Of the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command — 1 Chronicles 12:32
The Los Angeles Times print edition ran this story on July 2 under the considerably more Marxist headline, “Wealthy benefit from recovery as workers struggle“:
WASHINGTON (AP) — This is one anniversary few feel like celebrating.
Two years after economists say the Great Recession ended, the recovery has been the weakest and most lopsided of any since the 1930s.
After previous recessions, people in all income groups tended to benefit. This time, ordinary Americans are struggling with job insecurity, too much debt and pay raises that haven’t kept up with prices at the grocery store and gas station. The economy’s meager gains are going mostly to the wealthiest.
Workers’ wages and benefits make up 57.5 percent of the economy, an all-time low. Until the mid-2000s, that figure had been remarkably stable — about 64 percent through boom and bust alike.
[…]
But if the Great Recession is long gone from Wall Street and corporate boardrooms, it lingers on Main Street:
— Unemployment has never been so high — 9.1 percent — this long after any recession since World War II. At the same point after the previous three recessions, unemployment averaged just 6.8 percent.
— The average worker’s hourly wages, after accounting for inflation, were 1.6 percent lower in May than a year earlier. Rising gasoline and food prices have devoured any pay raises for most Americans.
— The jobs that are being created pay less than the ones that vanished in the recession. Higher-paying jobs in the private sector, the ones that pay roughly $19 to $31 an hour, made up 40 percent of the jobs lost from January 2008 to February 2010 but only 27 percent of the jobs created since then.
[…]
Hard times have made Americans more dependent than ever on social programs, which accounted for a record 18 percent of personal income in the last three months of 2010 before coming down a bit this year. Almost 45 million Americans are on food stamps, another record.
[…]
Because the labor market remains so weak, most workers can’t demand bigger raises or look for better jobs.
“In an economic cycle that is turning up, a labor market that is healthy and vibrant, you’d see a large number of people quitting their jobs,” says Gluskin Sheff economist Rosenberg. “They quit because the grass is greener somewhere else.”
Instead, workers are toughing it out, thankful they have jobs at all. Just 1.7 million workers have quit their job each month this year, down from 2.8 million a month in 2007.
The toll of all this shows in consumer confidence, a measure of how good people feel about the economy. According to the Conference Board’s index, it’s at 58.5. Healthy is more like 90. By this point after the past three recessions, it was an average of 87.
How gloomy are Americans? A USA Today/Gallup poll eight weeks ago found that 55 percent think the recession continues, even if the experts say it’s been over for two years. That includes the 29 percent who go even further — they say it feels more like a depression.
Allow me to start with the second paragraph in the story:
“Two years after economists say the Great Recession ended, the recovery has been the weakest and most lopsided of any since the 1930s.”
The weakest and most lopsided of any recovery since the 1930s, you say???
WHO WAS PRESIDENT IN THE 1930s? WHICH PARTY DOMINATED BOTH THE HOUSE AND THE SENATE IN THE 1930s?
And next let me ask you, “Are there any similarities between socialist Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt and socialist Democrat Barack Hussein Obama??? And the answer is, “HELL YES THERE ARE!!!”:
Which is to say, “This is the worst the U.S. economy has ever been since the LAST time we had a socialist just like FDR – and the mainstream media proudly hailed Obama as FDR and Obama’s as a NEW “New Deal.”
Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt. After scrutinizing Roosevelt’s record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.
”Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump,” said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA’s Department of Economics. ”We found that a relapse isn’t likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies.”
In an article in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Ohanian and Cole blame specific anti-competition and pro-labor measures that Roosevelt promoted and signed into law June 16, 1933.
[…]
”The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes,” Cole said. ”Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened.”
And of course all the “experts” the mainstream media love to trot out have all bought hook, line and sinker the notion that capitalism is something to be loathed and feared. So they demand that America pursue asinine government stimulus policies that fail even by the “experts'” own standards, and then these same “experts” proceed to argue that the economy failing to recover somehow is proof that more of the same thing that already failed is necessary.
These “experts” whom the mainstream media give a loud microphone to to espouse their socialist views are pathologically incapable of seeing this connection between socialist policies and an economy in the doldrums. Every bit of negative economic news is invariably “unexpected” (liberals favorite adjective to wave a hand at bad economic developments whenever a Democrat president is in charge), because these “experts” cannot separate the inevitable results of their ideology from their terribly failed ideology. There has to be a disconnect, or more commonly, a scapegoat.
I think of the Soviet Union, which literally blamed the total failure of their entire political philosophy and the ruinous policies that philosophy entailed by claiming that their agricultural output had been adversely affected due to 72 years of bad weather. And the Soviet Union has gone the way of the Dodo bird for that very reason.
Is America under Obama the next Dodo bird to fall apart while we’re assured that everything is fine while some suitable scapegoat bears the blame for every failure that can’t be ignored???
It couldn’t be the fact that socialism is nothing more than state-planned economic failure. It had to be something else, ANYTHING else.
The Big Brother from the novel 1984 had Emmanuel Goldstein. The Big Brother who is now occupying our White House has George W. Bush.
The next obvious question to ask and answer is, “Why are the wealthy benefitting while the workers struggle?”
The answer is twofold: 1) because when you attack the employers, the first thing to go is the employees and 2) because that’s exactly how crony capitalism works.
There is a magnificent book entitled, New Deal Or Raw Deal? How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America, which should be required reading. Burton Folsom Jr. points out that when FDR structured his many policies and regulations that strangled economic growth, he did so in such a way that favored the big crony capitalist corporations at the expense of the smaller businesses that could no longer compete given the costly regulatory requirements. The smaller businesses were forced out of the market while the big businesses protected themselves with insider deals based on access to and influence with the government that only they could afford. And there is no question whatsoever that – even as FDR employed the class warfare of socialism – the rich got richer while the poor got poorer. Income tax revenues plunged as the wealthy sheltered their wealth from the high tax rates and the poor paid an increasingly high overall percentage of tax revenues via excise taxes. Regulations mandating higher pay for workers priced those workers right out of their jobs. Folsom provides the official data to back it up.
In 1929, prior to FDR demonizing the rich, income taxes accounted for 38% of total revenue collected, and corporate income taxes accounted for 43%. Excise taxes which burdened the poor only counted for 19% of revenues. By 1938, the rich and the corporations had protected themselves from FDR’s demagogic tax policies (but the poor couldn’t), such that the only 24% was collected in income taxes (versus 38%) and only 29% from corporate income taxes (versus 43%). Meanwhile the poor-punishing excise taxes (e.g. gasoline tax) soared from 19% to 47% of the total taxes collected. Meanwhile, when income taxes were kept low, the wealthy invariably paid FAR MORE in the total tax revenue as they put their money out to invest in and expand the economy in pursuit of the profits. And they created millions of jobs in doing so.
And the exact same mindset is yielding the exact same results ALL OVER AGAIN. Obama has put the fear of God (actually the fear of the Soviet-style STATE) into the wealthy and the corporations. They keep hearing Obama demagogue them, and they keep sheltering their money. And they will CONTINUE to keep doing that until the threat of Obama is gone. Just like they did with FDR.
That said, there is also a deliberate and fundamental misunderstanding of fascism by the left. If you read leftists, you come away thinking that somehow “fascism” is the takeover of a state by corporations. But stop and think: Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann, Hess and all the other key Nazis WEREN’T corporate CEOs who took over the state; THEY WERE SOCIALIST POLITICIANS WHO TOOK OVER THE CORPORATIONS. They usurped the corporations and FORCED them to perform THEIR agenda. They either performed the Nazis’ will or they were simply taken away from their rightful owners and nationalized.
And to the degree that German crony capitalist corporations helped Hitler in his rise to power, THEY WERE JUST MORE USEFUL IDIOTS.
The same sort of takeover of German corporations by socialists is building in America. Take Maxine Waters, a liberal Democrat, as the perfect example. What did she say of the oil companies?
“This liberal will be all about socializing … uh uh … would be about … basically … taking over … and the government running all of your companies.”
THAT’S what Hitler did, too. Hitler got this power through regulations that required corporations to do his bidding, just like Obama has now REPEATEDLY done.
I stand by that sweeping statement. People need to realize that “Nazi” stood for “National SOCIALIST German Workers Party,” and that both Nazi socialism and Soviet socialism were big government socialist tyrannies that failed their people. As to our own experiment with socialism here in the USA, I point out in an article that explains how “Government Sponsored Enterprises” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac policies led us into economic implosion in spite of warnings for YEARS prior to the 2008 economic collapse:
The timeline is clear: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were giant behemoths that began to stagger under their own corrupt weight, as even the New York Timespointed out:
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are so big — they own or guarantee roughly half of the nation’s $12 trillion mortgage market — that the thought that they might falter once seemed unimaginable. But now a trickle of worries about the companies, which has been slowly building for years, has suddenly become a torrent.
And it was FANNIE and FREDDIE that collapsed FIRST before ANY of the private investment banks, which collapsed as a result of having purchased the very mortgaged backed securities that the Government Sponsored Enterprises SOLD THEM. It wasn’t until Fannie and Freddie collapsed that investors began to look with horror at all the junk that these GSE boondoggles had been pimping.
The man who predicted the collapse in 1999 wrote a follow-up article titled, “Blame Fannie Mae and Congress For the Credit Mess.” It really should have read, “Blame DEMOCRATS.” Because they were crawling all over these GSEs that they had themselves created like the cockroaches they are. But Wallison is nonpartisan
That Chicago corruption extends right into Obama’s home, by way of his wife Michelle. This is a woman who sat on high-paying boards in direct quid-pro-quo consequences of Obama advancing in public office. And in some of those boards, she participated in the worst kind of hospital patient-dumping.
Here’s a video of Michelle Obama you ought to watch – if you can stand the revelations:
Too bad we voted to nationalize the Chicago Way.
I also pointed out that when you attacked employers, the ones who would be hit the most and the hardest would be EMPLOYEES.
Through the 12 months ended in March of last year, 505,473 new businesses started up in the U.S., according to the latest data available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s the weakest growth since the bureau started tracking the data in the early 1990s. It’s down sharply from the record 667,341 new businesses added in the 12 months that ended in March 2006.
Many times large corporations will even lobby for more regulations for their own industry because they know that they can handle all of the rules and paperwork far easier than their smaller competitors can. After all, a large corporation with an accounting department can easily handle filling out a few thousand more forms, but for a small business with only a handful of employees that kind of paperwork is a major logistical nightmare.
When it comes to hiring new employees, the federal government has made the process so complicated and so expensive for small businesses that it is hardly worth it anymore. Things have gotten so bad that more small businesses than ever are only hiring part-time workers or independent contractors.
So what we actually have now is a situation where small businesses have lots of incentives not to hire more workers, and if they really do need some extra help the rules make it much more profitable to do whatever you can to keep from bringing people on as full-time employees.
And who do all these rules and regulations hurt the most but the very people Democrats cynically and deceitfully claim they are trying to help? Meanwhile, who does it help the most but the crony capitalist corporations who DON’T do most of the hiring in America who can profit from Obama’s war on business that results in the destruction of their small business competition.
A Slowdown for Small Businesses
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
Published: June 14, 2011
In the latest sign that the economic recovery may have lost whatever modest oomph it had, more small businesses say that they are planning to shrink their payrolls than say they want to expand them.
That is according to a new report released Tuesday by the National Federation of Independent Business, a trade group that regularly surveys its membership of small businesses across America.
The federation’s report for May showed the worst hiring prospects in eight months. The finding provides a glimpse into the pessimism of the nation’s small firms as they put together their budgets for the coming season, and depicts a more gloomy outlook than other recent (if equally lackluster) economic indicators because this one is forward-looking.
While big companies are buoyed by record profits, many small businesses, which employ half of the country’s private sector workers, are still struggling to break even. And if the nation’s small companies plan to further delay hiring — or, worse, return to laying off workers, as they now hint they might — there is little hope that the nation’s 14 million idle workers will find gainful employment soon.
“Never in the 37-year history of our company have we seen anything at all like this,” said Frank W. Goodnight, president of Diversified Graphics, a publishing company in Salisbury, N.C. He says there is “no chance” he will hire more workers in the months ahead.
“We’re being squeezed on all sides,” he says.
So let me ask again the question that the Los Angeles Times phrased: “Why are the wealthy benefitting from the ‘recovery’ as workers struggle?
And the answer is simple: because Barack Obama and the Democrat Party are socialist who have destroyed the engine that creates the jobs that workers depend upon to flourish.
An interesting fact is that businesses are now forced to spend $1.7 TRILLION a year in regulatory compliance costs. That is a massive hidden tax on their viability; it exceeds the overt income taxes businesses have to pay, and it most certainly exceeds their profits. And right now Obama is attacking them via the Dodd-Frank regulatory legislation, via the EPA, via OSHA, via ObamaCare and via the ridiculous actions of the NLRB in addition to their tax burden. Just to name a few. The result is businesses terrified to expand and further place their necks under Obama’s axe blade.
Meanwhile, Obama’s socialist policies have not only devastated the worker by destroying his jobs, but they’ve ruined America on numerous other levels, too. Take the housing crisis – which was THE cause of the economic implosion of 2008. Did Obama make it better? Well, here’s a headline for you from CNBC: “US Housing Crisis Is Now Worse Than Great Depression.” Which is to say that Democrats – who first created the housing crisis by refusing to allow the regulation of their pet socialist wealth redistribution agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – took something awful and turned it into an American Dream-massacring nightmare.
The latest job figures simply further document my point: Obama is destroying America job by job. Not only did the unemployment rate go up to 9.2% (Obama promised the American people that the unemployment rate would be 7.1% by now if he got his massive government-spending stimulus); not only were the previous two month figures adjusted DOWNWARD by some 45,000 jobs; not only have a third of the unemployed been unemployed for at least a YEAR with fully half of the unemployed having been unemployed for over six months (which is unprecedented); not only did the economy create an incredibly dismal 18,000 jobs (versus the 100,000 the economists naively expected); but a quarter million more people simply walked away from the workforce entirely – abandoning any hope that Obama will do anything more than crush their hopes of finding a job.
I rather routinely call Obama the F-word. No, not that F-word (although the ability to resist doing so is dwindling); the other F-word: Fascist. Barack Obama is a fascist.
I have had quite a few liberals fixate on this word, and – while ignoring the rest of my arguments – proceed to give me a lecture about how my extremism undermines my positions and arguments (which they don’t bother to consider).
I’d like to respond to that. At length.
There are many who would argue that if a politician is not as rabid as Adolf Hitler, that one cannot use this label of “fascist” – at least not unless the target is a Republican (see below). Barack Obama is not a “dictator,” these would argue. He hasn’t launched the world into global war and he hasn’t murdered 6 million Jews (at least, he hasn’t yet). So he can’t be a “fascist.” This argument fails on two parts. First of all, by such a metric, Benito Mussolini wouldn’t be a “fascist” either (except for the “dictator” part). One of the reasons it is hard to have an easy definition of “fascist” is because fascism has taken a different character in every country and culture in which it has been embraced. Hitler is not the norm or standard of fascism; he is merely the most extreme example of its virulence and danger. Secondly, even if we were to take a Hitler as our example, let us realize that Adolf Hitler was a very cunning politician who managed to gain power in a Germany that was THE most sophisticated, educated and scientific nation and culture of its day. What I am asserting is that if an Adolf Hitler were to run for the presidency of the United States in 2012, he would run a platform that we could very easily label as “hope and change,” he would demagogue his adversaries as being the cause for the nation’s plight, he would lie both cynically and outrageously to win votes and he would then proceed to push the country as far as he possibly could toward his agenda. And so here, from the outset, I am claiming that the suggestion that either Barack Obama or anyone else does not qualify as a “fascist” simply because he or she can’t be directly compared to Adolf Hitler is nothing but a straw man.
The question thus becomes, what is fascism, and then it is what is Obama steering us toward?
THE WORD “fascism” is used broadly on the left as a term of abuse. Sometimes it is used to refer to any repressive government, whatever its political form. Most commonly on the left in the U.S., it is used to describe any Republican government–in particular, any Republican government or candidate on the eve of a presidential election.
As an experiment, I typed the words “Bush fascist” and then “Obama fascist” sans quotes. I got 3,280,000 Google hits for Bush fascist (and keep in mind an awful lot of hits would have vanished in the last 11 years as domains purged articles or simply ceased to exist) versus only 2,490,000 for Obama. That means liberals were over 45% more likely to call Bush a fascist than conservatives have been to call Obama one.
And when these liberals express their outrage that I would dare call Obama a fascist and thus lower the discourse, I invariably ask them just where the hell they were when their side was teeing off on Bush for eight unrelenting years of Bush derangement syndrome??? It was rare indeed to see a liberal excoriate his fellow liberals for demonizing the president of the United States.
With all due respect, the left started this form of “discourse.” They turned it into an art form. And how dare these hypocrites dare to tell me not to do unto Obama as they did unto Bush???
That might only be a rhetorical argument, as two wrongs clearly don’t make a right. But it remains a powerful one. Liberals have forfeited any moral right to criticize conservatives for using their own tactics against them.
But I don’t simply call Obama a fascist because liberals called Bush one. I call him one because he has exhibited all kinds of fascistic tendencies, which I shall in time describe.
But fascism has a far more precise definition. Historically, fascism is a far-right movementof the middle classes (shopkeepers, professionals, civil servants) who are economically ruined by severe economic crisis and driven to “frenzy.”
In the brilliant words of Leon Trotsky, fascism brings “to their feet those classes that are immediately above the working class and that are ever in dread of being forced down into its ranks; it organizes and militarizes them…and it directs them to the extirpation of proletarian organizations, from the most revolutionary to the most conservative.”
I have no doubt that the irony of these words were entirely lost to the “Socialist Worker” who wrote the article. But allow me to illuminate it for you: think of the most infamous fascists of all time, the Nazis. What did the word “Nazi” stand for? It was the “acronym for the ‘National Socialist German Workers Party’.” Let me try that again, just in case you missed these precious little details: “National SOCIALIST German WORKERS Party.”
But ask the “Socialist Workers” and they’ll assure you that the “Socialist Workers Party” had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Socialist Workers. Because that would certainly be awkward, wouldn’t it???
It is rather fascinating that “Socialist Worker” would cite as his authority on fascism and who should be labeled as a “fascist” the Marxist thinker . Allow me to provide one counter statement which is based not on the “brilliant words” of a Marxist, but on the plain simple facts:
“Part of the problem in recognizing fascism is the assumption that it is conservative. [Zeev] Sternhell has observed how study of the ideology has been obscured by “the official Marxist interpretation of fascism.” Marxism defines fascism as its polar opposite. If Marxism is progressive, fascism is conservative. If Marxism is left wing, fascism is right wing. If Marxism champions the proletariat, fascism champions the bourgeoisie. If Marxism is socialist, fascism is capitalist.
The influence of Marxist scholarship has severely distorted our understanding of fascism. Communism and fascism were rival brands of socialism. Whereas Marxist socialism is predicated on an international class struggle, fascist national socialism promoted a socialism centered in national unity. Both communists and fascists opposed the bourgeoisie. Both attacked the conservatives. Both were mass movements, which had special appeal for the intelligentsia, students, and artists, as well as workers. Both favored strong centralized governments and rejected the free economy and the ideals of individual liberty. Fascists saw themselves as being neither of the right nor the left. They believed that they constituted a third force synthesizing the best of both extremes” [Gene Edward Veith, Jr., Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview, p. 26].
So depending on Leon Trotsky or any other Marxist-inspired academic who merely parrots “the official Marxist interpretation of fascism” has rather serious intellectual drawbacks. And yet that is largely what we get. Far too many American academics wouldn’t be so obvious as to use the phrase, “In the brilliant words of Leon Trotsky,” but they give his ideas, theories and talking points total credence, nonetheless. The term “useful idiots” was literally coined to describe these Western “intellectuals.” And their being “useful idiots” is every bit as true today as it ever was in the past.
Consider the REAL “polar opposite”: American conservatives are capitalists, not socialists. They demand a limited national/federal government, not a massive centrally planned state as does socialism, communism and fascism. They prefer the federalist idea of powerful states’ rights against a weakened federal government, not some all-powerful Führer. And to try to force conservatives into some Nazi mold invariably means either creating straw men arguments or citing irrelevant facts (such as that conservatives favor a large military just like the Nazis did, as though virtually every single communist state does not similarly favor a large military “just like the Nazis did”). If you want an all-powerful national government that gets to decide who wins and who loses, if you want to see a system where you have to come to your government for assistance and resources with all manner of strings attached rather than being allowed to depend on yourself, your family and your community, you should embrace the political left, not the right.
By the way, another favorite idiotic red herring for liberals asserting that “Nazism was right wing” was that the Nazis hated the admittedly left wing communists. But consider the fact that Coke hates Pepsi and Barbie Doll makers hate Bratz Doll makers. Are we supposed to believe that Coke is the opposite of Pepsi as opposed to water, milk or orange juice? The fact of the matter is that Nazis and Soviet Communists hated each other because both movements had a global agenda of totalitarian dominion, and both movements were competing for the same rabidly left wing converts.
Pardon me for the following insult, but the only people who believe garbage arguments like these are ignorant fools who live in a world of straw men. Even if they have the title “PhD.” after their names.
It is for that reason that I can state categorically that Marxism and fascism are not “polar opposites” at all. They are merely two potentially complementary species of socialism. That is why China has been able to easily weave blatantly fascistic (national socialist/corporatist) elements into its Maoist communism. It is also why Joseph Stalin was able to go from being an international socialist (i.e. a communist) and then appeal to nationalism (i.e., national socialism or “fascism”) when he needed to fight Hitler, only to switch back to “international socialism” after the war, as a few lines from Wikipedia on “Russian nationalism” point out:
The newborn communist republic under Vladimir Lenin proclaimed internationalism as its official ideology[4]. Russian nationalism was discouraged, as were any remnants of Imperial patriotism, such as wearing military awards received before Civil War….
The 1930s saw the evolution of the new concept of Soviet nationalism under Joseph Stalin, based on both Russian nationalism and communist internationalism. Official communist ideology always stated that Russia was the most progressive state, because it adopted socialism as its basis (which, according to the writings of Karl Marx, is the inevitable future of world socio-economic systems). Under Lenin, the USSR believed its duty to help other nations to arrange socialist revolutions (the concept of World Revolution), and made close ties with labor movements around the world[4].
[…]
The Soviet Union’s war against Nazi Germany became known as the Great Patriotic War, hearkening back to the previous use of the term in the Napoleonic Wars. The Soviet state called for Soviet citizens to defend the ‘Motherland’, a matrilineal term used to describe Russia in the past.
[…]
In 1944, the Soviet Union abandoned its communist anthem, The International, and adopted a new national anthem which citizens of the Soviet Union could identify with.
And then, with the victory secured over fascism, the Stalinist “national socialism” (a.k.a. “fascism”) suddenly became international socialism again. The Nazis’ very name was Nationalsozialistische.
One can be a “Marxist-fascist” and combine and blend elements of both totalitarian socialist systems quite easily, as both the Russian and then the Chinese communists proved. Communism and fascism have far more in common with one another than they have in opposition; especially when you examine the fact that both political systems invariably end up becoming the same big-government totalitarian police state.
So for my first two points – namely that 1) the left has routinely demagogically labeled the right “fascist” even when 2) it is clearly the left that owes far and away the most to fascistic elements – I am going to continue to shout from the rooftops who are the real fascists in America.
That said, it is still not enough to merely point out the FACT that American liberalism has much in common with fascism. And there is a lot more yet to say.
Before I begin spouting particular examples, I therefore need to further approach just what it is that would constitute a “fascist.” And then see who and how the label fits. From The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics:
The best example of a fascist economy is the regime of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Holding that liberalism (by which he meant freedom and free markets) had “reached the end of its historical function,” Mussolini wrote: “To Fascism the world is not this material world, as it appears on the surface, where Man is an individual separated from all others and left to himself…. Fascism affirms the State as the true reality of the individual.”
This collectivism is captured in the word fascism, which comes from the Latin fasces, meaning a bundle of rods with an axe in it. In economics, fascism was seen as a third way between laissez-faire capitalism and communism. Fascist thought acknowledged the roles of private property and the profit motive as legitimate incentives for productivity—provided that they did not conflict with the interests of the state.
[…]
Mussolini’s fascism took another step at this time with the advent of the Corporative State, a supposedly pragmatic arrangement under which economic decisions were made by councils composed of workers and employers who represented trades and industries. By this device the presumed economic rivalry between employers and employees was to be resolved, preventing the class struggle from undermining the national struggle. In the Corporative State, for example, strikes would be illegal and labor disputes would be mediated by a state agency.
Theoretically, the fascist economy was to be guided by a complex network of employer, worker, and jointly run organizations representing crafts and industries at the local, provincial, and national levels. At the summit of this network was the National Council of Corporations. But although syndicalism and corporativism had a place in fascist ideology and were critical to building a consensus in support of the regime, the council did little to steer the economy. The real decisions were made by state agencies such as the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (Istituto per la Ricosstruzione Industriale, or IRI), mediating among interest groups.
[…]
Mussolini also eliminated the ability of business to make independent decisions: the government controlled all prices and wages, and firms in any industry could be forced into a cartel when the majority voted for it. The well-connected heads of big business had a hand in making policy, but most smaller businessmen were effectively turned into state employees contending with corrupt bureaucracies. They acquiesced, hoping that the restrictions would be temporary. Land being fundamental to the nation, the fascist state regimented agriculture even more fully, dictating crops, breaking up farms, and threatening expropriation to enforce its commands.
Banking also came under extraordinary control. As Italy’s industrial and banking system sank under the weight of depression and regulation, and as unemployment rose, the government set up public works programs and took control over decisions about building and expanding factories. The government created the Istituto Mobiliare in 1931 to control credit, and the IRI later acquired all shares held by banks in industrial, agricultural, and real estate enterprises.
The image of a strong leader taking direct charge of an economy during hard times fascinated observers abroad. Italy was one of the places that Franklin Roosevelt looked to for ideas in 1933…
Fascism is all about the “community,” not the individual. Its message is about the good of the nation, or the people (or the Volk), or the community, rather than the good of a nation’s individual citizens. It is about distributing and then redistributing the wealth and returning it to “its rightful owners” under the guise of an all-powerful state rather than recognizing and rewarding individual achievement. In short, when Hillary Clinton explained that, “It takes a village,” an educated Nazi would have snapped his fingers and excitedly shouted, “Ja! JA! Das ist ES!”
For Obama, the collectivism, community or “village” thing is such a profound part of him that he has literally made it an integral part of his very heretical form of “Christianity,” which very much stresses individual salvation and individual responsibility. Obama has on several occasions put it this way:
For example, in 1995, Obama said, “my individual salvation is not going to come about without a collective salvation for the country…” and again in May of 2008, “our individual salvation depends of collective salvation.”
In the Christian faith, there is no such thing as collective salvation. Salvation is an individual choice. It is personal acceptance of Jesus as savior, Son of the living God.
Obama’s is a wildly perverted view of orthodox Christianity. It so distorts true Christianity at such a fundamental level, in fact, that one literally has to go to Hitler to find a suitable similar parallel from a “Christian” national leader. The great Protestant Reformer Martin Luther – the most famous German prior to Hitler – had written the most monumental text of German culture prior to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. It was called “The Bondage of the Will,” which was considered THE manifesto of the Reformation. According to Luther, the human will was in bondage to sin. The fallen will, if left to itself, will choose what is evil. The human will has been perversely set against the righteous will of God. For sinful human beings, the will is not in a state of liberty but is in bondage to its worst impulses. Luther wrote in this work, “When our liberty is lost we are compelled to serve sin: that is, we will sin and evil, we speak sin and evil, we do sin and evil.” Adolf Hitler infamously turned that key doctrine of Christianity on its head in his “The Triumph of the Will,” in which he exalted depraved human will to an altogether different level of human depravity. Which is to say that Hitler was so profoundly wrong that he proved Luther right.
But getting back to Obama’s profoundly anti-Christian concept of “collective salvation,” the Nazis would have been all over that, enthusiastically shouting their agreement, “Ja! JA! Das ist ES!” Recall the encyclopedia entry on fascism stating that, “Fascism affirms the State as the true reality of the individual,” which was then further defined as “collectivism.” And the Nazis repeatedly called upon loyal Germans to make horrendous sacrifices in the name of that collective.
What the Nazis pursued was a form of anti-capitalist anti-conservative communitarianism encapsulated in the concept of Volksgemeinschaft, or “people’s community.”
From the Nazi Party Platform:
– The first obligation of every citizen must be to work both spiritually and physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all Consequently we demand:
– Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of rent-slavery.
– In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
– We demand the nationalization of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
– We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
– We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
– We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.
– We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.
– We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, Schieber and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.
– We demand substitution of a German common law in place of the Roman Law serving a materialistic world-order.
– The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education and subsequently introduction into leading positions. The plans of instruction of all educational institutions are to conform with the experiences of practical life. The comprehension of the concept of the State must be striven for by the school [Staatsbuergerkunde] as early as the beginning of understanding. We demand the education at the expense of the State of outstanding intellectually gifted children of poor parents without consideration of position or profession.
– The State is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.
– We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.
– We demand legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation through the press. In order to enable the provision of a German press, we demand, that: a. All writers and employees of the newspapers appearing in the German language be members of the race: b. Non-German newspapers be required to have the express permission of the State to be published. They may not be printed in the German language: c. Non-Germans are forbidden by law any financial interest in German publications, or any influence on them, and as punishment for violations the closing of such a publication as well as the immediate expulsion from the Reich of the non-German concerned. Publications which are counter to the general good are to be forbidden. We demand legal prosecution of artistic and literary forms which exert a destructive influence on our national life, and the closure of organizations opposing the above made demands.
Ah, yes, the Nazis had their “Fairness Doctrine” long before this current generation of liberals had theirs.
You read that Nazi Party Platform carefully, and you tell me if you see small government conservative Republicans or big government liberal Democrats written all over it.
Now, you read the Nazi Party Platform, and given what American liberals want and what American conservatism opposes, it is so obvious which party is “fascist” that it isn’t even silly. Then you ADD to that the fact that fascism and American progressivism (which is liberalism) were so similar that the great fascists of the age couldn’t tell the damn difference.
Since you point out Nazism was fascist, let’s look at some history as to WHO was recognized as fascist in America.
Fascism sought to eliminate class differences and to destroy/replace capitalism and laissez-faire economics.
H.G. Wells, a great admirer of FDR and an extremely close personal friend of his, was also a great progressive of his day. He summed it up this way in a major speech at Oxford to the YOUNG LIBERALS organization under the banner of “Liberal Fascism”: “I am asking for a Liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis.” He said, “And do not let me leave you in the slightest doubt as to the scope and ambition of what I am putting before you” and then said:
These new organizations are not merely organizations for the spread of defined opinions…the days of that sort of amateurism are over – they are organizations to replace the dilatory indecisiveness of democracy. The world is sick of parliamentary politics…The Fascist Party, to the best of its ability, is Italy now. The Communist Party, to the best of its ability, is Russia. Obviously the Fascists of Liberalism must carry out a parallel ambition on still a vaster scale…They must begin as a disciplined sect, but must end as the sustaining organization of a reconstituted mankind.”
H.G. Wells pronounced FDR “the most effective transmitting instrument possible for the coming of the new world order.” And of course, we easily see that the new world order Wells wanted was a fascist one. In 1941, George Orwell concluded, “Much of what Wells has imagined and worked for is physically there in Nazi Germany.”
It was from the lips of liberal progressive H.G. Wells that Jonah Goldberg got the title of his book, Liberal Fascism. Goldberg didn’t just invent this connection: H.G. Wells flagrantly admitted it and George Orwell called him on it. All Goldberg did was rediscover history that liberals buried and have used every trick imaginable to keep buried.
And as a tie-in to our modern day, who more than Barack Obama has been more associated with said FDR?
But let me move on to some real red meat. In just what specific, concrete ways can I call Obama a fascist?
Well, to begin with, there is the signature achievement of his entire presidency, his national health care system (ObamaCare). For liberals, it is nothing but the most bizarre coincidence that Nazi culture had a national health care system that was quite rightly considered the wonder of its day by socialists in America. It is the most despicable of insults that Sarah Palin excoriated ObamaCare as “death panels” – even though it is more precisely a bureaucratic maze consisting of more like 160 separate death panels:
And the “czar” thing hits a very fascist nerve, too. Obama has appointed 39 czars who are completely outside our Constitutional process. Obama signed a budget bill into law that required him to remove these czars, but why would a fascist trouble himself with outmoded things like “laws”? One of the enraged Republicans responded, “The president knew that the czar amendment was part of the overall budget deal he agreed to, and if he cannot be trusted to keep his word on this, then how can he be trusted as we negotiate on larger issues like federal spending and the economy.” And of course, he’s right.
But why do I say it’s financial fascism in 20/20 hindsight? Because of what we just learned: in spite of all the bogus lying promises and the massive takeover “for our own good,” Obama didn’t fix anything. Instead he made it WORSE:
The financial system poses an even greater risk to taxpayers than before the crisis, according to analysts at Standard & Poor’s. The next rescue could be about a trillion dollars costlier, the credit rating agency warned.
S&P put policymakers on notice, saying there’s “at least a one-in-three” chance that the U.S. government may lose its coveted AAA credit rating. Various risks could lead the agency to downgrade the Treasury’s credit worthiness, including policymakers’ penchant for rescuing bankers and traders from their failures.
“The potential for further extraordinary official assistance to large players in the U.S. financial sector poses a negative risk to the government’s credit rating,” S&P said in its Monday report.
But, the agency’s analysts warned, “we believe the risks from the U.S. financial sector are higher than we considered them to be before 2008.”
Because of the increased risk, S&P forecasts the potential initial cost to taxpayers of the next crisis cleanup to approach 34 percent of the nation’s annual economic output, or gross domestic product. In 2007, the agency’s analysts estimated it could cost 26 percent of GDP.
Last year, U.S. output neared $14.7 trillion, according to the Commerce Department. By S&P’s estimate, that means taxpayers could be hit with $5 trillion in costs in the event of another financial collapse.
Experts said that while the cost estimate seems unusually high, there’s little dispute that when the next crisis hits, it will not be anticipated — and it will likely hurt the economy more than the last financial crisis.
So much for the massive and unprecedented fascist government takeover.
Think last year’s $700 billion Wall Street rescue package was beaucoup bucks to spend bailing out the nation’s floundering financial system? That’s chump change compared to what the overall price tag could be, a government watchdog says.
The inspector general in charge of overseeing the Treasury Department’s bank-bailout program says the massive endeavor could end up costing taxpayers almost $24 trillion in a worst-case scenario. That’s more than six times President Obama’s proposed $3.55 trillion budget for 2010.
Nobody here but us fascists. And we sure aint talking.
Then there are other issues that the left usually uses to attack conservatives, such as racism. Wasn’t Hitler a racist, just like conservatives? The problem is, the liberals are as usual upside-down here. After running as the man to create racial harmony, Barack Obama has instead done more to racially polarize America than any president since other famous progressives such as Woodrow Wilson and FDR. Frankly, if one were to conduct a major study of racial politics, and the setting up in opposition of one racial group against another, just which party has emphasized race and race-baiting more?
Hitler’s Jew-baiting was all about the idea that one race had taken over the culture, had the money and the power, and was using its influence to oppress the people in the banking system and anywhere else that mattered. And Hitler’s constant screed was that Germany needed to confiscate the Jews’ wealth and then redistribute it. With all respect, all the left has done is replace “Jew” with “Caucasian” and making the exact same claims.
And with all this hard-core racist demagoguing, I’m supposed to say that, “Oh, yes, it’s the conservatives who are guilty of demagoguing race”??? Seriously???
Obama has Samantha Powers (the wife of Cass Sunstein, the man who “nudges us”) close to him and advising him on matters of war. According to the very liberal publication The Nation, “She began to see war as an instrument to achieving her liberal, even radical, values.” What if you had an ultra conservative – oh, say a Sarah Palin – openly acknowledged to pursue war and risk American lives to advance her radical values??? What would the left call this if not “fascist”?
But it’s only fascist if Republicans do it, of course.
Also in yesterday’s news is the fact that Obama is the perpetual demagogue– which is a quintessentially fascist tactic. Obama demonized Bush for trying to raise the debt ceiling until he needed to raise it. Now it would be un-American for Republicans to act the same exact way Obama acted. In the same demagogic spirit, Obama personally invited Paul Ryan to a speech just so he could personally demonize him. The same Obama who lectured Republicans that it would be counter-productive to rely on name-calling and accusations in the health care debate launched into a vicious demagogic attack. Ryan correctly said that “What we got yesterday was the opposite of what he said is necessary to fix this problem.” But that is par for the golf course for a fascist. If that wasn’t enough, Obama held a White House conference for “stake holders” in the immigration debate and refused to invite a single governor from a border state.
A Republican equivalent would have had to come out of a deep involvement with some vile racist militia organization to approximate Obama’s background. And liberals would rightly label such a politician a fascist for his past alone.
Here’s a recent Youtube video of Obama’s key union allies on camera saying, “We’re not going to rely on the law,” and, “Forget about the law” as they seek to impose their unions basically whether workers want them or not:
With all due deference to separation of powers, last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.
(APPLAUSE)
I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests or, worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps correct some of these problems.
And Samuel Alito shook his head and mouthed, “That’s not true.” In deference to the separation of powers, and all that:
Our Demagogue-in-Chief has now turned his demonizing away from George Bush (for just a brief moment, mind you) and toward the Supreme Court:
WASHINGTON — President Obama took aim at the Supreme Court on Saturday, saying the justices had “handed a huge victory to the special interests and their lobbyists” with last week’s 5-to-4 decision to lift restrictions on campaign spending by corporations and unions.
The decision will have major political implications for this year’s midterm elections. After it was announced, Mr. Obama immediately instructed his advisers to work with Congress on legislation that would restore some of the limits the court lifted. But in his weekly address on Saturday, he sharply stepped up his criticism of the high court.
“This ruling strikes at our democracy itself,” Mr. Obama said, adding: “I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest. The last thing we need to do is hand more influence to the lobbyists in Washington, or more power to the special interests to tip the outcome of elections.”
Barack Obama is a demagouge, and nothing but a demagogue. You are either with him, or he is bitterly against you. He has been a fearmongerer and a demagogue from the beginning:
ABC’s Jake Tapper notes the “Helter-Skelter cultish qualities” of “Obama worshipers,” what Joel Stein of the Los Angeles Times calls “the Cult of Obama.” Obama’s Super Tuesday victory speech was a classic of the genre. Its effect was electric, eliciting a rhythmic fervor in the audience — to such rhetorical nonsense as “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. (Cheers, applause.) We are the change that we seek.”
That was too much for Time’s Joe Klein. “There was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism … ,” he wrote. “The message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is.”You might dismiss the New York Times’ Paul Krugman’s complaint that “the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality” as hyperbole.
And what happens if you contradict such a “cult of personality”? You become the enemy of the religion. And you must be attacked with the zeal of the fanatic.
Did the five justices of the U.S. Supreme Court want to “strike at our democracy itself”? Hardly:
The five justices who sided with the majority characterized it as a victory for the First Amendment and freedom of speech.
Boy, is THAT ever striking against democracy. Damn free speech! Damn First Amendment! Let’s get rid of them both and have Obama instead!
“When you think about the First Amendment…you think it’s highly overrated.”
That joke dismissing the First Amendment was about as funny as Josef Stalin’s kneeslapper:
“The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.”
Here’s an important question: Just why is our demagogic president and his lackeys so unhinged over this decision?
It comes back to the idea of his racist, Marxist, anti-American reverend’s words about “chickens coming home to roost“:
From the previously cited New York Times article:
But the decision could also have a significant effect on Mr. Obama’s expansive domestic agenda. The president has angered many of the big-money industries — like banks and insurers — that would be inclined to dig deep into their pockets to influence the outcome of the president’s legislative proposals.
I’m reminded of the sci-fi movies that feature an evil scientist finally having his own monsters turn on him while he screams.
It’s poetic justice that the industries and businesses that Obama demonized should finally get a chance to have their crack at him.
And only a profoundly anti-American ideologue would say that people shouldn’t have a right to publicly confront their accuser. When Obama attacks them in public, they should have a right to speak out themselves in public.
An excellent summary of the grounds for the Supreme Court’s decision can be found here. Basically, the Court recognized that there are two types of corporations: media corporations and non-media corporations. One had the full rights of free speech, and the other had its free speech rights attacked. Why should General Electric-owned NBC have complete access to free speech, while other corporations are banned from free speech?
As Justice Kennedy (who is hardly “right wing”) pointed out in his decision:
Media corporations are now exempt from §441b’s ban on corporate expenditures. Yet media corporations accumulate wealth with the help of the corporate form, the largest media corporations have “immense aggregations of wealth,” and the views expressed by media corporations often “have little or no correlation to the public’s support” for those views.
You can frankly understand why Obama and the far left want to have the ability to keep attacking businesses and people who depend upon businesses for their livelihood without their opponents being able to respond. They want to be able to impose their agenda and crush any and all opposition. By any means necessary.
Fortunately the Supreme Court has allowed corporations to answer back to this demagoguery.
Our United States Supreme Court has defined a corporation in the following language: “An association of individuals, acting as a single person …. united for some common purpose …. and permitted by the law to use a common name and to change its members without a dissolution of the Association.”
But liberals don’t like these “people.” They don’t like businesses. And they believe they should have the right to attack the people they don’t like, and that the people they attack should have no right to defend themselves.
Corporations are legally recognized to act as a “person.” Obama has attacked such “persons” too many times to count. And now that “person” finally is getting the right to respond.
The Demagogue-in-chief was at it again the other day, telling Charles Gibson on ABC that if his ObamaCare takeover isn’t passed, the country will go bankrupt. It’s really the other way around, given that this monstrosity will raise costs rather than lowering them, but demagogues don’t need facts – only fear.
And, of course, it was through naked fearmongering that Obama threatened and rushed his now-failed stimulus through Congress. As the Wall Street Journal put it:
President Barack Obama has turned fearmongering into an art form. He has repeatedly raised the specter of another Great Depression. First, he did so to win votes in the November election. He has done so again recently to sway congressional votes for his stimulus package.
Our economy is now actually suffering a higher unemployment than Obama said we’d experience if we didn’t pass his porkulus slush fund. But, being a tried-and-true demagogue, Obama merely shifts the blame on that failure.
I could go on and on on the demagogic tactics of this administration. But I think I’ve demonstrated my point.
There’s a single short paragraph in a Hill article that came out yesterday that sums up Obama’s “leadership” style. Threatening a liberal Democrat who has not always toed the Obama line, we had this unveiled threat:
“Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother,” Obama told DeFazio during a closed-door meeting of the House Democratic Caucus, according to members afterward.
It was just a couple of days ago that we heard that Barry Hussein had threatened Senator Ben Nelson (D-Neb) with closing Offutt Air Force Base – which not only employs 10,000 people but serves as the strategically vital location for the US Strategic Command – as a naked threat to force Nelson to support ObamaCare. But incredibly, at the same time the White House was frankly treasonously intimidating a US Senator with a threat against US national security, they were also trying to offer a bribe that would make even Mary Landrieu’s $300 million “Louisiana Purchase” look tame.
We’re now finding out that Ben Nelson is selling his vote, and just one of the goodies he will collect for his supporters is that the federal government will pay for Nebraska’s Medicaid tab — forever. Which means that the taxes for Medicaid will go up in every single other state — forever.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger joined Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman in opposing the current senate version of ObamaCare, with Schwarzenegger saying the unfunded expansion of Medicaid would cost California an additional $3 billion a year when the state is already deep into a budget crisis. And that is now going to be $3 billion PLUS California’s share in paying for Nebraska’s exempted share.
To get as far as the bill did so far, it appears the administration might have spread some money around. California Rep. Jim Costa was wavering but told a local newspaper last week that his vote could be contingent on getting some federal money for a new medical school in his district along with help for local hospitals.
When a constituent named Bob Smittcamp e-mailed him to complain about his vote for the House bill, the congressman explained he’d been offered the dollars he was looking for — $128 million in federal money.
“He responded to me by basically saying that he did not like many of the elements there were in the legislation. However, he was able to procure $128m for the University of California medical school in Merced,” Smittcamp told Fox News.
Now we officially learn, according to a study of Obama’s stimulus by George Mason University, that the Democrats are using the stimulus as a slush fund. The study found no correlation between unemployment rate and stimulus funding; rather, Democrat districts have received DOUBLE the money received by Republican districts as the most partisan president in the history of America proved his true colors again.
Mind you, we’ve pretty much known that all along. We can go back to July, when Obama directly threatened Arizona to cut off federal stimulus money unless the state’s leadership saw things his way. So the study merely proved what everybody should already know. But there is another lesson as well: that the flip side of using taxpayer stimulus money to bribe Democrats is using taxpayer stimulus money to intimidate Republicans.
And of course, that is why Americans should be terrified by this administration: a president who can pay bribes to buy political behavior can take money away to discourage other political behavior.
In any event, we have our answer to the question posed by the title: “What happens when a demagogue’s demagoguery fails him?” Answer: a ton of naked bribery and insider-politicking using taxpayer stimulus money that was supposed to be used to create jobs, but is instead being used to buy Democrat’s votes for a federal government takeover of the health care system.
The problem with the liberal-glorified cash-for-clunker program was always obvious to anyone who would but contemplate: the spike in sales merely robbed future sales, or delayed past ones.
My own parents waited for at least a couple months to buy a car for the program to go into effect. Ultimately they walked away from it due to the massive aggravations of the program (my father is a very patient man unless and until things stop making sense – at which time he starts to lose it) and decided to keep their “clunker” until they needed to buy a new car.
The funny thing is, they very likely would have already bought a new car had it NOT been for the cash-for-clunker program.
U.S. auto sales likely fell in September back to the nearly three-decade lows of early 2009 without government incentives to spur buying, leaving in doubt the timing and pace of a recovery for the battered industry.
Nearly 700,000 new cars and trucks were bought by U.S. customers through the government “cash for clunkers” incentive program from late July through the first three weeks of August, a leap from recession-stunted sales earlier in 2009. […]
“There are still a lot of obstacles out there,” she said. “I think we are still going to see the hangover from ‘cash for clunkers’ both in September and almost potentially through the end of the year.”
Sales Drop at All Major Automakers
U.S. auto industry sales rose 1 percent to more than 1.2 million vehicles in August from a year earlier under the “clunkers” program, the first time monthly sales pierced the 1 million mark in a year.
However, none of the largest manufacturers are expected to post sales gains in September, and Edmunds has forecast a 23 percent industry sales decline for the month.
Edmunds expects Ford Motor to post a 9.7 percent sales drop, GM a 46.1 percent drop and Chrysler a 48.7 percent decline among the Detroit automakers.
Edmunds expects Toyota Motor to post a 9.7 percent sales decline, Honda Motor an 8.3 percent drop and Nissan Motor a 1.1 percent drop among Japan-based automakers.
The August sales gain represented a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 14.1 million vehicles, but did little to turn the tide on annual sales. U.S. auto industry sales were down nearly 28 percent through August 2009 versus last year.
Global Insight expects U.S. September auto sales to come in at a 9.33 million seasonally adjusted annualized rate, or well below the 12.5 million unit rate from a year ago when credit markets froze in the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse.
The median forecast for U.S. auto industry sales was 9.5 million vehicles from 41 economists surveyed by Reuters, while J.P. Morgan believes the annualized rate could drop to 8.9 million vehicles — the lowest month since December 1981. […]
C4C disrupted the even flow of supply and demand. New car buyers held back in advance of the launch of the program; in fact, many prenegotiated with dealers to do so. And, now the promotion is over, expect year-on-year sales to be lower than they would have been because so much consumer demand has been concentrated in the promotion period.
The auto industry received a short-term “sugar high” at the expense of lower future sales when the program is over. The program apparently boosted sales by about 750,000 cars this year, but that probably means that sales over the next few years will be about 750,000 lower. The program probably further damaged the longer-term prospects of auto dealers and automakers by diverting their attention from market fundamentals in the scramble for federal cash.
And whaddyaknow? That’s basically exactly what happened.
Poor people – who couldn’t afford to buy a new car with the cash for clunker incentive – will also now lose out on billions of dollars’ worth of used cars that were destroyed under the program. The price of the cars that would have improved their lives (and their mileage) were shipped to China as scrap metal. And law of supply and demand guarantees that the price of used cars will go up for the people Democrats always say they’re trying to help.
The cash for clunkers program ought to sound eerily familiar to people who’ve done any reading about the Great Depression, because it was the same kind of program that led to the slaughter of hogs under the Agricultural Adjustment Act (which was intended to raise hog prices but led to famine instead). The issue here is the same one as back then: the profound arrogance of economic planners who think if they just get enough data, and they turn all the diodes exactly the right way, and if they get all the right memos and all the right forms, that they’re going to be smarter than free market would be.
Big government liberals invariably believe they know how to allocate resources better than markets do — just like the Marxist economic planners did. And the problem is like that fairy tale about the old woman who swallowed a fly; every single solution they come up with just creates another problem, and then you get this continual snowball effect that just keeps getting more insolvable.
And thus it is with the cash for clunkers thing. Maybe some of these people who bought a new car didn’t really need a new car; what they really needed was a new refrigerator or a new washing machine – but they got such a great deal on that car! The government knows better that they needed to buy a new car more than they needed to buy a new refrigerator or a washing machine or a host of other products. And so the government artificially incentivized people to buy the car that they really didn’t need. And instead of buying all the things that they really should have bought and WOULD have bought anyway WITHOUT the billions in taxpayer dollars, now people have taxpayer-funded cars they really didn’t need to buy.
So, as an example, were told that “Durable goods orders show unexpected decrease in August,” but it shouldn’t have been “unexpected” at all. What it was was the opportunity costs due to all the people buying cars instead of other goods. Like refrigerators and washing machines.
And at the same time, all we’ve really done is rob demand from a couple of years down the road, where these people were almost by definition ultimately going to buy new cars anyway. Why? Because they have CLUNKERS, dammit!
I’ve been trying to sort out why it would be beneficial to shut down car dealerships when the auto industry is facing bankruptcy. After all, more dealerships means more car sales. And it would very much seem that more sales would be a good thing for a struggling industry.
It would be one thing if the dealerships were corporate-owned. Corporations shut down underperforming locations all the time in order to consolidate cash and improve profitability. But the dealerships that are being closed are NOT corporate-owned; they are private. So you kind of have to wonder what is going on.
On possible reason is that fewer dealerships will be able to create more sales and therefore create more “buzz” by improving facilities and having more potential customers. Call it the “wow” factor.
In any event, the real question is why some dealerships are closed and others are allowed to remain open.
One big example in my own local area is Dodge City Chrysler in La Quinta, the management of which was stunned to find the dealership on the closure list. They are appealing the decision, but intend to remain open even if they are “closed” by Chrysler as a service department and as a pre-owned dealership. The only thing that stands in the way of that plan would be that the current zoning laws don’t allow used car sales. But the city promises to work with Dodge City if the appeal fails.
Why close down Dodge City? It’s turning a profit. It’s successful.
The answer, it turns out, may be “an enemies list.”
ChryslerDealershipShutdown examines the political donations of dealerships scheduled to close versus those that are being allowed to remain open and leads to a frightening conclusion: it very much appears that dealerships are being closed down because of their political contributions, rather than because of purely business considerations.
What follows is an article by Doug Ross dated May 27, 2009:
This work builds upon the research done by numerous parties, most notably Joey Smith. It is a follow-up to my original post, entitled “Did anti-Obama campaign contributions dictate which Chrysler dealers were shuttered?” The odds that these closings occurred without partisan bias are roughly equivalent to the odds that Jean Claude Van-Damme will grab a Best Supporting Actor Oscar next year for a remake of Terms of Endearment.
How did the U.S. government’s “car czar” decide which Chrysler dealers to close and which would remain open? No one appears to know, not even the President of Chrysler:
…Lawyer Leonard Bellavia, of Bellavia Gentile & Associates, who represents some of the terminated dealers, said he deposed Chrysler President Jim Press on Tuesday and came away with the impression that Press did not support the plan…
“It became clear to us that Chrysler does not see the wisdom of terminating 25 percent of its dealers,” Bellavia said. “It really wasn’t Chrysler’s decision. They are under enormous pressure from the President’s automotive task force.”
Follow the evidence trail, below, and judge for yourself.
Dealers on the closing list donated millions to Republicans, $200 for Obama
In fact, I have thus far found only a single Obama donor ($200 from Jeffrey Hunter of Waco, Texas) on the closing list.
Another review of all 789 closing dealerships, by WND, found $450,000 donated to GOP presidential candidates; $7,970 to Sen. Hillary Clinton; $2,200 to John Edwards and $450 to Barack Obama.
Now, and this is important, Chrysler claimed that its formula for determining whether a dealership should close or not included “sales volume, customer service scores, local market share and average household income in the immediate area.”
Dealer Jim Anderer told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto he can’t comprehend how his dealership can be among those killed: he stated that his sales volume ranking is in the top 2 percent of all dealers.
Furthermore, Anderer says explanations aren’t forthcoming. “They won’t tell us. They seem to be running for cover right now because they won’t give us a solid explanation. They come up with all these reasons, but none of them seem to make sense… This is insanity. The government is stealing my business. And they’re telling me there’s nothing I can do about it… There was no process that you could put your finger on and say, ‘Hey, we cut 25 percent of the lowest performing dealers.’ They didn’t do that. Nobody will give us a real clear explanation of the formula that they came up with.”
The odds of a non-partisan process being employed can best be illustrated by RLJ.
The Mysterious Case of RLJ
In Smith’s research, one company kept popping up on the list of dealerships remaining open. The company is RLJ-McLarty-Landers, which owns six Chrysler dealerships. All six dealerships are on “the safe list.”
RLJ’s owners “are Steve Landers (long-time car dealer, 4th-generation dealer), Thomas “Mack” McLarty (former Chief of Staff for President Clinton), and Robert Johnson (founder of Black Entertainment Television and co-owner of the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats)… McLarty campaigned for Obama in 2008, and Johnson has given countless amounts of money to Democrats over the years.”
Smith examined RLJ’s markets, which I’ve illustrated below.
Bentonville, AR Market
1. Bentonville, AR Landers-McLarty (RLJ owned)
2. Springdale, AR Springdale Chrysler-Jeep (owned by Harold Schwartz)
3. Springdale, AR Steve Smith Country
Springdale is about 15 miles south of Bentonville.
The 2 Springdale dealerships gave no money to any political candidates since 2004. The 2 dealership will close in June while the RLJ-owned dealership in Bentonville will remain open.
The Landers-McLarty dealership will have no other Chrysler dealers within a 20-mile radius of the dealership.
The closest competitors will be in Pineville, MO (22 miles away) and Fayetteville, AR (27 miles away).
Huntsville, AL Market
1. Huntsville, AL Landers McCarty D-C-J (RLJ Owned)
2. Athens, AL Champion Chrysler Dodge (owned by Jeffrey Hamm)
3. Decatur, AL Cloverleaf C-D-J (owned by Kevin Morris)
The dealerships in Athens and Decatur gave no money to any political candidates since 2004. Landers-McCarty and the Athens dealership will remain open while the Decatur dealership will close in June.
Here is a link to the document containing the information gathered on RJL-McLarty-Landers. It appears that the company will benefit greatly from the reduced competition in their markets. For the most part, the dealerships that are forced to shut down in the 5 markets have either given no money to candidates or have donated to GOP candidates in the past…
Branson, MO
There are 4 dealerships within 30 miles of Branson, MO.
1. Branson, MO Tri-Lakes Motors (RLJ owned)
2. Ava, MO Davis Dodge (owned by Larry Davis)
3. Ozark, MO Heritage Chrysler-Jeep (owned by Kay Church)
4. Ozark, MO Ozark Dodge (owned by Kay Church)
Mr. Davis and Ms, Church gave no money to any political candidates since 2004.
The RLJ owned dealership in Branson will remain open while the other 3 dealerships will be forced to close in June.
Tri-Lakes Motors in Branson (RLJ owned) will have no other Chrysler dealers within a 30-mile radius of its dealership…
Lee’s Summit, MO
There are 5 Chrysler dealerships near Lee’s Summit:
#1 is located in Lee’s Summit and is owned by RLJ-McCarty-Landers.
#2, #3, and #4 are located 9 miles northwest in Raytown, MO and is owned by Michael Crawford.
#5 is located 19 miles south in Harrisonville, MO and is owned by Charles O’Quinn.
The Lee’s Summit dealership will remain open while the other 4 in Raytown and Harrisonville will close. The Lee’s Summit dealership will have no other Chrysler dealerships located within at least a 20 mile radius. All of the local competition will be wiped out due to the Chrysler closings.
Bossier City/Shreveport, LA Market
There are 3 dealerships in this market:
1. Bossier City, LA Landers DCJ (RLJ owned)
2. Shreveport, LA Roundtree Automotive Group
3. Shreveport, LA Bob Post/Hebert’s Town and Country
Marshall Hebert (owner of Hebert’s Town and country) gave $4,250 to GOP candidates, $2,500 to Dem candidates, and $1,300 to the NRCC since 2004. Mr. Hebert is also on the National Auto Dealers Association Board of Directors representing Louisiana.
Frank Stinson (owner of Roundtree) gave $24,000 to GOP candidates and $3,400 to Demcocratic candidates since 2004.
The Bossier City dealership owned by RLJ-McCarty-Landers and the Shreveport dealership owned by Marshall Hebert will stay open. The Shreveport dealership owned by Stinson will be forced to close.
Of 29 existing dealerships, Smith reports that Lithia will likely have a net gain of three new dealers after the dust settles (they lose just two and may gain five). Debeor has donated nearly $15,000 to two Democrat candidates and approximately $8,250 to four GOP individuals.
What are the Odds?
All other factors being equal, what are the odds that RLJ’s dealerships would remain open while all other area dealerships would be shuttered? The approximate odds of such an occurrence can be calculated. 789 of the Chrysler’s dealerships are closing, which represents 25% of the total (according to MSNBC).
Recall that Chrysler claimed that its formula for determining whether a dealership should close or not included “sales volume, customer service scores, local market share and average household income in the immediate area.”
Thus, the odds that any, randomly selected, single dealership would remain open is roughly 75%. The odds that a single dealership would close is roughly 25%.
In the Bentonville, AR territory, the odds that RLJ would remain while its competition gets axed is .75 * .25 * .25 = .046875 (4.6%).
In Huntsville, AL, the odds are .75 * .25 * .25 = .046875.
What are the odds of all of these RLJ dealerships remaining open while their competitors are wiped out? Maybe 1/10,000,000 of 1%. Yes, that’s one ten-millionth of one percent.
Approximately the odds that I’ll win American Idol. Or that you’ll land two frisbees, simultaneously, on each of Barack Obama’s teleprompters during one of his televised speeches.
Hello, mainstream media: anyone listening? How about you, class-action lawyers?
What we find is that RLJ dealerships whose ownership has close ties to the Democratic Party remain open in teritory after teritory, while competitors who gave to Republicans are closed down again and again.
Something isn’t right.
Red State has more, offering links to stories of dealerships that are closed, and clearly shouldn’t have been, as well as describing the Republican connections to dealerships that ended up on the closure list.
Richard Nixon created an enemies list of major political oppoenents in order to “screw” political enemies, by means of tax audits from the IRS, and by manipulating grant availability, federal contracts, litigation, prosecution, and by other means.
If the dealership closures are a form of political attack, this would be FAR worse than Nixon’s abuse of power, simply because Nixon and Colson used a scalpal to cut at enemies; whereas Obama and his Task Force are using the equivalent of a nuclear bomb.
We’re talking about somewhere around 20,000 employees at these 789 dealerships.
“It became clear to us that Chrysler does not see the wisdom of terminating 25 percent of its dealers… It really wasn’t Chrysler’s decision. They are under enormous pressure from the President’s automotive task force.”
Even Nixon never dreamed of abusing his presidential power like that.
Elaine and Jerry have the following dialogue in a famous Seinfeld episode titled, “Bizarro Jerry”:
“He’s reliable. He’s considerate. He’s like your exact opposite.”
“So he’s Bizarro Jerry.”
“Bizarro Jerry?”
“Yeah, like Bizarro Superman, Superman’s exact opposite, who lives in the backwards Bizarro world. Up is down, down is up, he says hello when he leaves, goodbye when he arrives.”
“Shouldn’t he say badbye? Isn’t that the opposite of goodbye?”
“No, it’s still goodbye.”
“Does he live underwater?”
“No.”
“Is he black?”
“Look, just forget the whole thing.”
– Elaine and Jerry, in “The Bizarro Jerry”
Well, let’s not forget the whole thing, Jerry. Because Bizarro Superman is now among us. Art, imitation, and boob-tube television have come to life: Barack Obama is our Bizarro Superman.
Bizarro Superman is the sort of Superman who saves the guilty by beating the snot out of the innocent.
Did you invest in secured debt from Chrysler and GM? Sorry, buddy: Superman has flown in and given your safe and secured investment dollars to his UAW cronies. When the secured investors – who by law were entitled to be at the head of the line in any bankruptcy – balked at being paid pennies on the dollar while the UAW was given the farm – Bizarro Superman demonized them as “greedy hedge funds” and threatened them with public propaganda attacks.
Bizarro Superman has flown in and promised that 95% of Americans will get a tax cut under his plan (which actually just means more welfare for the 43.4 percent who already don’t pay any federal income tax at all even as our small business owners who employ most American workers are increasingly taxed into oblivion). Will people pay less in taxes under Bizarro Superman? Just for your information, the average 30 year old will pay $136,932.75 just for the interest of just Obama’s 2010 budget over the course of his or her working lifetime. Americans will be paying FAR more of their money to the government – and they will have Bizarro Superman to thank for it.
Now Bizarro Superman has flown in and saved risky credit-card borrowers by establishing a system that will penalize those who have always paid their bills on time and in full. From the New York Times:
Credit cards have long been a very good deal for people who pay their bills on time and in full. Even as card companies imposed punitive fees and penalties on those late with their payments, the best customers racked up cash-back rewards, frequent-flier miles and other perks in recent years.
Now Congress is moving to limit the penalties on riskier borrowers, who have become a prime source of billions of dollars in fee revenue for the industry. And to make up for lost income, the card companies are going after those people with sterling credit.
Banks are expected to look at reviving annual fees, curtailing cash-back and other rewards programs and charging interest immediately on a purchase instead of allowing a grace period of weeks, according to bank officials and trade groups.
“It will be a different business,” said Edward L. Yingling, the chief executive of the American Bankers Association, which has been lobbying Congress for more lenient legislation on behalf of the nation’s biggest banks. “Those that manage their credit well will in some degree subsidize those that have credit problems.”
Again and again, on issue after issue, our Bizarro Superman, Barack Hussein Obama, has come to the rescue of the irresponsible by punishing the responsible.
Our economy became the greatest in the history of the world by policies that rewarded sound and prudent investment while punishing foolish behaviors. Those days are long gone. We’re in Bizarro world now.
I pulled out of the stock market following the Democratic National Convention when I had that first moment of genuine fear that Obama would probably win, and put my nest egg into gold and silver. Betting that Obama would be a disaster for the economy has been the best financial move I’ve ever made: I’ve made a 15% return on precious metals even as investors in the stock market lost about 30%.
I still remember the day I came across the following poll results from the September/October issue of CEO Magazine:
According to the poll, which is featured on the cover of Chief Executive’s most recent issue, by a four-to-one margin, CEOs support Senator John McCain over Senator Barack Obama. Moreover, 74 percent of the executives say they fear that an Obama presidency would be disastrous for the country.[…]
In expressing their rejection of Senator Obama, some CEOs who responded to the survey went as far as to say that “some of his programs would bankrupt the country within three years, if implemented.” In fact, the poll highlights that Obama’s tax policies, which scored the lowest grade in the poll, are particularly unpopular among CEOs.
I’ve pulled out of the US economy due to Bizzaro Superman and his Bizarro economic policies. No investments in stocks, no purchases of US bonds. Not with Obama’s mind-boggling deficit spending acting like a 10 ton anvil hovering over the economy due to debt as a percentage of GDP rising like a rocket ship. I’m making as few purchases as possible. And I’m not coming back to investment in America as long as Bizarro Superman is our president.
And I’m going to pull out of credit cards now, too. If I see one fee, or if I see my interest rate go up so much as 1 point due to my cards’ charging interest from the moment of purchase, I’m cutting them up and going back to the tried and true checkbook.
The only question I have is this: at some point Obama’s and the Democrat’s policies of subsidizing stupidity by penalizing prudence are going to implode the economy. In the aftermath of that disaster, will there even BE a U.S. economy worthy of investing in?
If you don’t live under a rock (and frankly a rock wouldn’t be a bad place to live under these days), you’ve no doubt heard that Obama has fired CEOs, picked board members, altered bankruptcy proceedings, and has refused to allow banks to repay their loans without ridiculous conditions being imposed. He is also moving toward regulating the pay of executives even if their companies didn’t take bailout money. You might have heard how Obama has bullied and threatened hedge funds that demanded that their legal rights as secured Chrysler debtholders be recognized and respected as their money is given to unions in a clear case of political payback.
And if you have any understanding of American history at all, you should realize what a massive abuse of power all of this is.
Obama can say whatever he wants about not wanting to control the economy. But actions in this case scream far louder than words. On front after front (e.g., industry, banking, health care, energy, education) his administration is engaging in a naked grab for unprecedented power and control.
FDR doesn’t even come close: the New Deal in inflation adjusted dollars cost an estimated $500 billion; Obama has spent or committed $12.8 TRILLION so far.
There is so much federal government money going to who-only-knows that it boggles the mind.
And Obama – who has already demonstrated that he is perfectly willing to abuse his power – is at it again.
The People’s Republic of California – like many other failed liberal utopias – is on the fast track to insolvency. And you can bet that that outcome is going to be significantly expedited if the Obama administration follows through on its threat to cut off stimulus funding unless California does things the way Obama wants.
The state of California enacted measures in order to save $74 million, but state governments have apparently forfeited all sovereignty under Obama rule.
Reporting from Sacramento — The Obama administration is threatening to rescind billions of dollars in federal stimulus money if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers do not restore wage cuts to unionized home healthcare workers approved in February as part of the budget.
Schwarzenegger’s office was advised this week by federal health officials that the wage reduction, which will save California $74 million, violates provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Failure to revoke the scheduled wage cut before it takes effect July 1 could cost California $6.8 billion in stimulus money, according to state officials.
The news comes as state lawmakers are already facing a severe cash crisis, with the state at risk of running out of money in July.
The wages at issue involve workers who care for some 440,000 low-income disabled and elderly Californians. The workers, who collectively contribute millions of dollars in dues each month to the influential Service Employees International Union and the United Domestic Workers, will see the state’s contribution to their wages cut from a maximum of $12.10 per hour to a maximum of $10.10.
The SEIU said in a statement that it had asked the Obama administration for the ruling.
I’ve written about this before. Just over one year ago I wrote on the subject of how postmodernism leads to fascism. I said in part:
Already some postmodernist sects explicitly advocateand demandsuch measures; all they lack is the power to impose their will.
And now they are accumulating that power.
Democrats and liberals are postmodernists; and postmodernism contains all the underlying philosophical presuppositions essential for fascism to rear its monstrous head yet again.
Just keep sitting around doing nothing, and keep watching your boob tube while your new Fuhrer takes away one thing after another that this nation always intended for the people to be able to choose for themselves.
At the core of representative democracy is the idea of the secret ballot: when you go into the booth to vote, you vote YOUR values and YOUR will; not the values and will of someone who is out to intimidate you into voting any other way.
But Democrats and unions think that kind of individual freedom is dangerous and unfair: better that everyone be forced to vote openly and publicly, so that their version of the fascist blackshirts can pay a visit to their home and “persuade” them to vote their way.
‘Card Check’ in Action
Matt Milner works as a “tracker” for the Colorado Republican Party: He follows Sen. Michael Bennet, a newly appointed Democrat, around and videotapes his public appearances. The Denver Post reports what happened when he went to an AFL-CIO meeting where Bennet was speaking Saturday:
Milner, with his tripod and video camera, garnered the attention of event organizers just as Bennet bid his adieu to hundreds of audience members, some of whom had grown passionate over politically tricky labor issues, such as the Employee Free Choice Act. . . .
The 5-foot-6-inch Milner found himself surrounded as the event wound down, he said.
“This hulking guy comes flying at me, and he’s yelling ‘Who are you with?’ There’s a flurry of F-words,” Milner said. “They circled around me. I’d try to move, and they’d move to block my path.”
[Mike] Cerbo [executive director of the Colorado AFL-CIO], one of the five men who spoke to Milner after Bennet’s speech, disputed that version of events Sunday. He said the young interloper was aggressive and tried to provoke a confrontation, though he declined to say how.
“He came in uninvited. . . . I’d call him a trespasser,” Cerbo said. “He didn’t get the incident he wanted, so he’s clearly lying about what happened.”
Milner says the men demanded that he erase his recording, and one of them took his camera, while Cerbo claims, in the Post’s words, that he “offered to erase his tape because he hadn’t been invited to the event.” No one disputes that Milner was outnumbered, or that it was he who called 911.
If this is what happens to a man at a public event, what do you expect a woman to do when these guys show up at her house with a card to sign?
A working mom was repeatedly intimidated by union organizers. They approached her going to work, leaving work, at breaks, at lunches, saying, “You’ve got to sign this card. We’ve got to have your information.” Telling them “NO” meant nothing to them. They came to her house. They waited outside. She had two small children in the house. She said, “We have a secure vote to elect the president; why can’t we have one when it comes to our paycheck and our home and everything else?” She also said, “If this is my livelihood we should be able to have a choice – and card check isn’t a choice.”
The same intimidation happened to workers at Dana Corp. in Albion, Indiana when UAW organizers came to harass and intimidate them.
‘Card Check’ is flagrantly undemocratic and unAmerican – and so are the liberals who are trying to push it onto working people.
You might find the following unrelated. I personally believe it is just another example of the same sort of ‘Card Check”-like crap that the left is trying to shove down our throats in the name of warped and redefined “fairness” and “tolerance.”
This kind of ruthless assault on people’s private beliefs being “outed” – and attacked if it doesn’t measure up to the left’s agenda – goes on all the time.
The campaign against Miss California Carrie Prejean is an example of this liberal pressure by intimidation. Similar to what liberals want to do through Card Check, Carrie Prejean was forced to answer a question by a liberal that she clearly would never have wanted to publicly answer while running for the crown in a beauty pageant. For a liberal, Perez Hilton’s question was a chance to shine with the politically correct answer that beauty pageants thrive upon; for a conservative, it amounted to being forced to answer the McCarthyesque question, “Are you now, or have you ever been, a Christian?”
Prejean gave her honest answer. And you would have thought she had said she liked eating babies (when we all know it’s liberals who favor baby meat). And thus the left pounced, following the lead of the homosexual activist who forced this issue by demanding Prejean answer his question (only to call her “a stupid bitch” because he didn’t like her answer).
Media Matters called Prejean “dishonest” because she said, “Well, I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land that you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage.” On their view, every state that doesn’t allow homosexual marriage doesn’t allow their citizens to choose. But in fact, THEY are the ones who are throwing out falsehoods: Carrie Prejean – as Miss California – represents a state where citizens CHOSE to define marriage as being between a man and a woman.
Miss California Carrie Prejean, who became the bombshell of the Miss USA pageant by saying gay couples should not be allowed to marry, said her state sponsors urged her to apologies afterward but she rejected the advice.
Ms Prejean, 21, said officials from the Miss California USA pageant were worried that her comments would cost their contest financial backing and tried to prepare her for a string of post-pageant media interviews by discouraging her from discussing her religious beliefs.
“You need to apologize to the gay community. You need to not talk about your faith. This has everything to do with you representing California and saving the brand,” Ms Prejean recalled being told.
Prejean has since had her private medical records exposed and “outed” for having had breast implant surgery. There was nothing improper with this; pageant officials actually paid for the procedure. It was nothing more than harassment.
OLBERMANN: There it is here, Miss California is opposed to same-sex marriage, which is at least marriage between two human beings, but she has fully endorsed now marriage between a man and a woman who is partially made out of plastic.
MUSTO: Well, she’s dumb and twisted. She’s sort of like a human Klaus Barbie Doll. I mean, you tell Perez Hilton you’re against gay marriage? That’s like telling Simon Cowell you’re against screeching a show tune. This is the kind of girl who sits on the TV and watches the sofa. You know, she thinks innuendo is a Italian suppository.
Can I keep going? On the pageants now, they really should have easier questions, like what’s your middle name or what show was Seinfeld on. I mean, this girl’s a ding-dong. I didn’t even like her earrings.
OLBERMANN: The cruelest cut of all. The outcomes here, too. Perez Hilton looks like an intellectual titan and some sort of civil rights leader. And the new poster girl against same-sex marriage is not just a boob, but a fake boob. This is a real win for this cause, is it not?
MUSTO: Well, Perez is the new me, let’s leave him alone. And using the C word is something I wouldn’t do. But yes, Carrie Prejean, however you say it, she’s getting something off her chest. But what she really needs to get off is the price tag there.
The “girl” was dumb and a ding-dong, Michael Musto explained, as he struggled with her last name. (Olbermann fake-mispronounced her name too, right at the start of the segment. He added the fact that the girl is a boob.) Did we mention that Prejean’s position on the issue at hand resembles that of almost all major Dems? Resembles that of President Obama, to cite just one example?
At any rate, the boys went on and on—and on—with their clever boob jokes. Musto proved he was a progressive when he announced that he wouldn’t call Prejean a “c*nt” (or even a “b*tch,” one might assume), as Perez Hilton has done. Because the gentlemen were so clever, we offer you more of their minstrelsy:
OLBERMANN: Now, the moral in this is what? Never cross a beauty pageant official who knows you’ve had implants?
MUSTO: Yes, exactly, that’s it. This has escalated to a public shaving. I mean, and what Moakler has left out, Keith, is they also paid for Carrie to cut off her penis, and sand her Adam’s Apple and get a head-to-toe waxing. I know for a fact that Carrie Prejean was Harry Prejean, a homophobic man, who liked marriage so much he did it three times. Now he’s a babe who needs a brain implant. Maybe they could inject some fat from her butt. Oh, they have?
How could Keith Olbermann or Musto have been more vicious or more vile? If this isn’t the kind of propaganda attack that would have made Nazi Joseph Goebbels proud, I don’t know what is. They certainly have been doing everything they could to dehumanize her and make her an object of mockery and hate.
One might ask where the feminists were to defend this strong, independent, successful woman who is being so attacked just for having the courage to stand up for her convictions. But feminist Gloria Feldt actually used the same reasoning in attacking Carrie Prejean as a fake person with breast implants when she came on the O’Reilly Factor.
Even as activists who could care less about the intent of the voters immediately went to work nullifying the will of Californians so they could impose their own will.
They immediately flooded the courts so that a few judges could throw out the will of Californians. It’s not about the will of the people. Liberals don’t give a damn about the will of the people. All they care about is power, and their ability to impose their will upon the people by any means necessary.
The left loves to call conservatives “fascists,” and have been shouting the label for years. It is time they look at the mirror and recognize that THEY are the fascists, and always have been.
Fascism comes from the left, being a form of socialism. “Nazi” was an abbreviation for “Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei,” which means, “National Socialist German Workers’ Party.” If we had a “National SocialistAmericanWorkers’ Party,” would it be filled with conservatives or liberals? The Nazi Party’s platform and its underlying philosophy were decidedly leftwing.
And the point is that the big labor “workers’ parties” in America are every bit as fascist as the German “workers’ party” that gave fascism such a horrible reputation in the first place.
And homosexuals themselves – who ultimately ended up being persecuted by the Nazis – were themselves instrumental in bringing about Nazi power. It was they who filled the ranks of Ernst Roehm’s SA (also known as the stormtroopers or the Brownshirts) and brought Hitler to power. The fact that Hitler later turned on them does nothing to mitigate that role.
The same players, playing the same fascist games, yesterday and today. The left constantly scream and whine about being victimized, when THEY are the victimizers. THEY are the attackers. THEY are the sick, twisted freaks who continually harass and intimidate the innocent and the helpless to impose their will upon society whether that society be the majority or not.
Liberals and Democrats have become fascists. If they don’t like being called “fascists,” they should quit acting like fascists and let people express their consciences in their opinions and their votes.
The government is preparing the way for a “Dr. Kevorkian”-style bankruptcy for Chrysler. A couple of paragraphs from the New York Times story should suffice:
DETROIT — The Treasury Department is directing Chrysler to prepare a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing that could come as soon as next week, people with direct knowledge of the action said Thursday.
The Treasury has an agreement in principle with the United Automobile Workers union, whose members’ pensions and retiree health care benefits would be protected as a condition of the bankruptcy filing, said these people, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.
You know, I’m old enough to remember a time way, way back when businesses were actually allowed to attend to their own financial affairs.
And they’ve got a guy who was either too dishonest or too stupid to pay his own tax bill organizing the thing: “Turbo Tax Tim” Geithner.
That’s bad enough, but then the snowball starts rolling straight to hell.
The government isn’t making its arrangements with Chrysler; it is rather making them with the United Auto Workers, and then imposing the conditions onto Chrysler.
This is tantamount to saying that Chrysler will never come out of bankruptcy, given the fact that the company needs to be able to escape its legacy costs if it is to ever have any chance of ever being viable.
Would Italian Fiat want this gold-plated turd? Not very likely. The Obama administration’s kissy-kiss with the UAW on a bankruptcy deal (and who ever would have seen THAT coming) is frankly akin to a bridal consultant pushing a bride-to-be to gain 500 pounds and have her face chewed off by a deranged chimpanzee in order to prepare her for her nuptials. The bridal consultant, the chimp, and the bride; the Obama administration, the UAW, and the company: neither situation is going to end well.
Realize this: Obams imposing a suicide pack onto Chrysler. There is no way the company will be able to attract private investment as long as the unions get to dictate terms. And realize this: the green cars that the Obama administration wants to impose on the American auto industry aren’t profitable. Which is why no American money wants anything to do with Barack Hussein’s GM or Chrysler (and very soon Ford). That leaves us hoping that some foreign country’s investors are more stupid than ours are.
This is nothing less than a suicide pact. There’s a spaceship hidden behind big labor’s version of the Hale-Bopp comet, and the Obama administration wants Chrysler and GM to prepare to board.
The NY Times article continues:
The only major question that remains unresolved is what happens to Chrysler’s lenders, who hold $6.9 billion in company debt. The government’s most recent offer, presented Wednesday, would give the company’s lenders about 22 cents on the dollar, or $1.5 billion, and a 5 percent equity stake in a reorganized Chrysler. Earlier this week, a steering committee of the lenders proposed that they receive 65 cents on the dollar, or $4.5 billion, and a 40 percent equity stake.
If no agreement is reached between the government and Chrysler’s lenders, a nasty legal fight could emerge in bankruptcy. The creditors’ claims are backed by most of the company’s collateral, including plants, brands and equipment, and the senior lenders will argue that they have first claim on those assets — even over and above the government’s debt….
Some analysts questioned whether the Treasury’s steps to prepare a bankruptcy case were an effort to put more pressure on lenders, with which it has exchanged proposals meant to reduce Chrysler’s debt. Chrysler faces an April 30 deadline from the Treasury, while G.M. faces a June 1 deadline in its own efforts to draft a new restructuring plan.
Let me put the first sentence of the last paragraph another way: “Some analysts questioned whether the father-in-law’s steps to prepare a shotgun wedding was an effort to put more pressure on the boyfriend…”
This is an administration that is clearly hungry for power, and which clearly intends to use that power for political purposes. Why won’t they allow banks to repay bailout money? They want to be able to control the banks, and thereby control the banks lending policies.
Think about it: If Rick Wagoner can be fired and compact cars can be mandated, why can’t a bank with a vault full of TARP money be told where to lend? And since politics drives this administration, why can’t special loans and terms be offered to favored constituents, favored industries, or even favored regions? Our prosperity has never been based on the political allocation of credit — until now.
Obama is paying unions back for supporting his presidency by putting the UAW at the head of the line in bankruptcy negotiations. It is nothing short of political patronage. Do you seriously think there’s even a chance that he won’t similarly use his power over the banking industry to impose liberal policies and reward liberal constituents?
Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”–that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions.
What the hell else are you going to call what Obama is doing but fascism?
Which leads to the last observation: the suicide-pact that the Obama adminstration is forcing onto Chrysler is a microcosm for the suicide-pact that our society and our country are going to experience. This government takeover of the American way of life won’t just result in a fascistic redefinition of America. The federal government and federal reserve have committed over $12.8 TRILLION so far in bailouts and stimulus. And we’re nowhere near done with this madness, because our leaders believe they can sepnd their way out of debt. Massive inflation – and a death spiral – will necessarily follow.
Start Thinking Right 