THIS IS A REPEAT OF AN ARTICLE FIRST OUT IN JULY 08. THIS ARTICLE SHOULD BE REQUIRED READING FOR EVERY VOTER. IT WILL BRING YOU TO YOU FEET AND SHARPEN YOUR THROUGHT PROCESSES PRIOR TO MAKING THE CHECK MARK OR PUNCHING THE HOLE OR PULLING THE HANDLE AT YOU VOTING MACHINE. PLEASE ALERT YOUR FRIENDS TO THIS SITE IT IS THAT IMPORTANT. THANK YOU DAVE THANKS BILL FOR BRINGING THIS BACK. WE APPRECIATE IT.
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Barack Obama's Stealth Socialism
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY - July 28, 2008
Election '08: Before friendly audiences, Barack Obama
speaks passionately about something called "economic
justice." He uses the term obliquely, though, speaking in
code — socialist code.
During his NAACP speech earlier this month, Sen.
Obama repeated the term at least four times. "I've been
working my entire adult life to help build an America
where economic justice is being served," he said at the
group's 99th annual convention in Cincinnati.
Obama has styled himself a centrist. But a look at those
who've served as his advisers and mentors over the years
shows a far more left-leaning tilt to his background —
and to his politics.
And as president, "we'll ensure that economic justice is
served," he asserted. "That's what this election is about."
Obama never spelled out the meaning of the term, but he
didn't have to. His audience knew what he meant, judging
from its thumping approval.
It's the rest of the public that remains in the dark, which is
why we're launching this special educational series.
"Economic justice" simply means punishing the
successful and redistributing their wealth by government
fiat. It's a euphemism for socialism.
In the past, such rhetoric was just that — rhetoric. But
Obama's positioning himself with alarming stealth to put
that rhetoric into action on a scale not seen since the birth
of the welfare state.
In his latest memoir he shares that he'd like to "recast" the
welfare net that FDR and LBJ cast while rolling back
what he derisively calls the "winner-take-all" market
economy that Ronald Reagan reignited (with record gains
in living standards for all).
Obama also talks about "restoring fairness to the
economy," code for soaking the "rich" — a segment of
society he fails to understand that includes mom-and-pop
businesses filing individual tax returns.
It's clear from a close reading of his two books that he's a
firm believer in class envy. He assumes the economy is a
fixed pie, whereby the successful only get rich at the
expense of the poor.
Following this discredited Marxist model, he believes
government must step in and redistribute pieces of the pie.
That requires massive transfers of wealth through
government taxing and spending, a return to the
entitlement days of old.
Of course, Obama is too smart to try to smuggle such
hoary collectivist garbage through the front door. He's
disguising the wealth transfers as "investments" — "to
make America more competitive," he says, or "that give
us a fighting chance," whatever that means.
Among his proposed "investments":
• "Universal," "guaranteed" health care.
• "Free" college tuition.
• "Universal national service" (a la Havana).
• "Universal 401(k)s" (in which the government would
match contributions made by "low- and moderate-income
families").
• "Free" job training (even for criminals).
• "Wage insurance" (to supplement dislocated union workers' old income levels).
• "Free" child care and "universal" preschool.
• More subsidized public housing.
• A fatter earned income tax credit for "working poor."
• And even a Global Poverty Act that amounts to a
Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost
Africa.
His new New Deal also guarantees a "living wage," with a
$10 minimum wage indexed to inflation; and "fair trade"
and "fair labor practices," with breaks for "patriot
employers" who cow-tow to unions, and sticks for
"nonpatriot" companies that don't.
That's just for starters — first-term stuff.
Obama doesn't stop with socialized health care. He wants
to socialize your entire human resources department —
from payrolls to pensions. His social-microengineering
even extends to mandating all employers provide seven
paid sick days per year to salary and hourly workers alike.
You can see why Obama was ranked, hands-down, the
most liberal member of the Senate by the National
Journal. Some, including colleague and presidential
challenger John McCain, think he's the most liberal
member in Congress.
But could he really be "more left," as McCain recently
remarked, than self-described socialist Sen. Bernie
Sanders (for whom Obama has openly campaigned, even
making a special trip to Vermont to rally voters)?
Obama's voting record, going back to his days in the
Illinois statehouse, says yes. His career path — and those
who guided it — leads to the same unsettling conclusion.
The seeds of his far-left ideology were planted in his
formative years as a teenager in Hawaii — and they were
far more radical than any biography or profile in the
media has portrayed.
A careful reading of Obama's first memoir, "Dreams
From My Father," reveals that his childhood mentor up to
age 18 — a man he cryptically refers to as "Frank" — was
none other than the late communist Frank Marshall Davis,
who fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened
investigations into his "subversive," "un-American
activities."
As Obama was preparing to head off to college, he sat at
Davis' feet in his Waikiki bungalow for nightly bull
sessions. Davis plied his impressionable guest with liberal
doses of whiskey and advice, including: Never trust the
white establishment.
"They'll train you so good," he said, "you'll start believing
what they tell you about equal opportunity and the
American way and all that sh**."
After college, where he palled around with Marxist
professors and took in socialist conferences "for
inspiration," Obama followed in Davis' footsteps,
becoming a "community organizer" in Chicago.
His boss there was Gerald Kellman, whose identity
Obama also tries to hide in his book. Turns out Kellman's
a disciple of the late Saul "The Red" Alinsky, a hard-
boiled Chicago socialist who wrote the "Rules for
Radicals" and agitated for social revolution in America.
The Chicago-based Woods Fund provided Kellman with
his original $25,000 to hire Obama. In turn, Obama would
later serve on the Woods board with terrorist Bill Ayers of
the Weather Underground. Ayers was one of Obama's
early political supporters.
After three years agitating with marginal success for more
welfare programs in South Side Chicago, Obama decided
he would need to study law to "bring about real change"
— on a large scale.
—
While at Harvard Law School, he still found time to hone
his organizing skills. For example, he spent eight days in
Los Angeles taking a national training course taught by
Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation. With his newly
minted law degree, he returned to Chicago to reapply —
as well as teach — Alinsky's "agitation" tactics.
(A video-streamed bio on Obama's Web site includes a
photo of him teaching in a University of Chicago
classroom. If you freeze the frame and look closely at the
blackboard Obama is writing on, you can make out the
words "Power Analysis" and "Relationships Built on Self
Interest" — terms right out of Alinsky's rule book.)
Amid all this, Obama reunited with his late father's
communist tribe in Kenya, the Luo, during trips to Africa.
As a Nairobi bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a
Harvard-educated economist, grew to challenge the ruling
pro-Western government for not being socialist enough.
In an eight-page scholarly paper published in 1965, he
argued for eliminating private farming and nationalizing
businesses "owned by Asians and Europeans."
His ideas for communist-style expropriation didn't stop
there. He also proposed massive taxes on the rich to
"redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all."
"Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the
government from taxing 100% of income so long as the
people get benefits from the government commensurate
with their income which is taxed," Obama Sr. wrote. "I do
not see why the government cannot tax those who have
more and syphon some of these revenues into savings
which can be utilized in investment for future
development."
Taxes and "investment" . . . the fruit truly does not fall far
from the vine.
(Voters might also be interested to know that Obama, the
supposed straight shooter, does not once mention his
father's communist leanings in an entire book dedicated to
his memory.)
In Kenya's recent civil unrest, Obama privately phoned
the leader of the opposition Luo tribe, Raila Odinga, to
voice his support. Odinga is so committed to communism
he named his oldest son after Fidel Castro.
With his African identity sewn up, Obama returned to
Chicago and fell under the spell of an Afrocentric pastor.
It was a natural attraction. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright
preaches a Marxist version of Christianity called "black
liberation theology" and has supported the communists in
Cuba, Nicaragua and elsewhere.
Obama joined Wright's militant church, pledging
allegiance to a system of "black values" that demonizes
white "middle classness" and other mainstream pursuits.
(Obama in his first book, published in 1995, calls such
values "sensible." There's no mention of them in his new
book.)
With the large church behind him, Obama decided to run
for political office, where he could organize for "change"
more effectively. "As an elected official," he said, "I
could bring church and community leaders together easier
than I could as a community organizer or lawyer."
He could also exercise real, top-down power, the kind that
grass-roots activists lack. Alinsky would be proud.
Throughout his career, Obama has worked closely with a
network of stone-cold socialists and full-blown
communists striving for "economic justice."
He's been traveling in an orbit of collectivism that runs
from Nairobi to Honolulu, and on through Chicago to
Washington.
Yet a recent AP poll found that only 6% of Americans
would describe Obama as "liberal," let alone socialist.
Public opinion polls usually reflect media opinion, and
the media by and large have portrayed Obama as a
moderate "outsider" (the No. 1 term survey respondents
associate him with) who will bring a "breath of fresh air"
to Washington.
The few who have drilled down on his radical roots have
tended to downplay or pooh-pooh them. Even skeptics
have failed to connect the dots for fear of being called the
dreaded "r" word.
But too much is at stake in this election to continue
mincing words.
Both a historic banking crisis and 1970s-style stagflation
loom over the economy. Democrats, who already control
Congress, now threaten to filibuster-proof the Senate in
what could be a watershed election for them — at both
ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
A perfect storm of statism is forming, and our economic
freedoms are at serious risk.
Those who care less about looking politically correct than
preserving the free-market individualism that's made this
country great have to start calling things by their proper
name to avert long-term disaster.
[If Obama is elected, with Pelosi and Reid heading up
the congressional houses, America is doomed and a lot
faster than the present rush to oblivion.
Read Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged. If the business
leaders will put aside greed and join John Galt by
stopping production, this socialist threat can be
overcome.
It did happen once and by one man – Consolidated
Aircraft’s founder, manager, and successful leader –
Reuben H. Fleet. After moving the employees, factory,
and operations from Buffalo, N.Y. to San Diego in
1935, Consolidated became the largest employer with
over 40,000 employees, the largest producer of aircraft
in Southern California, developer of new training
techniques that the workers used the rest of their lives,
and backer of one of the first large (3,000 homes) low
cost, housing developments in the nation. High taxes
and government interference in his business motivated
him to sell his stock and retire after World War II. He
lived for another 18 years, producing nothing,
contributing nothing, and San Diego and the world
lost. If many producers will do the same, socialism can
be defeated.
Remember, when the income tax was being debated in
1912, one senator wanted to put a cap of 15% on the
maximum tax the government could collect. He was
laughed off the floor because “if the government ever
tries to tax more than 15%, the American people will
revolt.”
Well, they are trying to revolt, now, but for “Change”
without understanding what this “Change” means.
The above Article should be read by anyone with
character and who can think logically. Then, it should
be read again!
The Spirit of Karl Marx is alive and well!
