According to Wikipedia:

community organizers generally assume that social change necessarily involves conflict and social struggle in order to generate collective power for the powerless.

So you’d think the PRESIDENT of the United States could use his bully pulpit, and its power of persuasion to help tackle state and local government financial problems. After all, if nothing is done, we face a possible collapse of our nation (more on that in a another post..)

But no, if you travel over to BarackObama.com, our President’s web site, you will find our President cheering on the masses. He criticizes the Governor:

Republican Governor Walker Scott Walker has proposed a radical plan to take away the collective bargaining rights of public workers. Those who teach and those who plow the snow-filled Wisconsin streets would no longer be able to organize for better working conditions and rights in the workplace.

Since Tuesday, the streets of Madison and the halls of the Capitol building have been filled with thousands of ordinary folks who are sending the strongest message possible to their state legislators—their rights are not up for negotiation.

Organizing for America–Wisconsin, who has been among the most vocal advocates for state employees’ rights, is tweeting live from the rallies and pulling together the voices, videos, and photos of this movement.

Since when have we seen a sitting President back teachers illegally “striking”.  Where is the leadership, the help in dealing with crushing fiscal problems? Where is the leadership in addressing runaway public pension costs?

Perhaps what we see is what we can expect from a President who received hundreds of millions of dollars from these “public servants”.  Past SEIU President Andy Stern said in 2009:

We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama — $60.7 million to be exact — and we’re proud of it.

If Obama wants to be a community organizer, he should resign and carry on the fight.  If he wants to be President, he should act like one.

The speech is full of memorable phrases that are as relevant today as when he said them.

This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I’d like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There’s only an up or down: [up] man’s old — old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.

And do you think of Obamacare when he says:

the full power of centralized government” — this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don’t control things. A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.

We have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one.

The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.

What the 2011 tax changes mean for you.
• When you sell equities (such as stock) acquired in 2011, we will be required to report details about your gain or loss to you and the IRS on Form 1099-B. (Mutual funds, ETFs, fixed income investments, and options will be affected in subsequent years.)

Obama made his point of view very clear on CNBC”s Town Hall program on Monday 9/20.  In response to a question about raising taxes (termed “extending the Bush tax cuts” to deride them), Obama clearly outlined his rationale for raising taxes on “the rich”, those families making over $250,000, and  keeping cuts to an already lower-tax group:

• “You probably didn’t get a raise” (i.e. you deserve it, I’m on your side in this class struggle).
• “You’re more likely to spend it”.  (Keynesian economics — we want spenders, not investors).

So this is a clear class-warfare stance: Those who invest must have their money confiscated; we’ll give tax breaks to some only if they spend it.  (The government will make the investment decisions.)  The proletariat will live from pay-check to pay-check and spend all they have.  And that is “good”, according to Obama.

This is a doctrine straight out of the words of Karl Marx:

Marx argues that in capitalist society, an economic minority (the bourgeoisie) dominate and exploit an economic majority (the proletariat). Marx argues that capitalism is exploitative, specifically the way in which unpaid labor (surplus value) is extracted from the working class (the labor theory of value), extending and critiquing the work of earlier political economists on value. Such commodification of human labor according to Marx, creates an arrangement of transitory serfdom. He argued that while the production process is socialized, ownership remains in the hands of the bourgeoisie. This forms the fundamental contradiction of capitalist society. Without the elimination of the fetter of the private ownership of the means of production, human society is unable to achieve further development.

In order to overcome the fetters of private property the working class must seize political power internationally through a social revolution and expropriate the capitalist classes around the world and place the productive capacities of society into collective ownership. Upon this, material foundation classes would be abolished and the material basis for all forms of inequality between humankind would dissolve.

Obama, through his words, clearly sees the world as a struggle of classes, between rich and poor in the United States.  He views himself as someone who has been chosen to lead the revolution, as intelligent and benevolent enough to make the tough decisions to fundamentally change America.

Thomas Sowell commented last week on this class warfare and how the Left has twisted words to advance their argument:

Among the many other catchwords that shut down thinking are “the rich” and “the poor.” When is somebody rich? When they have a lot of wealth. But, when politicians talk about taxing “the rich,” they are not even talking about people’s wealth, and what they are planning to tax are people’s incomes, not their wealth.

If we stop and think, instead of going with the flow of catchwords, it is clear than income and wealth are different things. A billionaire can have zero income. Bill Gates lost $18 billion dollars in 2008 and Warren Buffett lost $25 billion. Their income might have been negative, for all I know. But, no matter how low their income was, they were not poor.

By the same token, people who have worked their way up, to the point where they have a substantial income in their later years, are not rich. In most cases, they never earned high incomes in their younger years, and they will not be earning high incomes when they retire.

A middle-aged or elderly couple making $125,000 each are not rich, even though politicians will tax away what they have earned at the end of decades of working their way up. Similarly, most of the people who are called “the poor” are not poor. Their low incomes are as transient as the higher incomes of “the rich.”


Most of the people in the bottom 20% in income end up in the top half of the income distribution in later years. Far more of them reach the top 20% than remain in the bottom 20% over the years.

The grand fallacy in most discussions of income statistics is the assumption that the various income brackets represent enduring classes of people, rather than transients who start at the bottom in entry-level jobs and move up as they acquire more experience and skills.

But if we are going to base major government policies on confusions between medical care and health care, or on calling people “rich” and “poor” who are neither, then we have truly accepted words as the money of fools.

The American Dream, as Dr. Sowell states, is the ability to start poor, work hard, save and invest to build up a nest egg that allows you, perhaps someday, to invest in a business and employ others … in the process becoming financially well off.  It’s an ebb and flow … a process, that relies on your skills and determination.

If the government policy is to ensure that if you have excess income, you spend it, and that investing is bad … how can anyone climb the ladder of success when Big Government is removing the rungs?

The dream has its foundation in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

So why would President Obama “slip” and leave out the “their Creator” in a speech last week?

Back to Marx’s view on religion:

Although Marx was intensely critical of institutionalized religion including Christianity, some Christians have “accepted the basic premises of Marxism and attempted to reinterpret Christian faith from this perspective.” Some of the resulting examples are some forms of liberation theology and black liberation theology. [Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for 17+ years] Pope Benedict XVI strongly opposed radical liberation theology while he was still a cardinal, with the Vatican condemning acceptance of Marxism.

Obama and the people that he surrounds himself with all lean to Marxism, and if allowed to carry on extending their consistent polices, will end the American Dream … perhaps for our lifetime.

Mandatory spending: $2.184 trillion (+15.6%)
$695 billion (+4.9%) – Social Security
$453 billion (+6.6%) – Medicare
$290 billion (+12.0%) – Medicaid
$0 billion (−100%) – Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)
$0 billion (−100%) – Financial stabilization efforts
$11 billion (+275%) – Potential disaster costs
$571 billion (−15.2%) – Other mandatory programs
$164 billion (+18.0%) – Interest on National Debt

US receipt and expenditure estimates for fiscal year 2010.Discretionary spending: $1.368 trillion (+13.1%)
$663.7 billion (+12.7%) – Department of Defense (including Overseas Contingency Operations)
$78.7 billion (−1.7%) – Department of Health and Human Services
$72.5 billion (+2.8%) – Department of Transportation
$52.5 billion (+10.3%) – Department of Veterans Affairs
$51.7 billion (+40.9%) – Department of State and Other International Programs
$47.5 billion (+18.5%) – Department of Housing and Urban Development
$46.7 billion (+12.8%) – Department of Education
$42.7 billion (+1.2%) – Department of Homeland Security
$26.3 billion (−0.4%) – Department of Energy
$26.0 billion (+8.8%) – Department of Agriculture
$23.9 billion (−6.3%) – Department of Justice
$18.7 billion (+5.1%) – National Aeronautics and Space Administration
$13.8 billion (+48.4%) – Department of Commerce
$13.3 billion (+4.7%) – Department of Labor
$13.3 billion (+4.7%) – Department of the Treasury
$12.0 billion (+6.2%) – Department of the Interior
$10.5 billion (+34.6%) – Environmental Protection Agency
$9.7 billion (+10.2%) – Social Security Administration
$7.0 billion (+1.4%) – National Science Foundation
$5.1 billion (−3.8%) – Corps of Engineers
$5.0 billion (+100%) – National Infrastructure Bank
$1.1 billion (+22.2%) – Corporation for National and Community Service
$0.7 billion (0.0%) – Small Business Administration
$0.6 billion (−14.3%) – General Services Administration
$19.8 billion (+3.7%) – Other Agencies
$105 billion – Other

And the people that wrote this new bill?  The same people who DENIED over and over again that the GSE’s were just fine:

Rep Richard Baker (R-LA) asked in 2003 for more regulation of these corrupt giants.  Watch Rep Maxine Waters (D-CA) say “We do not have a criss at Freddie Mac, and particular at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Franklin Raines” [later convicted of fraud, a current Obama advisor] .

Watch Rep Gregory Meeks (D-NY) say “there is nothing wrong”, “we don’t need it [regulation]“. Rep Lacy Clay (D-MO) called the hearings a “political lynching of Franklin Raines” (who happens to be an African American).  Rep Barney Frank (D-MA) says “I don’t see anything in this report that raises safety and soundness problems.”

Watch this if you can stomach the lies!

These same blockers received campaign donations (Obama was #1) from these GSE’s.  How can we believe anything will change?  I don’t

• The Canadian Consumer Tax Index tracks the total tax bill of the average Canadian family from 1961 to 2009. The total tax bill of the average Canadian family, including all types of taxes, has increased by 1,624 percent since 1961.
• Taxes have grown much more rapidly than any other single expenditure for the average Canadian family. In contrast to the jump in taxes, spending on shelter increased by 1,198 percent, food by 559 percent, and clothing by 526 percent from 1961 to 2009.
• In 1961, the average family had an income of $5,000 and paid a total tax bill of $1,675 (33.5 percent). In 2009, the average Canadian family earned an income of $69,175 and paid total taxes equaling $28,878 (41.7 percent).
• The average Canadian family now spends more of its income on taxes than it does on the basic necessities such as food, shelter, and clothing. In 1961, the average family used 56.5 percent of its income on basic necessities, while only 33.5 percent of the family’s income went to taxes. In 2009, the proportion of income consumed by taxes had increased (to 41.7 percent), while the fraction of income spent on food, shelter, and clothing had dropped dramatically (to 37.1 percent).

Why Canada?  Everyone that I meet in the USA says: “Why can’t we have the economy (motored by oil), the health care (run by governments) and the economic stability (Run by excessive taxation) like they have in your home country of Canada?”

Canada is another one of the “canaries in the coal mine” about the creeping socialism all over the world.  Greece, Spain, Italy … somewhere down the line is Canada and the USA.

The report continues on …

Including deferred taxes (deficits) means the tax bill of the average Canadian family has increased by 1,793 percent since 1961.

Yikes!  I just don’t get it!  Governments all over have been spending FAR MORE than they can afford, racking up, especially, future pension liabilities for everyone …. then when the economy collapses, we do a bail-out.

Imagine what is going through the mind now of an average frugal German .. who is asked to bail out Greece.  Greeks are living far beyond the means … but will they cuts liabilities? not when Germans will send them cash.

I chatted with a friend last evening who told me that he had a huge sum in municipal bonds. I cautioned him, noting that Central Falls RI went bankrupt this week, and many states SHOULD follow.  His response: “Oh, the Federal government will just bail them out of the bonds get in trouble.”  He said this after a 20 minute rant on the size and invasiveness of government.

We all may be capitalists, but but we like the nanny state.  Until we throw out the bums who would spend and tax us to oblivion, and change this attitude … we are screwed.  But, on the horizon, I expect we will see more Chris Christie’s — honest, straight-talking politicians who aren’t in government to line their own pockets.