM|#

What is the sound of one president clapping?

|3.9.09 @ 4:25PM|#

Its the several trillion in bonds it owes OTHERS. That is what they are protecting in my opinion. Whatever they do we are on the verge of disaster.

You say that like it should matter.

Why should the government be protecting that the bond holders? anyone who invested in a failing company should lose their investment.

It sucks for the bond holders-- but that's always a possibility when you invest in something other than a Savings account or a CD, right?

robc|3.9.09 @ 4:26PM|#

It's just plain old economic liberalism. FDR-style, American, liberalism.

Once again, socialism.

Everyone is agreeing with me today. :)

|3.9.09 @ 4:27PM|#

My new favorite pastime is watching people who could have cared less if Bush outright nationalized whole swaths of our economy now all of the sudden care about free markets.

Where do you go to watch these people, Perry? Because I can't think of any around here.

Except the government isn't actually controlling anything.

Those are voting shares they are getting now, ChicagoTom. Trust me, the organization that owns a very large share of the stock in any organization can exert quite a bit of control.

BDB|3.9.09 @ 4:28PM|#

No, socialism would be nationalization of the banks. Even FDR stopped before he got to that point.

|3.9.09 @ 4:30PM|#

Yes it is. Not 100% nationalization, but partial.

Let's agree to disagree.

It's either socialism or it isn't. You are either nationalizing or you aren't. You can't be "partially nationalized" any more that can you be a little pregnant.

Either the entity is run by the government or it is run as a private entity regardless of who the shareholders are.

Right now banks that are getting bailed out are still being run as private entities -- the government doesn't control them not even a little.

The government also keeps proposing to buy out the bad assets and leave the good assets for the banks. Essentially taking all the risk and forgoing any reward. That's not nationalization.

JW Gacy|3.9.09 @ 4:33PM|#

Here's where I draw the line between Fascism and Socialism.

Fascists try to bring Big Labor and Big Biz to the table in order to forge a stable society.

The Bolsheviks attempted to destroy the established institutions -- not make them national gods. Stability doesn't seem to be a big goal for Hugo Chavez and the like.

robc|3.9.09 @ 4:34PM|#

ChicagoTom,

While I agree there is some point where you probably change over, no state is ever either 100% capitalist or 100% socialist. All countries are somewhere on the range.

What points does it change over? It aint 100%. Personally I go with about 10% which puts everything since at least FDR (and probably Wilson) as socialist.

robc|3.9.09 @ 4:35PM|#

the government doesn't control them not even a little.

Bullshit. The government controls them in proportion to their percent of common stock. Just like I control a very very very very very tiny percent of Philip Morris (and other stocks, but they were a fun example for some reason),

BDB|3.9.09 @ 4:36PM|#

So during the Cold War we were a Socialist nation fighting another Socialist nation? What?

|3.9.09 @ 4:36PM|#

They did nationalize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and are currently forcing them to administer Obama's "affordable housing"/"mortgage assistance" program.

That's socialism.

|3.9.09 @ 4:37PM|#

Socialism? Fascism, Tom and rob? That's--that's not for us. You know, those are the decisions that are best left to the suits in Washington, OK? We're just here to make Monty Python jokes.

|3.9.09 @ 4:37PM|#

"My new favorite pastime is watching people who could have cared less if Bush outright nationalized whole swaths of our economy now all of the sudden care about free markets."

HAHAHAHAHAHA

The best comment on Reason.com for quite some time!

|3.9.09 @ 4:38PM|#

Those are voting shares they are getting now, ChicagoTom. Trust me, the organization that owns a very large share of the stock in any organization can exert quite a bit of control.

From here:

Treasury today issued the terms for its new Capital Assistance Program (CAP) for handing out TARP funds. There are some very interesting wrinkles. First, the government will purchase funny convertible preferred stock instead of preferred stock and warrants (on common). The conversion ratio is based on a 10% discount from the price of the common stock on Feb. 9th. Second, the preferred pays 9% for seven years rather than 5% for five and 10% for the second five (that some banks received). On the seventh year the government can force redemption of the new convertible preferred. Third, the preferred is convertible into voting common at the option of the issuer (not the holder, the government) with the approval of the government. Previously the warrants were for non-voting common only.

And that's just via TARP. The real money is coming via the FED and Treasury outside of TARP with little to no oversight.

robc|3.9.09 @ 4:38PM|#

So during the Cold War we were a Socialist nation fighting another Socialist nation? What?

What is so odd about that? During WW2 a socialist nation (Germany) invaded another socialist nation (USSR).

robc|3.9.09 @ 4:39PM|#

ChicagoTom,

You just contradicted yourself. Upstream you said the Gov chose to convert to common shares. I believe your latest post, but you said otherwise earlier.

BDB|3.9.09 @ 4:40PM|#

Wow, so you also think that World War II was a conflict between Socialist USA, Socialist Britain, Socialist Russia, against Socialist Germany, Socialist Italy, and Socialist Japan.

robc|3.9.09 @ 4:42PM|#

BDB,

Sure, why not. Big tent socialism.

Nearly all modern countries are socialist, but some are more socialist than others.

robc|3.9.09 @ 4:43PM|#

BDB,

Dont forget Socialist France, but Im not sure which side they were on. Both, I guess, technically.

|3.9.09 @ 4:44PM|#

The problem with most people who cry "socialism" is that they don't know what it is. They think that socialism is the opposite of "marketism". It is not. Obama is not a socialist, but he is a welfarist. He does want some centralized economic planning, but I've seen more actual nationalization of industries under Bush than any expressed desires to do so from Obama.

The Bismarkian Welfare State is wrong, and needs to be opposed, but it is still not socialism. We have a mixed economy, and Obama wants even more government in the mix, but it still ain't socialism.

robc|3.9.09 @ 4:44PM|#

I used to say the biggest problem with Newt was he was too pink.

BDB|3.9.09 @ 4:44PM|#

What Brandybuck said.

|3.9.09 @ 4:44PM|#

The French were fascists.

robc|3.9.09 @ 4:45PM|#

He does want some centralized economic planning

AKA socialism.

Seward|3.9.09 @ 4:48PM|#

ChicagoTom,

I've heard the term corporatism used; how accurate that is probably is in the eye of the beholder.

Seward|3.9.09 @ 4:50PM|#

You don't get government intervention without some sort of centralized planning; or government planning. There are looser and tighter forms of such obviously.

|3.9.09 @ 4:53PM|#

You just contradicted yourself. Upstream you said the Gov chose to convert to common shares.

robc,

Do you mean by this statement I made:
Even in the cases where the government were granted preferred shares (with dividends and a higher priority in bankruptcy) of companies they then turned around and decided to convert them to common shares at a premium.


I may not have been clear upstream. And I admit sometimes it's hard to keep it all straight. The comment upstream was about the Citi deal

From the above link:
Citigroup, of course, is getting a special deal. The government with exchange up to $25B of the old preferred for new convertible preferred (with an 8% rate) if the private shareholders also participate for the same amount. If it works out the government would have potential voting rights on close to 40% of Citigroups common. The offer hit the markets hard as Citigroup shares broke trading volume records and fell close to 40% on the announcement.

The CrunkMonk|3.9.09 @ 4:54PM|#

"I used to say the biggest problem with Newt was he was too pink."

Racist.

Brass Bancroft|3.9.09 @ 4:58PM|#

Sorry in advance for this cut & paste:

By JAMES TARANTO
Something in President Obama's Fat Tuesday speech to Congress rubbed us the wrong way, but some libertarian critics of the president convinced us that our initial reaction might have been misguided.

Here's the passage in question:

It is our responsibility as lawmakers and educators to make this system work. But it is the responsibility of every citizen to participate in it. And so tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma. And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It's not just quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country--and this country needs and values the talents of every American.As usual, Obama's bossy tone is off-putting; we're sure we're not the first to wonder if his middle initial stands for Hector. But Reason's Jacob Sullum also objects strenuously to the substance of Obama's comment. Against it he deploys the libertarian's favorite weapon, the reductio ad absurdum:

The collectivism implicit in this rhetoric is pretty creepy. Evidently all of us have a duty to optimize our educations so we can maximize our earnings and give our country the full benefit of our talents. "Every American will need to get more than a high school diploma," Obama decrees. But why stop there? If someone with strong mathematical and spatial reasoning abilities majors in sociology instead of engineering, it's plain that he will not be giving his country as much value (and tax revenue) as he could. What about the potential doctor who decides to play the violin or the writer who could have been a software developer? Given Obama's premise, it's hard to see why such choices should be permitted, especially when the country is so generously subsidizing higher education.Glenn Reynolds sarcastically amplifies the point:

We've got to all contribute to our society according to our abilities, not our desires, so that we can fulfill the needs of those less fortunate. To do otherwise--to pursue a career because of our selfish "interest" in it--would be unpatriotic.In this view, Obama sees America's young people as canon fodder, to be forced or shamed into college as preparation for a government-approved career. The problem is that this is very far afield from what the president actually said. A truer paraphrase would be something like this: If you become a bum or a slacker, you have failed morally as well as personally. Everyone has a duty to society to make something of himself.

This actually is quite a conservative sentiment, albeit perhaps not a libertarian one. Contrary to Sullum, Obama expressed no opinion about what one should make of oneself. Contrary to Reynolds, the president did not disparage those who follow their own desires or act out of self-interest. Indeed, it would make no sense to do so. Hardly anyone goes to college or selects a career in a spirit of self-sacrifice. Even people who choose careers in what is termed "public service" over more remunerative fields--say, those who become writers for nonprofit magazines or professors at state-owned law schools instead of investment bankers or trial lawyers--do so because they find such work rewarding.

President Obama has a tendency to accentuate the negative, which often brings out the worst in his critics. But the flip side of his admonition is that a young American who does make something of himself is thereby doing good for the country. To the extent that this is true, it is so regardless of the young person's motives.

Economic freedom is morally superior to socialism not only because freedom is an intrinsic good, but also because the free market is the most effective means of harmonizing individual self-interest with collective good. A market economy rewards neither self-indulgence nor self-sacrifice but the production of goods and services that other people value. We have no confidence that President Obama is fully cognizant of this, but we'd like to think our libertarian friends would be.

|3.9.09 @ 5:00PM|#

Putin better capitalist than Obama

Oh, the irony of it.

Joshua Holmes|3.9.09 @ 5:03PM|#

Not all government action is socialist. Not even all government ownership is socialist. Socialism requires some sort of nexus to worker control of companies. In the libertarian socialist case, the workers directly own and operate the means of production. In the state socialist case, the state owns and operates the means of production, and (here's the important part) the state itself is run by a workers' organization or party.

What's missing here is that government ownership/control is obviously not being done by a workers' party, and it's not being done on behalf of the workers', either actually or rhetorically. What we have here is good old-fashioned crony capitalism.

|3.9.09 @ 5:19PM|#

Socialism requires some sort of nexus to worker control of companies.

I thought that's what the whole voting thing was about.

Gilbert Martin|3.9.09 @ 5:20PM|#

"They did nationalize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and are currently forcing them to administer Obama's "affordable housing"/"mortgage assistance" program.

That's socialism."

Yes it is.

Of course it's also taking them full circle, since they were creations of government in the first place and operated as such for a long time before they were ever allegedly "privatized" by issuing stock.

Gilbert Martin|3.9.09 @ 5:23PM|#

"Putin better capitalist than Obama "

Heh, Just about the only heads of state in the world who AREN'T better capitalists that Obama are Chavez and the Dear Leader of North Korea.

Pedro|3.9.09 @ 5:37PM|#

haha Robert J. Samuelson is scared:

"The $787 billion "stimulus" is weaker than necessary, because almost $200 billion for extended projects (high-speed rail, computerized medical records) take effect after 2010."

$587 billion is still a lot. I heard it was more. Of course we'd get more bang for the buck if we had more tax breaks for the rich who could spend that money on more yachts or domestic help or porn, etc...

Still Samueleson was 100% wrong about how the financial markets flaked out. That's the elephant in the room. Will he write a mea culpa column? I doubt it.

And Welch is wrong also, Obama's budget is a big break from the past. Moderates feel it's too liberal.

And liberals like me are worried Obama will get serious on Social Security and entitlement reform. Too bad we didn't turn Social Security over to the stock market like Bush wanted, b/c then we would now have old people eating dog food in alleyways - well much more than there currently are. Samuelson will probably be happy if Obama does that.

|3.9.09 @ 5:40PM|#

Ya anyone screaming socialism is a good candidate for being a not very serious person. Either our mixed economy contains elements of socialism, in which case all presidents are socialists to some extent and Obama is no different except perhaps by degree, or socialist is not what our economy is and it's just a word being thrown around by partisan hacks.

PR|3.9.09 @ 5:40PM|#

Why should the government be protecting that the bond holders? anyone who invested in a failing company should lose their investment.

ChiTom, please try to be consistent on this when state government employee pension funds fail.

Kolohe|3.9.09 @ 5:43PM|#

"I used to say the biggest problem with Newt was he was too pink."

He got better.

Bruce Majors|3.9.09 @ 5:49PM|#

Our president is a silly thin skinned little bitch whose popularity is going kersplat.

Odumba is getting an "F" from 47% of the people on today's MSNBC poll. Help push that over 50%:

MSNBC has a live poll to grade Obama's performance and we need to get
the conservative voice showing up in the results!!! Here is the site:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29493093/

|3.9.09 @ 5:53PM|#

Bruce Majors,

That doesn't make it a very scientific poll now does it?

|3.9.09 @ 6:46PM|#

So does the government actually NEED a decision-making position in order to influence the banks? Well here's a DIRECT quote from an email I got from an SBA funder:

"SBA cannot do more than $2MM, unless they meet the new energy efficiency public policy goal"(emphasis mine)

So the government is actually controlling the bank by requiring the prospective borrower to comply with some horseshit "public policy goal". No board seat, no ownership stake. Now I have a borrower that may not get the assistance he needs if he hasn't switched over to CFL bulbs or proven that he recycles X% of his trash.

Sounds a lot like highway fund shenanigans to me. Yeah, the government can't tell you what to do, but they sure can hold a lot of shit over your head. Tomatoes tomahtoes.

|3.9.09 @ 7:27PM|#

AKA socialism.

Nope. We don't have socialism (except in a few spots) because we don't have state/public ownership of the means of production. Welfarism is not socialism.

Paul|3.9.09 @ 8:13PM|#

My point was that the fact that the government received shares in companies in exchange for billions of dollars is not socialism. Thats not even nationalizing the bank.

Corporate Welfare is not socialism. the road to facism.

Fixed.

|3.9.09 @ 8:25PM|#

I don't think it's a coincidence that Citibank announced it's mortgage relief program just days after the government upped it's stake to 36%, do you?


http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/03/real_estate/Citi_unemployed_homeowners/

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gHs5OM3gFG_DytQQZFbWfgPT08MAD96KOFN01


Especially given the government's finagling with FMAE and FMAC, now that it has nationalized them.

In the last six weeks alone, the Obama administration has essentially transformed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into arms of the federal government. Regulators have ordered the companies to oversee a vast new mortgage modification program, to buy greater numbers of loans, to refinance millions of at-risk homeowners and to loosen internal policies so they can work with more questionable borrowers.

Anthony|3.9.09 @ 9:02PM|#

I stick by my belief that Obama is not a socialist, not a Marxist (can you see him whithering away the state) but a managerial statist

|3.9.09 @ 9:05PM|#

In the 90s? You mean, when the Fed was busily inflating the dot com bubble? Yeah, sounds like a great idea, barry. What could possibly go wrong?

-jcr

|3.9.09 @ 9:21PM|#

This Obama kid is way over his head. How do you say OJT?

|3.9.09 @ 9:22PM|#

How Obamian. When he's asked flat-out about his ideological beliefs, His Majesty tries to straddle both sides of the road while simultaneously voting "present."

Barry O! is the kind of guy who thinks he's the smartest and most popular dude at frat parties, but who's so insecure that he slips a monthly keg of beer to the "prez" just to make sure he stays on the permanent invitation list.

Stephen Macklin|3.9.09 @ 9:56PM|#

"My new favorite pastime is watching people who could have cared less if Bush outright nationalized whole swaths of our economy now all of the sudden care about free markets."

Socialism sucked when Bush did it. Socialism sucks with Obama doing it.

Socialism Sucks.>/a>

|3.10.09 @ 12:25AM|#

ok he's read more Lenin than Lincoln;so, we'll call him a leninist.

|3.10.09 @ 2:40AM|#

How to Create a Crisis and Steal a Nation
I.O. emphatically recommends this insider account of just how the Alinsky and Cloward-Piven curses upon society have yielded bitter fruit for America -- in the welfare crisis, the current finance crisis, and in the coming federal spending catastrophe. It may seem a long story for a blog, but it is of imperative value, for understanding how our proud nation is about to be brought to its knees.

by Sam Sewell, The Steady Drip blog

Note: It will quickly be obvious to the reader why details have been obscured, omitted or fictionalized in this narrative of events that began nearly forty years ago.

Se non è vero, è ben trovato.

Even small children know how to get what they want by creating a crisis. Witness any "temper tantrum." My wife and I teach parenting skills. One of our sayings which we recommend to parents when dealing with a child's "crisis strategy" is: "Poor planning on your part does not constitute a crisis on my part. No, you can't borrow $20 because you are broke, even if you did promise to take Betty Lou to the movies tonight." The child did not get their way. A similar "No!" needs to be said to adult politicians who have created a crisis to get their way.

Another example; Paris taxi-drivers, in protest against a police demand that they take physical examinations, threatened to obey every traffic law to the letter-which would, they vowed, produce the greatest traffic jam Paris had ever seen. The Taxi drivers got their way.

Creating a crisis to get one's way is a strategy as old as Moses calling down plagues upon Pharaoh and saying "Let my people go."

To better understand the fascinating story below we need some background information. In the late 1960s a pair of college professors who thought they were original thinkers came up with something called the Cloward-Piven Strategy (CPS), a strategy for forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. "Cloward-Piven's early promoters cited Chicago radical community organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration."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 Judaeo-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." Notice that Alinski might have heard about the Paris taxi drivers, and then gave their strategy a radical left twist.

Saul had a huge influence on radical left people of the day. Saul was the subject of Hillary Clinton's senior honors thesis at Wellesley College. "In early 1993, the White House requested that Wellesley not release the thesis to anyone. Wellesley complied, instituting a new rule that closed access to the thesis of any sitting U.S. president or first lady, a rule that in practice applied only to Rodham." Alinski also strongly influenced a young Chicago "community organizer" named Barack Obama.

An old friend from my spooky past recently reminded me of his adventures back in the early 1970s. If you did not know that clergy are used for Intelligence and undercover missions you haven't been paying attention to history. Believe it or not these decades old events, told by The Rev. Big Goon, help explain our present political and economic crisis.

Dear Aristotle the Hun

I've been doing some thinking that I thought I would share with you. My memories of the work I was doing when we knew each other at UMKC have really helped inform me about our present situation with our new President and the financial crisis.

I have visited "The Steady Drip" many times and I know your reputation for accurate research so you will find citations included to back up what I have to say. I noticed that on your blog you have expressed suspicions about the onset of the financial meltdown just in time to help Obama get elected. You also expressed suspicions about the most liberal President and Congress in the history of the nation conveniently coming into office at a time when the economy was so wounded that it might be possible to establish a socialist economic system. Just how "lucky" can these liberals get?

What I have to say may help you understand the dynamics but I doubt it will do away with your suspicions. Being suspicious is a job requirement for both Clergy and Intelligence work. I also know you are well connected to the Internet community and influential bloggers so you have my permission to use my comments as you see fit.

Here is my story: I arrived in Kansas City, Mo. in May of 1970, shortly after the first bombing done by a group of left wing radicals. I worked for the Western Diocese of the Episcopal Church which sponsored the St. Thomas Student Center at UMKC. Naming an Episcopal student center after "Doubting Thomas" was glaringly appropriate for a college campus in the early 70s No, your readers can not ask about my real employer. (As the old joke goes; "If I told you I would have to kill you.")

The summer of 1970 in Kansas City was a really wild ride. In 1970 alone, an estimated 3,000 bombings and 50,000 bomb threats occurred in the United States, and Kansas City was not left out of the chaos. One of my assignments was to look into the activities of a group of radicals who, after they were arrested, became melodramatically known as "the Kansas City Four." They were really bungling, small time radicals. A legal case from those days survives on the Internet.

It was arranged for the FBI to contact known radicals in the community and ask them questions about me. My "case officer" posed as a state employee, so my monthly meetings with him were open and aroused no suspicion. I was warmly accepted by the radical community, and even spent some time living at a place operated by young radicals called the Ecstatic Umbrella, until I found more permanent housing.

The Second Presbyterian Church at 52nd and Oak owned an apartment building, and one of the Kansas City bombers lived in that building. As well as doing my job as a campus chaplain, I became a youth pastor at Second Presbyterian, and took an apartment in their building. I must admit that I was very uncomfortable living in the same building with a LSD using, grass smoking, alcoholic who I knew was making bombs in his bedroom.

By the time I entered UMKC in the fall as a graduate student, my cover was already firmly established. To put a cinch knot on my cover story, I also became the Chaplain of the Viet Nam Veterans Against the War. I still experience a gratifying chuckle over how perfectly, easily, and quickly I had infiltrated the radical community in KC. It wasn't that hard. Almost everyone was doing acid and grass. Every weekend there was a wild carnival of hippy, stoner, radical, love-child young people in Volker Park. Contact was easy. I won my status in the counter-culture community with nothing more than a prank. I purchased a case of dish washing liquid, and in the dark of night I poured the entire case into the Plaza fountain. My accomplices were very impressed with my boldness and it made the front page of the Kansas City Star.

I had a different name then. I was called Rev. Big Goon. It should be noted here that I physically resemble a great silver back gorilla, although my knuckles don't drag on the ground. A local Kansas City undercover officer who had no idea who I was gave me that name. I saw it in a police report on activity in Volker Park. Years later I found out that my cover was so believable that I was on a list of dangerous radicals that Kansas City Chief of Police Clarence Kelly took with him when he was appointed as the Director of the FBI in 1973.

For me, the investigation of the Kansas City Four quickly fizzled. Other investigators uncovered the activities of the suspects, provided the evidence and they were arraigned in July of 1971. My last contact with that case was to arrange to be appointed as a Chaplain for the Jackson County jail, where I interviewed one of the suspects who was being held there as a federal prisoner awaiting trial.

The case was hugely overblown, in the way law enforcement and prosecutors will exaggerate to make their work seem to be more important and to advance their careers. One of them was more of a nut case than a criminal and he might have been the most dangerous because of his hatred and violence against "the system". He is still alive, on the streets, and probably still dangerous.

I struck up a romantic involvement with a social worker from Chicago who was working for Family and Children's Services, a state of Missouri agency. Her friends and contacts were a gold mine for my new mission. That is how I became involved with the Welfare Rights Organization (WRO) of Kansas City where I saw, first hand, how community activists applied the CPS theory in real life.

CPS and Saul Alinski were all the rage among left wing professors, activists, students and social workers. My social worker girl friend from Chicago knew all about Saul Alinski. CPS was a new idea seen as dazzlingly brilliant by social workers and other liberals. She introduced me to a radical community activist, also from Chicago, who was organizing poor black people who lived in Wayne Minor public housing. His name was Mark. Mark was also a clergyman. Mark introduced me to a powerfully charismatic black woman who was Executive Director of the Kansas City Welfare Rights Organization. There were several young white men and women who worked for the WRO. Mark taught me the ropes about how we were going to train these young "community organizers" and welfare recipients, so that they became effective foot soldiers for the left wing.

The socialist professors who devised the CPS: "The authors (Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven) noted that the number of Americans subsisting on welfare -- about 8 million, at the time -- probably represented less than half the number who were technically eligible for full benefits. They proposed a "massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls." Cloward and Piven calculated that persuading even a fraction of potential welfare recipients to demand their entitlements would bankrupt the system. The result, they predicted, would be "a profound financial and political crisis" that would unleash "powerful forces … for major economic reform at the national level." Their article called for "cadres of aggressive organizers" to use "demonstrations to create a climate of militancy." Intimidated by threats of black violence, politicians would appeal to the federal government for help. Carefully orchestrated media campaigns, carried out by friendly, leftwing journalists, would float the idea of "a federal program of income redistribution," in the form of a guaranteed living income for all -- working and non-working people alike. Local officials would clutch at this idea like drowning men to a lifeline. They would apply pressure on Washington to implement it. With every major city erupting into chaos, Washington would have to act."

Mark and I were part of that "cadres of aggressive organizers." We would go through the vast, dilapidated cavern of poverty called Wayne Minor with a list of all the entitlements offered by the State of Missouri. Each person we talked to became instantly "motivated" to apply for more welfare benefits. Before long, people began seeking us out at the WRO office. Outreach to the community wasn't necessary. The community flocked to us. We would show them how to fill out application forms, and many times we filled out the forms for them.

When we had a large number of people ready to apply for new benefits, or additional benefits they had not known they were entitled to before our training, we arranged for busses to take our new recruits to the state office building. We had spent many hours training them as to what to do and what not to do. We told them it was ok to be loud, obnoxious, aggressive, but to never be physical or damage property. In other words, do everything you can do to be uncivil, but don't get yourself arrested. We planned the event for a Friday and, of course, we called the media. Our "trainees" staged a class "A" media event for the television cameras. Our first "action" was a rousing success.

When we got to the WRO office Monday morning there were hundreds of people waiting to be "trained" in how to collect welfare. The part of the welfare system to feel the most heat right away was what the state called "intake." Intake social workers were overwhelmed, intimidated, and routinely approved questionable benefits because of the stress they were experiencing. The state began a panicky search for new intake workers, and anybody with a BA degree was practically dragged off the street. Larger office space was arranged for the intake department. Mark and I were heroes to the radical community.

Since this was happening at the same time in St. Louis and other cities, Kitt Bond, then Auditor of State of Missouri, and soon-to-become Governor, asked for help. I was assigned to brief his representative about what was behind the welfare revolt.

As it turns out Mark, the community organizer from Chicago, and my social worker girl friend from Chicago were also friends with the Kansas City Four. Soon my primary mission was accomplished, and I went on to other projects, but I never forgot the effectiveness of creating a crisis to bring about radical change. I concluded that the WRO and the Alinski/CPS inspired radical community organizers were more of a danger to the nation than the Laurel and Hardy bombers.

I stopped doing Intelligence work, the years went by, and I began my career as a full time Pastor. Not long after I "went straight" I again ran into the CPS and Saul Alinsky. During the administration of George H. W. Bush I began hearing reports of loud, obnoxious, aggressive, poor people taking over bank lobbies and demanding that they be given mortgages. All this was happening because community activists, many from Chicago, were doing the same thing to banks that had been done to the state welfare offices back in Kansas City. The role of WRO was now filled by ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now).

Stan Kurtz of National Review comments on ACORN'S tactics. "While ACORN holds to NWRO's radical economic framework and its confrontational 1960's-style tactics, the targets and strategy have changed. ACORN prefers to fly under the national radar, organizing locally in liberal urban areas - where, Stern observes, (Sol Stern ACORN's Nutty Regime for Cities." local legislators and reporters are often "slow to grasp how radical ACORN's positions really are." ACORN's new goals are municipal "living wage" laws targeting "big-box" stores like Wal-Mart, rolling back welfare reform, and regulating banks - efforts styled as combating "predatory lending." Unfortunately, instead of helping workers, ACORN's living-wage campaigns drive businesses out of the very neighborhoods where jobs are needed most. ACORN's opposition to welfare reform only threatens to worsen the self-reinforcing cycle of urban poverty and family breakdown. Perhaps most mischievously, says Stern, ACORN uses banking regulations to pressure financial institutions into massive "donations" that it uses to finance supposedly non-partisan voter turn-out drives."

Obama's role as a radical community organizer and ACORN "leadership trainer" is well established. Kurtz continues: "ACORN's tactics are famously "in your face." Just think of Code Pink's well-known operations (i.e. threatening to occupy congressional offices, interrupting the testimony of General David Petraeus) and you'll get the idea. ACORN protesters have disrupted Federal Reserve hearings, but mostly deploy their aggressive tactics locally. Chicago is home to one of its strongest chapters, and ACORN has burst into a closed city council meeting there. ACORN protestors in Baltimore disrupted a bankers' dinner and sent four busloads of profanity-screaming protestors against the mayor's home, terrifying his wife and kids. Even a Baltimore city council member who generally supports ACORN said their intimidation tactics had crossed the line."

It wouldn't take a degree in economics to see what was going to happen. This time the Alinski/CPS pressure wasn't aimed at the state of Missouri and Kitt Bond. By 1999 Fannie Mae came under pressure from the Clinton administration to expand mortgage loans to low and moderate income borrowers. At the same time, institutions in the primary mortgage market pressed Fannie Mae to ease credit requirements on the mortgages it was willing to purchase, enabling them to make loans to subprime borrowers at interest rates higher than conventional loans. Everybody knows how the problem escalated from there

Do you still have doubts about your suspicions that the financial crisis happened just in time to help Obama get elected? Do you still have doubts about your suspicions that there is something fishy about the financial crisis and the way Congress passed the trillion dollar "Reward Liberal Causes and Constituents Bill" without anyone actually reading it, because we had a "crisis"? See I told you that I wouldn't be able to help your suspicious nature. J

The Rev. Big Goon


To emphasize Rev. Big Goon's comments here is an absolutely brilliant piece by Jim Simpson that details the connection of Barack Obama to those who practice the Cloward-Piven strategy.
"Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis"

After reading Jim Simpson's article you will more fully understand how CPS is connected to Barack Obama, and why Obama keeps using the word "crisis" in every speech he gives. I don't know how to escape the conclusion that manufactured crisis is what clobbered the economy. Manufactured crisis is what made Obama President, and manufactured crisis is what drives his administration and his policies. There is a web site entitled, "Things I know are true but can't prove". Maybe I should send them an email.

Here is a part of the puzzle I think others have missed.

If an enemy of America were to pair the Cloward-Piven strategy to the principles of the new science of networks, it would be possible to target a hub in a system, create a crisis, and by causing that hub to fail, create a domino effect in other hubs and the rest of the system. See here:
A news release from UMass Amherst
and
Doug Simpson's weblog of research on the collision of law, networks and disruptive technologies
And a link to the most popular book on the subject Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age by Duncan Watts

"Columbia Professor Duncan J. Watts builds on the work of mathematicians, physicists, biologists, sociologists, economists and others to advance the new science of networks. "Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age " brings a sociologist's perspective to a field relevant to those dealing with complex systems and their robustness and fragility under stress. The science of networks has significance for those wrestling with current issues of law and public policy in a wide spectrum of applications including electric power grids, insurance markets and anti-terror measures.In 1999, Barabasi and Albert published a ground breaking paper "Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks." Science, 286, 509-512. (1999). This paper showed that certain connections in real world networks don't have a normal ("bell curve") distribution but rather follow a power law distribution. This means that there is an increased likelihood of extreme events in such "scale free" networks. As a result, in scale-free networks, as networks evolve, a few nodes will be "hubs" with an extraordinary number of connections. Barabasi and Albert also found that the evolution of these hubs depended on the combination of network growth and "preferential attachment" - the tendency for new nodes to connect to those already well connected (the "rich get richer" effect.)"

The major reason other political commentators have not addressed the issue of network science is that only mathematicians and scientists understand it. My feeble attempt at a "plain speak" translation is that all networks tend to form hubs that are connected to thousands of other networks, and more importantly, to other hubs. These hubs are vulnerable to a "created crisis" and when that happens the entire web collapses, be it the World Wide Web or the web of the U.S. economy.

National security experts are well aware of the vulnerability of network hubs and publish Network Vulnerability and Risk Assessment reports. This one is researched and published by DTIC Provider of DoD Technical Information to Support The Defense Community. One of the points to note is that: "Threats that originate inside the network tend to have the ability to exploit vulnerabilities in a serial form. This allows the attacker to traverse or "leap-frog" across the network to an advantageous position". The most likely scenario would expect the attack to come from inside the network when we are looking at the financial network. I have read this risk assessment and it is too general to connect dots as to how a financial "crisis" might be timed and executed, but it is very clear that it can happen.

We know how leftist activists created a crisis and turned the mortgage lending business into a "mortgage welfare entitlement" lending policy. We know that the hub we know as "mortgage banking" failed, bringing down the rest of the economy with it. What we don't know is how the failure was timed.

My guess is that the science of networks was used to tilt the election in Obama's favor and damage the economy to such an extent that reshaping it along a socialist paradigm became possible.

One of my hopes in writing this article is to encourage real network scientists to take a look at my hypothesis. One friend who is a scientist at Amherst says I am on the right track, but that isn't enough to make a definitive statement.

Remember all that talk about how savvy the Obama campaign was about using the Internet? Remember all those Internet CEO's who were on the Obama team? Remember that George Soros, "the man who broke the Bank of England", the king of creating market and currency crisis, was on Obama's team? Can you really imagine a likely scenario where these people do not know about network science and how to use a created crisis to get what they want?

We know for sure that a crisis was deliberately created with malice aforethought by enemies of our country and liberal politicians. They overtly said they would do it and they did. Many of these created events have damaged our nation since 1970. The culprits aren't even trying to hide the fact that they did it. Decent Americans have trouble believing that people could deliberately do something so evil. That is how deliberately evil people pull the wool over the eyes of decent people.

This isn't a conspiracy theory. No black helicopters or deep throats. It isn't hidden and it isn't secret. It is easily visible for those who have eyes to see. Those radical socialists who used deliberately created crisis tactics were successful beyond their expectations. I am reminded of Osama Ben Laden's pleasant surprise when he was informed about how successful the 9/11 attack had been. I imagine Obama shares Osama's elation over his unlikely success.

Aristotle the Hun, the Reverend Big Goon, and Good Shepherd Sam

I.O. Epilogue ~

Look, all you who kindle a fire,
Who encircle yourselves with sparks:
Walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks you have kindled-
This you shall have from My hand:
You shall lie down in torment.

- Isaiah 50:11, NKJV

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.

photo of ACORN demonstrator "capitalizing" upon ACORN's sabatoge, from Wikipedia
hat tip for Scripture: Bobby Conner
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Posted by Arlen Williams at 7:19 AM
Labels: ACORN, Cloward-Piven, crisis, economic terrorism, Marxism, Mortgage Crisis, Saul Alinsky
6 comments:

John said...

Obama Birth Certificate: Senator Shelby Comment:

http://www.rightpundits.com/?p=2936
February 24, 2009 2:19 PM
John said...

Soldier doubts eligibility, defies president's orders:
'As an officer, my sworn oath to support and defend our Constitution requires this'

http://www.wnd.com/static/89837.html
February 24, 2009 2:37 PM
CAPT-DAX said...

One of Obama's early mentors in the Alinsky method, Mike Kruglik, would say the following about Obama:

"He was a natural, the undisputed master of agitation,who could engage a room full of recruiting targets in a rapid-fire Socratic dialogue,nudging them to admit that they were not living up to their own standards.

As with the panhandler,he could be aggressive and confrontational.

With probing, sometimes personal questions, he would pinpoint the source of pain in their lives, tearing down their egos just enough before dangling a carrot of hope that they could make things better."
February 24, 2009 9:00 PM
nicedeb said...

Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book, Rules for Radicals.

You mean 1971 book.
February 25, 2009 12:56 AM
Anonymous said...

Morris has his own angle on it:

http://thehill.com/dick-morris/its-obama-spreading-panic-2009-02-24.html

It's Obama spreading panic
February 26, 2009 3:22 PM
Anonymous said...

It's well known (established historical fact anyhow) that from the 1940s that FBI infiltrators in the Communist Party and leftist groups outnumbered the revolutionaries and the nutjobs. It's worse today. Start up any group with an agenda in any way critical of political, social, military, judicial, corporate, environmental, or law enforcement policy and you will attract federal, state, or military snoopers reporting, guiding, or frustrating unwanted activism. Like who ? Dangerous subversives like anti-death penalty groups...you name it.

"Reverend Goon" is an example replicated hundreds of thousands of times over decades: authorities have got mountains of intelligence on who, what, where, when and how. Quoting "Reverend Goon:" "...how perfectly, easily, and quickly I had infiltrated the radical community in KC. It wasn't that hard. Almost everyone was doing acid and grass. Every weekend there was a wild carnival..." As I wrote in another post here: "Are we seriously being asked to believe that Obama's Marxist and Communist cohorts - from the high security of campus coffee bars and urban crack dens - commanded the manipulation of hundreds of billions of dollars in capital markets..." Of course they didn't and it is mischievous to say they did. For Sewell to claim that the US economy was "stabbed in the back" (Ludendorff and Hitler) when "leftist activists created a crisis...bringing down the rest of the economy with it...the failure was timed" is demonstrably absurd, paranoid, and manufacturing a scapegoat. As Sewell is an ex-spook I am amazed and shocked that he is not more familiar with his ex-colleagues track record of massive surveillance, disinformation, and disruption against these deluded left-wing activists. I think there is part of the puzzle Sewell himself has missed:

There is manufactured crisis and necessary crisis.

The US economy is so extended and ramshackle that crisis and crash is inevitable, both in terms of markets finding their true levels (property, finance, manufacturing etc.) and of the tax-hikes and cutbacks that must accommodate to the new realities - all this is necessary not because I want to see it happen but because, as in aerodynamics so in economics, "what goes up must come down." There is no economic philosophy or school that can prevent this happening; it can be delayed but that only multiplies the ultimate consequences - like any subprime loser would experience juggling credit cards, loans, a ballooning mortgage, bills, ex-wives, six children, a booze problem etc all while on short-time.

Then there is manufactured crisis and manufactured crisis.

For two centuries the American economy has periodically been held to ransom over of regular cycles by homegrown predatory - I'm sorry, "free enterprise" - banking which time after time has undermined regulation, kited the market beyond capacity, taken their profits, crashed the economy, then shoved rescue (ransom) demands at government because the finance sector cannot be allowed to fail and government needs money to function. More stable and more successful economies don't finance industry or investment this way but then they don't have a "free enterprise" robber-baron culture which buys up government and manufactures crises for gain. You might call this a "fun for some" crisis.

But manufacturing crises can have a more serious side.

Strategic power can be undermined by imperial overstretch and deficit spending when trying to maintain a "place in the sun" (Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1901). A good example is the Soviet Union in the 1980s, spending vast amounts of money it did not have to maintain an imperial regime: with only a small manufacturing base to sustain its military budget the USSR relied on reducing consumption and services to rock bottom to stay "in the sun", but even this could not be sustained when the Soviets were overloaded with currency pressures, bailouts, falling revenues, increased borrowing etc and then everything went straight down a badly maintained nasty Russian sewer.

The US ? Where do I start ? Inflation and unemployment figures faked by successive administrations to mask our real deteriorating economic status ? The export of manufacturing by Corporate America ? Feeble industries unable to withstand foreign competition begging to be propped up by government handouts ? A military budget built on vast loans from "friends" like China and Saudi Arabia ? Unimaginable sums of funny-money pumped into the bottomless abyss of already failed financial sectors ? I could go on but you get the picture: our economy is like a hugely and morbidly obese individual who will not and cannot stop eating, believing the only way out of his predicament is to keep eating - and his family keep bringing him food in that same belief. Anybody can see this dysfunctional family needs radical treatment and that sick man needs a reducing diet to survive.

Before we get anywhere near the "Secret Masters Of The World" manufacturing a crisis for America these "Secret Masters" will have to get in line: our own domestic secret masters are fully aware (if we are they are !) that a lot of fat and disease is going to have to be cut away from the bloated carcass of the American body economic if we are not going to succumb to inflated imperial delusions like the Soviet Union and collapse under the weight as they did. We were warned in the late 1980s by Paul Kennedy (The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers) what was likely to happen to the US - everyone here dismissed his analysis with "We are different, we are America ! We will never go the way of..." Yeah, yeah. End of history (Francis Fukuyama 1992), my dimpled asterisks.

Getting carved up by the "Secret Masters Of The World" is the crisis after next: the "Secret Masters Of Here and Now" have to ensure that America survives in some form which leaves them still at the top calling the shots. That's their impossible dilemma: how to crash the system while a) not threatening the US strategic position internationally and b) when everybody at home is so brainwashed they voted for the pain to be passed onto someone else. Every time we have seen the preferred solution of the "Secret Masters Of Here and Now" imposed abroad in recent decades it has entailed a catastrophic impoverishment for both the working and middle classes, a draconian reduction of government expenditure and services which "bankrupts society back to the stone age" (eg barter in Argentina), the looting of government coffers by corrupt politicians and business interests, and the terror of non-constitutional Gestapo rule to make it all stick. Nobody in these circumstances, looking through the wire of a detention camp or picking through a dump to feed their family, imagines for a second that those in authority have one shred of remorse or mercy about any of this. For the junta, the oligarchs, and the interrogators it's all in a day's work, this is how they conduct business. And it's everything the United States was to supposed to stand against.

So let's get real: before the last election it was only to be expected that no Republican would win the presidential "election". Cue your sincere new best friend, the family-trained liar, the skilled manipulator with an uncheckable past, the trustworthy professor with a once-in-a-lifetime Golden Opportunity, the con game's roper to hook the rubes with day-dreams and phoney birth Certifications. The King is fated to and must fall, and we're going to do it for "them", so that no blame attaches to whoever "they" (the "Secret Masters Of Here and Now") are. What does America look like subsequently ? Is it Russia 1991 and Yeltsin didn't prevail -- or is it 1993, after Yeltsin did prevail ? The frying-pan or the fire ? Which was better for the USSR ? For Russia ? For its people ? For the military ? For the oligarchs ? For the world ? Russians are predicting we'll fall apart too. Sour grapes ? Unthinkable ? That's what Ivan thought. All I know is there are now (according to Forbes) more billionaires in Russia than anywhere else, with private armies of hitmen and KGB "garbage disposal" working for a KGB government to make sure it stays that way. And we haven't even got to the "Secret Masters Of The World" yet ! With all this to worry about, who cares ?

Perhaps even King Obama doesn't know he's expendable, they didn't tell him that...he's so hooked on the game, so intoxicated with his own ability to lie and con, he could never imagine they'd play him and set loose the dogs. Well he is and they're making us all complicit - how's that for a sting ? We're the suckers whichever way it goes...

Maybe not: the National Grand Jury being organized by Stephen Pidgeon et al seeks to investigate not just King Obama but his facilitating henchmen, but we must not stop there. We the People are doomed if we allow the Constitution and law which alone protect us to be ignored, diminished, or set aside. Other Grand Juries should be formed to investigate all those who brushed the People off with contempt and undermined our Sovereign Authority. Think Democrat and Republican parties. Think Congress. Think Fed. Think Regulators and Bankers etc. All it takes is a People with endurance, character, and discipline -- the way we were in 1776:

"We have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to attest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave..." Patrick Henry, Address to the Virginia Provincial Convention, March 23, 1775

PdeB
March 4, 2009 3:25 PM

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Why does Alan Keyes call Barack Obama a "usurper" and a "communist?"

"The Awakening," with Hanen & Arlen on The Sentinel Radio Network

Interview of Alan Keyes, Monday 2/23, 8pm ET, archived for streaming or downloading, immediately followed by Tom Hoefling, Chairman, America's Independent Party

Investigating Obama and helping you fight for freedom

The Sentinel Radio Network Blog

Natural Born Citizenist, Obamologist & Nobamist Net-Radio

* MommaE & the Radio Rebels
* Sandy Rios Show, Chicago's WYLL AM-1160, M-F 3-5pm CT, Stream
* Sandy Rios Show, Obama Archives
* Solutions Not Politics, Devvy Kidd, 6pm PT, 9pm ET + Rebroadcasts
* The Awakening, with Hanen & Arlen, Monday eve. 9pm ET,,,6pm PT

Obama, Emanuel & a "Civilian National Security Force"

"...just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded."
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Barack Obama, Strategist for Forced Redistribution

pesky Constitution anyway...
Barack Obama & the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis I
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Conspiracy of Lemmings: Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis II
Conspiracy of Lemmings: Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis II
After connecting the dots, Jim Simpson fills in the colors
About Investigating Obama
The campaign for America to understand Barack Obama goes on. Facts are documented in the original articles, via Web links to valid sources. Factual dots are connected with historically informed reason. Original postings may not be frequent, but are intended for value. 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.

Believe Barack Obama, when he says he will (keep working with comrades in this nation and others, to) change the world.

Pray and work effectively, for an American America, for all Americans, and a free world. Consider what others have sacrificed for these.

Arlen Williams
former movement volunteer organizer, Chicagoland
arlenwilliams /at/ yahoo /dot/ com
twitter.com/ArlenWilliams

PS: I know movement politics very well. Dedicated activists with shared motives, goals, and objectives coordinate their activities. They communicate regularly and operate together in their roles, or movements do not move. "History is the history of conspiracy," whether for good or ill.
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Further Obama Appraisals - some caught on quickly, others are discovering

* "The night we waved goodbye to America... our last best hope on Earth" Peter Hitchens, Daily Mail
* "What We Know About Obama" Stanley Kurtz, NRO
* "Socialism in Disguise" Ian de Silva, Washington Times
* "Obama's Socialist Background" Is2C, FreeRepublic.com
* "Obama's Radicalism: Destroying the Constitution" Manchester Union Leader
* "Barack Obama's Radical Positions on Abortion" Jill Stanek
* "Pinch Yourself" (Marxist on the verge of U.S. Presidency) - Spectator
* "The Comprehensive Argument Against Barack Obama" Morrisey, Benson, Ham

Obama Watch, NewsBusters.org
21 Days of Prayer and Fasting for Awakening, January 1-21
For Christians, from the prayer ministry, Generals International:

The United States Reformation* Prayer Network urges individuals, families, and churches to join us in 21 Days of prayer and fasting for "Awakening" in America, January 1-21, 2009. This period begins New Year's Day and extends through the last days of the outgoing President, the inauguration of a new President, and his first full day in office.

1/13: Special, emergency announcement for Christian intercessors; link to video

Rescue me, O Lord, from liars and from all deceitful people" Psalm 120:2 As quoted in "Lies and Plenty of Them" by Marie Jon in Renew America

*not a reference to Reformation denominations
Change.gov
Sandy Rios - Interviews & Research on Obama
Sandy Rios - Interviews & Research on Obama
Revelatory audio tracks from Sandy Rios, WYLL-AM 1160, Chicago, streamed 3-5pm CT weekdays
Osawatomie: Weather Underground newspaper (Ayers Manifesto: socialism thru community organizing)
Osawatomie: Weather Underground newspaper (Ayers Manifesto: socialism thru community organizing)
Zomblog shows Ayers in the thick of Alinsky/Obama style organizing
Obama's four atrocious actions aginast Born Alive Infant Protection
Obama: Social Security & Driver's Licenses for Illegal Aliens
A Citizen's Response To The Obama-mercial - Part I of III

TheMouthPeace
Obama's Communist, Marxist Influences

Over the top? Well, Obama is.
Do Not Violate Natural Law
Do Not Violate Natural Law
Violating the laws of nature brings consequences. wtop.com, photo: Gilbert Genn, h/t: Sean Michael
Web Sites with Apparent Leftist Bias Behind Facades of Objectivity

* factcheck.org
* obamaconspiracy.org
* opednews.com
* snopes.com
* zz - most broadcast news
* zz - most newspapers
* zz - the news service oligopoly

Your Feedback Requested: About how many I.O. articles do you want to see on the Front Page? (I think they have to be listed in their entirety with blogger, but checking.)
To the Hillary Voting PUMA's
America needs you. The overriding political contest is now between Americanists and anti-Americanists (Marxists, Islamists, racists, etc.).

Thank you for sticking to your guns (and religion ;-) in opposing the insurgency represented by Barack Obama and his comrades.

I hope you may accept that America was founded upon our Creator endowed rights and that chief among these is the Right to Life. I hope you will not be uncomfortable with those who point out some unfortunate similarities between HRC and BHO.

You are welcomed with open arms. Please help us keep them -- ammunition, too.

(And please don't be put on the spot. I may write a note down here for conventional party folk and independents, too.)
To Those of Deviant Views, Philosophy & Character:
To the Marxists, racists, and bigots who read this page, or who link to it -- to any with a un-American attitude of whatever kind -- you are welcome to read and you are welcome to repent of the sins of these defiled views. Seek the light, while it shines for you.
To Anyone Out There Who May Be Considering Bad Behavior
Do not be a fool. We still have a Constitution we must fight for, by constitutional means. In our nation, a criminal act for political motive is a further attack upon the Constitution and our own American principles. We may defend ourselves and our castles. We must not give away the moral high ground.

|3.10.09 @ 2:59AM|#

What would cause someone to believe that any soul would read all that crap in thread comment format?

Anthony|3.10.09 @ 9:35AM|#

Art -- I didn't.

In any event, this is not a "manufactured" crisis -- it is like an old fashioned financial panic.

|3.10.09 @ 10:54AM|#

WTFO

Loupeznik|3.10.09 @ 11:23AM|#

This just makes me want to buy more ammo ...and maybe some magazines

john|3.10.09 @ 12:09PM|#

Obama is a verbal ju-jitsu master. I think the key part of his call-back message is last sentence first paragraph. He is actually able to verbally put the NYT into the same camp as Bush, for asking Obama if he is socialist. This is the tribal dynamic -- if you are not loyal to the chief you will be kicked out of the tribe. The arch-representatives of 'outside-the-tribe' are Bush, Cheney, and Limbaugh. (Though people prefer not to mess with Cheney, god bless him)

|3.10.09 @ 10:23PM|#

"Tribal dynamic." More simpering 18th C. dandy talk coming from yet another right-wing nut poseur. Only right-wing nuts and toothless old hippies read the New York Times anymore.