WE ARE ALL COMMUNISTS NOW?

February 21, 2012

In 2009, not long after President Obama’s inauguration and when he was getting federal government spending shifted into high gear, the Newsweek Magazine of Feb. 16 proclaimed on its cover (in the largest typeface that would fit):  “WE ARE ALL SOCIALISTS NOW“.  Beneath the screamingly large type was a small subtitle, “THE PERILS AND PROMISE OF THE NEW ERA OF BIG GOVERNMENT”.

President Obama has been in reelection mode for the past year, as have potential Republican challengers.  We would not expect the President to react to the Newsweek proclamation, but it does indeed appear that he is doubling down on his promises of more, bigger and stronger centralized government.  Surprisingly, though, the Republican primary candidates for President have said little about the country’s accelerating march toward European-style, big government liberalism.  Of course they have complained about Obama’s policies and the stretched-out recession; but none has presented much in the way of details on how to reverse course before the U.S. automatically qualifies for membership in the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) group.

President Obama has mentioned, in both of his memoirs, his attraction to Marxists.  He also told us that the Hawaii organizer for the Communist Party USA and another prominent Communist were frequent visitors to his grandfather’s home in Hawaii where Obama grew up.  The President’s 20-year membership in the Reverend Wright’s church, which emphasized Marxist “Black
Liberation Theology”, is another implication that Obama does not find Marxist government policies unusual, uncomfortable, or in any way out of the ordinary.

Obama Administration appointees, speaking on the various Democrat-friendly talk shows, have made remarks that indicate this administration believes 60% of the U.S. voters actually want more government assistance and support, foreshadowing another easy Obama election victory.

Karl Marx is frequently mentioned as “the father of Socialism and Communism”.  His actual contribution was an idea for systematizing the political exploitation of two common human weaknesses:  envy and indolence.  Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation¹ about the inherent weakness of a democracy might have been the catalyst for Marx’ thinking, but there is no evidence.  Marx detailed his brilliant idea in a short document published in 1848, “The Communist Manifesto”.  Later in life, Marx developed an interest in political economics, publishing in 1867, “Das Kapital” (and he revised it incessantly until his death in 1884).  Obviously, Marx did not live to see any of his intellectual efforts tried out in attempts to create and run an actual, real-life government.

An inadvertent co-conspirator with Marx in the attempts to turn wishful thinking into an operating government was John Maynard Keynes, a highly educated and respectable political economist.  Keynes’ ideas, like those of Marx, come in and out of favor across time; both have been criticized by a number of world-famous economists over the years.  For someone without much training in political or practical economics, a serious flaw that might be seen is that both Marx and Keynes seemed to believe wealth just existed—like matter (pre-Einstein), wealth cannot be created nor destroyed, just transformed (as in where and how used).  During Marx’ productive years no essential economic data were collected or available.  Keynes did not have that handicap; but he compensated by ignoring data that did not support his economic theories.

Today, neither Marx nor Keynes carries much weight—except with Socialist and Communist true believers and with clever, opportunistic politicians.  But, as we have seen time and again over the last 100 years or so in the United States, emotion frequently trumps logic and reason.  Therefore it is likely that the current owners of Newsweek magazine already have the cover designed for the 2013 issue that will appear after the presidential inauguration.  Utilizing the largest typeface that will fit, that cover will proclaim, “WE ARE ALL COMMUNISTS NOW“.  A good subtitle on that cover would be, “LEARNING TO LOVE BIG BROTHER AND COPE WITH THE POLITBURO”.

NOTE:

  ¹Alexis de Toqueville, a French scholar and philosopher, made an extensive visit and study of the United States in its early years and later observed, ”A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”  (In more recent history, a Margaret Thatcher quote would be an appropriate footnote to de Tocqueville’s quote, “The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”).

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President of the PIIGS?

December 10, 2011

The PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) countries of Europe continue their economic slide, well past the tipping point and closer to the abyss than ever.  In spite of European Union bail-out efforts, combined with attempts to convince the profligate Socialist governments that they must rein in their unaffordable entitlement programs, little or no progress has been made on solving the underlying, core problem.

Recently, a number of the EU member states have managed to get the International Monetary Fund and its chief contributor, the United States, to contribute (“loan”) more money to try to prop up Italy, along with whatever a few of the EU members can scrape up.  As big a deal as it is to U.S. taxpayers, it’s just another drop into the fire bucket to be poured onto the European Socialist conflagration.  That whole effort may really be just to shame Germany, France and the United Kingdom into deeper financial participation in this unprecedented firefighting exercise.

The root of the problem is, of course, half one of human nature and half one of the known vulnerability that all democracies share.  The human frailty, which we all recognize even if we believe it is impolite to mention it, is our desire to get something for nothing.  Of course, all politicians―even the most dense and inarticulate―know that votes are purchased with promise capital.  Moreover, even that stupidest politician knows that the very best lure is something for nothing and that an ongoing vote-buying program is best of all.  Politicians also well understand that feasibility or deliverability of the promise is immaterial; we want to believe that we will get something free, with no strings attached.

That other part of the cause is a characteristic of democratic governments.  Alexis de Toqueville, a French scholar and philosopher, made an extensive visit and study of the United States.  It was de Toqueville who observed, ”A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years”.  No one has yet discovered a procedural method of avoiding this pitfall; but the United States has managed so far to last only a tiny bit longer than 200 years.

Barack Obama began campaigning for the office of President of the United States around 2002, and in 2008 he succeeded in being elected.  In large part, Obama’s appeal was his promise to be “a President of all the people”.  His “hope and change” slogan resonated even with some number of reasonable, educated and knowledgeable voters.  Over the years since he was elected, however, that promise seems increasingly in doubt.

President Obama seems to be stuck in a rut, ever since his 2012 reelection campaign season began in 2010.  His repetitive speeches are more strident and angry; his nice guy attitude is nowhere to be seen.  The only vestige of the old Obama is his prowess in raising campaign contributions.  He has been delivering Marxist class-envy speeches, filled with trite cold-war-era Soviet phrases, at every fund-raising stop on his current campaign trail.  It seems that Obama would feel comfortable only in a European Socialist government setting.

Obama’s legislative accomplishments also appear to be copies of the European Socialist initiatives that have led those progressive governments into imminent financial peril.  The President has refused to consider any but the most trivial reductions in government spending, and he is obsessed with increasing income taxes.  Taken together, the President’s speeches and his legislative agenda indicate that Obama is more of a President of the PIIGS than he is a President of the United States.  Perhaps it would be best if he abandoned the 2012 U.S. election and instead looked into organizing the PIIGS into their own union, with Barack Obama as its head.  PIIGS voters would undoubtedly be receptive to promises of more and more government largesse.

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Posted by thedrake01

Debt Limit Drama, In Retrospect

August 17, 2011

It’s been two weeks since the curtain rose on The Great  Debt Limit Drama; one of the major political parties has settled on its gleaning strategy; and the media has digested it, with only a low stomach rumble persisting.  The Propaganda Division of the ruling party is drawing down from regiment size to a few precautionary battalions.  Those on the out are still analyzing, trying to figure out who was on what side of this Tet Offensive.  Has the media turned a military defeat into a political victory, as in that other Tet Offensive?  It may be years before a General Giap appears on the scene to give us the straight story.

For those of us who are willing to admit that we are not politically omniscient, we are left with the meager visible facts.  One more time, my nascent opinion rests on a pitifully small number of facts.  The worry, which a number of sideline observers have voiced publicly, is whether the facts in that small quantity were salient and causative factors.

The way it looked to me:

1.  The debt limit “compromise” bill was passed by the House and the Senate and subsequently signed by the President into law.

2.  One of the credit / financial rating agencies rather quickly downgraded The United States from an AAA rating (its highest) to AA+ (one step lower), and added a financial Negative Outlook attribute for good measure.

3.  The amount of the increase in the debt ceiling is sufficient to allow the U.S. to keep borrowing until well after the next presidential election.

4.  Social Security checks went out on schedule, no military personnel missed a paycheck, medical providers received their Medicare / Medicaid payments, the millions of federal employees and contract personnel got paid, and Old Faithful had sufficient energy to keep erupting on schedule.

Now it’s down to somewhat lesser facts:

5.  The President publicly repeated over and over that failure to increase the Debt Ceiling would cause the U. S. to default on its bond holder interest payments.  At a later point he changed the wording to “default on its solemn obligations”.

6.  The President publicly stated a number of times that he “could not guarantee that Social Security checks would go out”  if the Debt Ceiling were not increased.  A few times he said the same for Medicare and Defense Department personnel payments.

7.  The Treasury Secretary also kept publicly iterating his stock disaster warnings, similar to the President’s.

8.  Some number of months before the Debt Ceiling deadline, the Treasury Secretary assured us in a televised interview that “there is no chance of a credit agency downgrade”.

At this point we segue to other minor facts, plus a few “what-if” speculations:

9.  Neither the President nor the Treasury Secretary ever publicly mentioned that the expected monthly income of the United States is sufficient to pay (a) bond holders, (b) Social Security recipients, (c) Medicare claims, and (d) Department of Defense payroll, with tens of billions of dollars left over.

10.  Neither the President nor the Treasure Secretary ever mentioned that there is no legal barrier to prioritizing federal government payments, allowing bond holders to be paid first (about $40 billion out of the expected $165 – $200 billion monthly income).

11.  Did the Treasury Secretary, or other Obama Administration official, ever privately tell the credit rating agencies that there was no danger whatsoever of default and that Administration rhetoric was just “political leveraging”?  It’s unlikely that we will find out.

12.  Did the President really take the Treasury Secretary’s “no downgrade” assertion at face value, without polling other knowledgeable people on his staff?  If so, perhaps he should turn to a better source (like the Tea Party?).

13.  There seems to be general agreement among media pundits that scaring “the old people on Social Security” continues to be an effective Democratic Party tactic.  Is the apparent diminished capacity epidemic among our senior citizens for real?

14.  Did the Republican leadership do a Charlie Brown, falling on its hind side when Lucy (AKA Democrats) yanked the football away from the tee at the last second—again?  Undoubtedly all those Lucys are still giggling.

15.  Did the Republicans learn any lessons from the attempts to scale the Everest mountain of U.S. debt?  It does appear that a sizable percentage have come to believe that it is not possible for our country to continue spending trillions more per year than the country’s income.

16.  Did the Democrats learn any lessons from the country’s unfettered credit-card spending?  The rhetoric of Democratic leaders indicates no!  But could it be that our President is smarter and more clever than most of us give him credit for?  Might he be just executing tactics from Alinsky and Marx, taking advantage of de Toqueville’s excellent hint about voting the treasury in a democracy, as keys to his Grand Strategy, whatever that might be?  If the debt escalation continues as at present, all of us will know for sure in five years or less.

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Governmental Aphorisms

August 17, 2011

We humans have had forms of government longer than we have had writing.  So it is not surprising that quite a number of aphorisms about government have accumulated.  Three of the small fraction to which I have been introduced come to mind fairly often.

One bit of government truth is possibly the best-known aphorism in the category, while being at the same time the least-heeded.  Thomas Jefferson observed, “That government which governs least governs best“.  However, a nineteenth century “philosopher / economist” later composed siren songs advocating governing most and governing everything; sadly, a large percentage of 20th  and 21st century politicians have fallen prey to those deadly tunes.

Another bit of Jeffersonian truth is prominently engraved in the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty“.  It is clear that he meant vigilance of our own government and not of imminent invaders.

Alexis de Toqueville, a French scholar and philosopher, made an extensive visit and study of the United States and later observed, ”A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”   Alexis de Toqueville’s perceptive quote remains timely, especially during the last seventy years:  is the U.S. now running on borrowed time (as well as borrowed money)?

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