Why Did Our Economy Melt Down In 2008? (Email This To Your Friends)

Note: I did not write the following; I am only passing it along.  I hope you read it and then pass it along as well.

Remember the LONG-TERM Causes of the Financial Sector Meltdown (an email pre-formatted for sending)
FreedomKeys.com ^ | 20101010 | various
Posted on 10/23/2010 12:49:32 PM PDT by FreeKeys

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
by novelist Orson Scott Card, a Democrat
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.. This [financial crisis] was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it.  One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules.  The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.
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Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans.  (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me.  It’s as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.) …
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If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.
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If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis. …
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So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all?  Do you even know what honesty means?
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[Was] getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for? …
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… tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis.  You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.
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This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.
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If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.
– Novelist Orson Scott Card, a Democrat, on October 5, 2008,HERE
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.. The Financial Sector Meltdown ..
1.  Almost all of the financial problems we see today are based on bad mortgage lending.  That would be lending money to people to buy homes who didn’t qualify for a loan.
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2.  The Democrats, under Clinton, strengthened a government-created monster called the “Community Reinvestment Act” [first foisted upon the country under Jimmy Carter].  This law was then used by “activists” and “community organizers” …  to coerce lending institutions to make these bad loans … millions of them.
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3.  Now we see what happens when political “wisdom” supplants good loan underwriting.  When private financial institutions are virtually forced to make loans to people with a bad credit and job history … this is what you get.  Enjoy it. — Neal Boortz, here ..

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Enough cards on this table have been turned over that the story is now clear. The economic history books will describe this episode in simple and understandable terms: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exploded, and many bystanders were injured in the blast, some fatally.
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Fannie and Freddie did this by becoming a key enabler of the mortgage crisis. They fueled Wall Street’s efforts to securitize subprime loans by becoming the primary customer of all AAA-rated subprime-mortgage pools. In addition, they held an enormous portfolio of mortgages themselves.
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In the times that Fannie and Freddie couldn’t make the market, they became the market.
.. — Kevin Hassett, Bloomberg News, here ..

 

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.. Obama choice helped Fannie block oversight
National security adviser tied to discrediting of probe ..
By Jim McElhatton, The Washington Times,October 13, 2010 here
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UNDER SCRUTINY: Thomas E. Donilon worked as a registered lobbyist for Fannie Mae from 1999 to 2005.
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Years before Fannie Mae foundered amid a massive accounting scandal, President Obama’s choice for national security adviser oversaw an office inside the mortgage giant that orchestrated a negative publicity blitz to fight attempts by Congress to increase government oversight, records show.
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Thomas E. Donilon, who won the job as national security adviser this month, worked as a registered lobbyist for Fannie Mae from 1999 to 2005 at a time the company’s officials insisted finances were sound. He also earned more than $1.8 million in bonuses [from Frannie Mae] before the government took over the troubled company in the wake of an accounting scandal.
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Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Mr. Obama, who railed against lobbyists on the campaign trail, hailed Mr. Donilon’s appointment last week, but made no mention of his time as a registered lobbyist.st wee
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Democrats and some [big-government] Republicans opposed reform in part because Fannie and Freddie were very good at greasing palms. Fannie has spent $170 million on lobbying since 1998 and $19.3 million on political contributions since 1990.
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The principal recipient of Fannie Mae’s largesse was a Democrat, Sen. Chris Dodd (D, CT), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. No. 2 was another Democrat, Sen. Barack Obama (D, IL).
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Mr. Dodd was also the second largest recipient in the Senate of contributions from Countrywide’s political action committee and its employees, and the recipient of a home loan from Countrywide at well below market rates.  The No. 1 senator on Countrywide’s list? Barack Obama. Check it out here:  http://tinyurl.com/4h9955
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“Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default.
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“The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.” — Dr. Thomas Sowell, Professor Emeritus, Economics, Stanford University, HERE
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When the Bush administration tried to rein in Freddie and Fannie from continuing to engage in risky practices, guess who stepped in to block their efforts? Democratic senators Chris Dodd, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and — are you ready? — Barack Obama.
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Meanwhile, guess who were the top four recipients of campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie between 1988 and 2008?
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Senators Chris Dodd, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and — still ready? — Barack Obama.
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A coincidence, I tell you — just a coincidence.
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More mere coincidences: Franklin Raines — a former Carter- and Clinton-administration official and former head of Fannie Mae, now under investigation for cooking its books — had a lot of powerful people in Congress beholden to his agency. Here is a list of his campaign-contribution recipients. Meanwhile, Democratic honcho Jim Johnson, another former Fannie Mae CEO, has been an economic adviser to and major fundraiser for Barack Obama, and even ran his vice-presidential search committee until growing scandals over his Fannie management forced him to step down in July. – Robert Bidinotto, here ..

 

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On May 25, 2006, Sen. John McCain spoke forcefully on behalf of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005.  He said on the floor of the Senate:
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“Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae’s regulator reported that the company’s quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were “illusions deliberately and systematically created” by the company’s senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.
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“The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight’s report goes on to say that Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives. In the case of Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae’s former chief executive officer, OFHEO’s report shows that over half of Mr. Raines’ compensation for the 6 years through 2003 was directly tied to meeting earnings targets. The report of financial misconduct at Fannie Mae echoes the deeply troubling $5 billion profit restatement at Freddie Mac.
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” The OFHEO report also states that Fannie Mae used its political power to lobby Congress in an effort to interfere with the regulator’s examination of the company’s accounting problems. This report comes some weeks after Freddie Mac paid a record $3.8 million fine in a settlement with the Federal Election Commission and restated lobbying disclosure reports from 2004 to 2005. These are entities that have demonstrated over and over again that they are deeply in need of reform.
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“For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs–and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO’s report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO’s report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.
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“I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.
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“I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation.”
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It died at the hands of the DEMOCRATS —
HERE’s a video clip showing their anger.
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“Many politicians and pundits claim that the credit crunch and high mortgage foreclosure rate is an example of market failure and want government to step in to bail out creditors and borrowers at the expense of taxpayers who prudently managed their affairs. These financial problems are not market failures but government failure. … The credit crunch and foreclosure problems are failures of government policy.” — Dr. Walter E. Williams, the John M. Olin distinguished professor of economics at George Mason University, HERE
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“Barack Obama wasn’t just the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac political contributions. He was also the senator from ACORN, the activist leader for risky ‘affirmative action’ loans. … [The CRA] gave groups such as ACORN a license and a means to intimidate banks … ACORN employed its tactics in 1991 by taking over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA. … Obama represented ACORN in a 1994 suit against redlining.  ACORN was also a driving force behind a 1995 regulatory revision pushed through by the Clinton administration that greatly expanded the CRA and helped spawn the current financial crisis. Obama was the attorney representing ACORN in this effort.” — IBD Editorials
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“The Woods Fund report makes it clear Obama was fully aware of the intimidation tactics used by ACORN’s Madeline Talbott in her pioneering [“community organizer”] efforts to force banks to suspend their usual credit standards. Yet he supported Talbott in every conceivable way. He trained her personal staff and other aspiring ACORN leaders, he consulted with her extensively, and he arranged a major boost in foundation funding [via CAC and Woods Fund] for her efforts.” — Stanley Kurtz, “BARACK’S ‘ORGAANIZER’ BUDS PUSHED FOR BAD MORTGAGES”HERE
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Bloomberg News has an excellent recap of
the history of the financial meltdown:.HERE.
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Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama
not shown: Bill Clinton

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“Scratch the surface of an endemic problem — famine, illness, poverty —  and you invariably find a politician at the source.” —  Simon Carr

 

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“One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary.” — Ayn Rand

 

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“I think that we all need to consider the possibility … just the possibility … that Obama is engaged in a conscious effort to destroy our free market economy so that he can build a government-controlled socialist party on the rubble.” — Neal Boortz, here
[Conscious effort or not, we have an emergency on our hands.]

 

AmeriCorps Pledge Challenge: Read It Out Loud Without Sounding Like A Little Marxist

The AmeriCorps Pledge.  Try to read it out loud, WITHOUT sounding like you just joined the Young Pioneers or the Hitler Youth.

“As an AmeriCorps member, you are expected to adhere to the AmeriCorps pledge. ( If you don’t have a pledge certificate, ask your project director for one.) The pledge represents the commitment you have taken to serve not just this year, but in the years ahead.”

The AmeriCorps Pledge

I will get things done for America –
to make our people safer,
smarter, and healthier.

I will bring Americans together
to strengthen our communities.

Faced with apathy,
I will take action.

Faced with conflict,
I will seek common ground.

Faced with adversity,
I will persevere.

I will carry this commitment
with me this year and beyond.

I am an AmeriCorps member,
and I will get things done.

Ah, yes, the Solemn Promise:

I, Barry Hussein Obama,

joining the ranks of the V. I. Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization,

in the presence of my comrades solemnly promise:

to love and cherish my Motherland passionately,

to live as the great Lenin bade us,

as the Communist Party teaches us,

as require the laws of the Young Pioneers of the Soviet Union.

And let’s not forget the rules.  Rules are important, you know:

• Young Pioneer is a young communism builder, labours for the welfare of the Motherland, prepares to become its defender.
• Young Pioneer is an active fighter for peace, a friend to Young Pioneers and workers’ children of all countries.
• Young Pioneer follows communists’ example, prepares to become a Komsomol member, leads Little Octobrists.
• Young Pioneer upholds the honour of the organization, strengthens its authority by deeds and actions.
• Young Pioneer is a reliable comrade, respects elder, looks after younger people, always acts according to conscience.
• Young Pioneer has a right to elect and be elected to Young Pioneer self-government institutions, to discuss the functioning of the Young Pioneer organization on Young Pioneer gatherings, meetings, gatherings of Soviets of Young Pioneer detachments and Young Pioneer groups, in the press; to criticize shortcomings; to submit a proposal to any Soviet of the Young Pioneer organization, including the Central Soviet of the V. I. Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization; to ask for a recommendation of the Soviet of Young Pioneer group to join VLKSM.

Yes.  We need more of THAT kind of thing.  That’s why we so desperately need the Obama Youth now.  I had this brilliant idea of militarizing the Obama Youth into little fascist Brownshirts.  But – as the the following video demonstrates – someone beat me to it.  Those nice boys sure do adore their fuhrer, don’t they?

Oh, liberals love to say that Republicans are fascists.  That’s in spite of the fact that fascism is clearly a disorder of the political LEFT, and it’s in spite of the rather obvious fact Republicans never had their children bask adoringly in the beatific glory of a new Reich under George Bush or Dick Cheney.  And I somehow don’t remember “the cult of McCain” marching around, either chanting creepy slogans, either.

But no matter how many frightening parallels there might be, you know what Democrats will always say:

I still remember this glassy-eyed little girl singing, “We’re gonna spread happiness! We’re gonna spread freeeeedom! Obama’s gonna change it, Obama’s gonna lead ‘em…”  That one made me realize that we’re really not that far from finding ourselves in some weird sci-fi flick involving weird children taking over one city after another.  Is it those vacant doll eyes, or the words she’s singing, that are scarier?

Children used to sing songs to another leader:

Adolf Hitler is our Saviour, our hero
He is the noblest being in the whole wide world.
For Hitler we live, for Hitler we die.
Our Hitler is our Lord who rules a brave new world.

I have never heard children singing the praises of Reagan, or either Bush.  But there were freakish children crawling out of the woodwork to sing about their messiah Obama.  This bizarre devotion to a politician is as mystifying as it is terrifying to a student of history.

I remember this political re-education camp for kindergartners:

I still remember Louis Farrakhan saying:

“You are the instruments that God is gonna use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth. And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn’t care anything about. That’s a sign. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking.”

And I still remember Spike Lee saying:

It means that this is a whole new world. I think…I’ve been saying this before. You can divide history. BB Before Barack. AB After Barack.

I don’t know about you, but that’s how I date things now.  It’s the year One AB.  It helps me better understand why the Mayans predicted the cataclysmic apocalypse on December 21, 2012 (according to that old “pre-BB/AB” calender).  Unfortunately, Spike Lee’s Before Barack-After Barack calender only has four years in it before liberals completely ruin the world.  It’ll be just like the Ghostbusters said: “Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes!  The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!”

Okay, maybe it will just be no jobs, no economy, government control over all health care and all use of energy, and a bunch of weird fanatic kids running around taking over the world for Dear Leader Obama.

The Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act (GIVE) will massively increase the Americorps program to the tune of $6 billion.  The money quote:

But the bill’s opponents — and there are only a few in Congress — say it could cram ideology down the throats of young “volunteers,” many of whom could be forced into service since the bill creates a “Congressional Commission on Civic Service.”

NO! Cram ideology down the throats of young “volunteers”?  PREPOSTEROUS! Never gonna happen.  Okay, maybe it will happen just a little bit…

Quite a shame that only a few opposed this in Congress, given the fact that the model this new “Obama Youth” program is based upon – Americorps – qualifies as “number one” in Heritage.org’s list of political slush funds.

A political slush fund to indoctrinate younp people into leftist ideology?  What could possibly be wrong with that?

House Passes Volunteerism Bill Critics Call Pricey, Forced Service: The legislation will expand the1993 AmeriCorps program to match the renewed interest in national service since President Obama’s election, which backers say is crucial in tough economic times.

Denial of Service: The battle over AmeriCorps

Obama Axes AmeriCorps’ Inspector General (see my article for more on why this was so blatantly political and wrong).

AmeriCorps volunteers used for political purposes

Obama’s AmeriCrooks and Cronies Scandal

Americorps has a recruitment ad (which your dollars paid for) that is pure propaganda, associating themselves with people and events that have nothing whatsoever to do with them as they attempt to leech more and more government funding.

Now, all that sounds well and good.  But just consider that the communist Young Pioneers depicted themselves as loving and cherishing the Motherland passionately; being a builder and labouring for the welfare of the Motherland; being an active fighter for peace; being a friend to workers’ children of all countries; upholding the honor of the organization, and strengthening its authority by deeds and actions; being a reliable comrade; respecting elders, looking after younger people, and always acting according to conscience.  It all just sounds so good; can I sign up and be a communist Young Pioneer or join Americorps too?

Now, Glenn Beck came out with a theory which would sound preposterous unless you watched some of the videos above and realize a few key facts:

1) The minimum wage increase forced through by a Democrat-controlled Congress will result in over 10% of the minimum wage workforce losing their jobs.  Young people ages 18-24 will be far and away the hardest hit.  Young minimum wage workers WILL be hurt by this program.

2) Americorps is competing for the same people in the same age group.  “Volunteers” are actually paid to perform activities which are in fact political.

3) MICHELLE OBAMA on 2/18/2008 is on the record preaching, “Barack Obama will require you to work. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”

Glenn Beck says,

They are steering our youth into community service. Ted Kennedy and his ilk are even pushing the idea of forced service. They’re incentivizing working for the government with promises of paying off college loans. The catch, of course, is you have to federalize your loan before they’ll pay it. He wants you to be a bureaucrat slave to government.

It’s hard to believe that a President of the United States would deliberately torpedo minimum wage jobs to force young people out of the private workplace and into one of his government “volunteer” service organizations.  But it was awfully hard for me to believe a lot of things I’ve seen this president do.

Obama has talked about “fundamentally changing the country.”  He has said, “We’ll transform America.”

Obama has incredibly radical theoretical constructs:

“But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can’t do to you, it says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

Even the Warren Court wasn’t radical enough for what Obama wanted to do.  He wanted to radically take the country further away from the founding fathers.

But to implement such “transformation” requires an army of leftist foot soldiers (preferably foot soldiers who are paid by federal funding, such as ACORN and AmeriCorps).  You need to have mobs to protest every “lack of government social resources”, to challenge the status quo at every turn, to push for the liberal social agenda.  You need those foot soldiers implanted in neighborhoods and cities across the country who are at the call of Team Obama – whether it’s answering the call to shake down banks, or form a housing entitlement mob, or foster voter fraud, or create statistical shenanigans with the census.  You need community organizers and the bitter mobs they organize.

Enter Obama and the organization he’s building:

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

Michelle Malkin has just written Culture of Corruption to explore “ObamaCorps” and how this army is being created.

There is another, even more sinister cospiracy.  Because all of this reminds me of the Cloward-Piven strategy:

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when “the rest of society is afraid of them,” Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would “the rest of society” accept their demands.

The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. Cloward-Piven’s early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration. “Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules,” Alinsky wrote in his 1972 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judaeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system’s failure to “live up” to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist “rule book” with a socialist one.

I genuinely believe that Barack Obama – a follower of Saul Alinsky as well as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate when he belonged to it to go along with a long and deep relationship with leftist radicals – is pursuing a “heads we win, tails you lose” strategy. If the economy somehow picks up under all of this massive spending and even more massive debt, then Democrats win big and Republicans lose. If – much more likely – the economy crashes under its own massive weight due to hyperinflation as interest payments on the debt soar, then a starving, terrified people will scream for help from their government. And Democrats will win the pure-socialist totalitarian state they have always envisioned. Either way, Obama liberals believe they will win big.

When Bill Clinton was president, I disagreed with many of his policies.  But I have no memory of being literally creeped out by any bizarre cult-like followings.  And I certainly didn’t constantly have to suffer legitimate fears that he was trying to fundamentally transform the very essence of America.