I find it hard to refer to Obama as “President”, when he is still a “Community Organizer”.
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.
Barack Obama’s policies are becoming crystal clear. Those policies are shutting down the American Dream, shutting them down in favor of a country that looks less like Capitalism, and more like Marxism.
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.
If you haven’t yet browsed Mish’s site, take a look at today’s rant. His site is full of articles that document the coming battle between public sector unions and taxpayers.
The big challenge for us is that unions have their man, socialist Barack Obama, in power. With “advisers” like Andy Stern, head of SEIU, and avowed Communists and socialists running all over the in the White House (Anita Dunn, Van Jones, and now Jim Wallis) ….
It will be a battle royale! Unions really don’t care about taxpayers. They only care about 3 things: power, more power and the union itself. Even its members are expendable.
The cry “workers of the world, unite” has gone out and this White House is leading the disembowelment of America.
(Why Obama desperately wants to pass healthcare, and the help he gets from this guy.)
The number 1 visitor to the White House, according to public WH disclosures, is SEIU President Andy Stern.
Stern was recently appointed by President Obama to be a member of the 18 person commission to reduce the national debt.
How has the head of a radical labor union like SEUI been able be the number 1 lobbyist to Obama? He just didn’t register. BigGovernment.com reports that:
Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) and me [Brian Johnson], as Executive Director of the Alliance for Worker Freedom (AWF) formally requested an investigation by the acting United States Attorney Channing D. Phillips, Esq., into the potentially illegal lobbying activities of the Service Employee International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern.
But why should we be worried about Andy Stern? Why is he the most dangerous man in America?
Well, first, he has the ear of, and now obviously, power through Obama, so he can influence and push an agenda. He has advised Obama on his health care tactics (see his involvement in a YouTube video here.) Obama said repeatedly during his campaign that he calls SEIU and Andy Stern “first” on every issue.
But more importantly is what this man believes. In earlier decades, he might have been called a communist, certainly a socialist, but radicals these days prefer more benign labels, like “progressive”.
Let’s look at Andy Stern through his own words and actions:
“We’re trying to use the power of persuasion. And if that doesn’t work we’re going to use the persuasion of power.”
“We took names. We watched how they voted. We know where they live.“
Sound like a thug? Well, yes, SEUI members have beaten up people they don’t like. But does that make him a socialist?
“Workers of the world unite, it’s not just a slogan anymore. It’s the way we’re going to have to do our work.”
Hmm .. where did that slogan originally come from ? Gee, it is directly out of the Communist Manifesto (1848)!!! This man is in FAVOR of the dis-assembling of American capitalism in favor of a government run society (with himself and Obama in charge, of course!)
“I happened to be at Davos and I say they are going to rename this year’s Davos as the revenge of the countries over the companies. Because all of a sudden we realized we let Global Capitalism run amok and reap global regulation and today we began the process in London of actually putting in place those regulations.”
“We have a new metric. The president says he wants to judge the new economy, whether it increases the number of people in the middle class, whether we have shared prosperity, not just whether we have growth, which is that we’ve seen in the country of today. “
So Andy is preaching straight up Socialism to us, and he says the President is on board!!! No argument from the White House here … and with a selection as 1 of Obama’s 6 picks to the debt commission …. seems that the White House is OK with the Communist Manifesto.
So why is the health care plan of Obama’s so important? So important, he is asking Democratic House members to walk the plank, risk their political future for the bill? OK, let’s go back to Andy Stern:
“Now, how do we distribute wealth in the country? And this is sort of my last big point. And clearly government has a major opportunity to distribute wealth. Through tax policies, through minimum wages, through living wages, the government has a role in distributing wealth or social benefits like Medicare, Medicaid, certain health insurance.”
Andy Stern is an avowed Communist, with more access to Obama than anyone else, receives contemporary support from Obama himself, and is committed to redistribution of wealth, world government and the “revenge of countries over companies”.
Ladies and gentlemen: Andy Stern is the most dangerous man in America.
