Imperialism or Socialism...Two Bad Choices – Commentary by Jim Dean

Dear Folks,

Brother Buchanan lays out for us how the Obamaniacs are taking advantage of the fiscal crisis to socialize America. My gut feel is they are making sure that the lifeboat has mainly their people in it as the ship of state goes down. Rahm Emanuel knows that if this massive spending bombs that they will get kicked out and they need to set themselves up well to not have to make any standard of living changes during what could be a long recession.

But what Pat did not have time or space to lay out in this Obama socialism coup is how the Bushite elites did basically the same thing by taking advantage of 911 to launch the American Near East Imperialism coup. Folks don't remember how the administration NeoCons were running around talking about how after we had 'done Iraq' that we were going to 'do Iran, Syria, and Libya next'. And mind you they were saying this when Iran and Syria were rounding up Al Qaeda people and top Bath party members and turning them over to us.

Lost in the economic sandstorm now is the memory of how the more moderate Iranian regime reached out through the French about normalizing relations with the US which would include their stopping support for resistance movement in occupied Palestine. Cheney stepped in and basically told them to shove it. The moderate Iranian regime who offered this was thrown out of office the next election there and we got 'Mr. Nice Guy' (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) as a replacement.

There is an old saying 'don't make a bad situation worse'. All of our mothers tried to drum this into our heads as kids. The Bush crowd made matters worse. After the military defeat of Iraq they brought in a bunch of free market propeller-heads to turn Iraq into an instant financial democracy with stock market and all. We even put the entire country up for sale to foreign buyers to jump start the free market system.

The only problem was that the Iraqis were completely left out of the process. The business shells left there had no electricity or access to raw material supplies to make anything. So we let imports flood into the country to extract whatever money was there. And the non-functioning banking system resulted in plane loads of cash being flown in to pay everybody from our end with the resulting sloppy accounting and graft. There is still $50 billion of reconstruction money missing which unbelievably our government does not seem really concerned about looking into. Does anyone know if Bernie Madoff was a consultant for that? :-)

Our experienced Intel pros picked up right away that public support for the insurgency spiked as soon as the nationalist Iraqis saw they we were only planning to colonize them and put in a puppet government. So the whole thing became a huge rat hole which helped build up the economic fall we are in now. No one would take any responsibility for these poor decisions.

It does not take a genius to see that with better leadership the funds spent on that debacle could have headed off the world wide recession that could go into a depression. That money could have completely solved the housing crisis. But the leadership we had saw an opportunity to militarize that region, secure oil sources in Russia and China's back yard and 'redo some Mideast regimes.'

We ignored the real, the disastrous economic threat preferring to play the Imperialism game instead...more fun, more glory and prestige, a diversion from the mess back home... who knows. But that is what they did. Instead of a War on Poor Leadership here at home we got the War on Terrorism.

I can tell you from my own personal Intel contacts that all those who warned that we were overreaching with tremendous risks that were being ignored were shouted down by ideologues who did not really know squat about the region. Many of these folks had their careers ended instantly like the deputy secretary of the Army. Others like the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who unanimously opposed the Iran invasion, fared better. Their advice was that we had Saddam completely boxed in and he was a threat to no one.

So far I don't see any better leadership from the Obama administration. They are winging it on the financial crisis in a way so similar to the Bush Imperialism disaster that it is eerie. It's like a bad dream that won't end. If they do make the Meltdown/Recovery situation worse they also will accept no responsibility. This has become almost a standard modern political routine.

I do think Pat picked a poor choice of the $500,000 a year restaurant small business owners below as a victim example. But the top 5% already paying 60% of all income taxes is a number has not really sunk in with the general public, especially Democrats. And neither has the 40% at the bottom who pay nothing. They just don't get it. In a country as successful as the United States the bottom 40% of working people contribute financially nothing to running the government? What is democratic about that? Is that not a crisis?

These 40% folks are real big on deficit spending because they know they are not going to be paying a dime for any of it, ever. But they were asleep during economics class and have forgotten about inflation, loss of buying power, rationed health care, and how recessions turn into depressions. They might have also not noticed that it's NOT poor people who hire workers.

We certainly need infrastructure projects as much of ours in falling apart. Spending money on fixing stuff up will eliminate the later funding. So it's money that has to be spent anyway. Five billion spent on the New Orleans levies would have saved us $150 billion.

But the Obama folks are going to waste a lot of this money on pork projects. You don't hear much about the big accounting auditor hiring program they have built into the stimulus project. It's not there...and for a reason. You do hear about the website they will have up but who will be checking the information that is being sent in to them? The stimulus package is a done deal. All we can do now is roast them alive for the shoddy implementation that will come next. There is no E-verify requirement to prevent illegals from grabbing the stimulus jobs...stripped out by Pelosi. All illegal immigrants are welcome. Of course they will be paying none of it back either, so why would they care.

What we need now is accountants and investigators with pitch folks and we should push for that as a critical part of the stimulus jobs creation. We also need to let our Congresscritters know that we will hold them accountable for a failed stimulus package were the money was wasted. Holding them responsible is what they fear most, but they actually worry about the least.

Why?...because we have Tim Geithner who was head of the NY Federal Reserve with oversight over all the razzle dazzle financial products that greased the skids for the Meltdown we witnessed. He also forgot to pay his taxes even though the World Bank had a long time policy of giving their independent contractor people the money to actually pay them.

His punishment for all this? He got promoted to Treasury Secretary. So with change like this, what is there to fear about being held responsible?

"In God we trust. All others we audit." --Accountant's Proverb

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." --John Adams

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories." --Thomas Jefferson

"Three groups spend other people's money: children, thieves, politicians. All three need supervision." --U.S. Rep. Dick Armey

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude.....A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for [another ]... till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery...And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." --Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816

"The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions in which he is competent...
- To let the National Government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations ...
- The State Governments with the Civil Rights, Laws, Police and administration of what concerns the State generally.
- The Counties with the local concerns, and each ward direct the interests within itself."

" It is by dividing and subdividing these Republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations until it ends in the administration of everyman's farm by himself, by placing under everyone what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best." --Thomas Jefferson

Jim Dean is the producer of Heritage TV and a member of the Georgia Heritage Council.

Buchanan.org Pitchfork Time By Patrick J. Buchanan, March 3, 2009 In his campaign and inaugural address, Barack Obama cast himself as a moderate man seeking common ground with conservatives. Yet, his budget calls for the radical restructuring of the U.S. economy, a sweeping redistribution of power and wealth to government and Democratic constituencies. It is a declaration of war on the Right. The real Obama has stood up, and lived up to his ranking as the most left-wing member of the United States Senate. Barack has no mandate for this. He was even behind McCain when the decisive event that gave him the presidency occurred — the September collapse of Lehman Brothers and the market crash. Republicans are under no obligation to render bipartisan support to this statist coup d’etat. For what is going down is a leftist power grab that is anathema to their principles and philosophy. Where the U.S. government usually consumes 21 percent of gross domestic product, this Obama budget spends 28 percent in 2009 and runs a deficit of $1.75 trillion, or 12.7 percent of GDP. That is four times the largest deficit of George W. Bush and twice as large a share of the economy as any deficit run since World War II. Add that 28 percent of GDP spent by the U.S. government to the 12 percent spent by states, counties and cities, and government will consume 40 percent of the economy in 2009. We are not “headed down the road to socialism.” We are there. Since the budget was released, word has come that the U.S. economy did not shrink by 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter, but 6.2 percent. All the assumptions in Obama’s budget about growth in 2009 and 2010 need to be revised downward, and the deficits revised upward. Look for the deficit for 2009 to cross $2 trillion. Who abroad is going to lend us the trillions to finance our deficits without demanding higher interest rates on the U.S. bonds they are being asked to hold? And if we must revert to the printing press to create the money, what happens to the dollar? As Americans save only a pittance and have lost — in the value of homes, stocks, bonds and other assets — $15 trillion to $20 trillion since 2007, how can the people provide the feds with the needed money? In his speech to Congress, Obama promised new investments in energy, education and health care. Every kid is going to get a college degree. We’re going to find a cure for cancer. Who is going to pay for all this? The top 2 percent, the filthy rich who got all those Bush tax breaks, say Democrats. But the top 5 percent of income earners already pay 60 percent of U.S. income taxes, while the bottom 40 percent pays nothing. Those paying a federal tax rate of 35 percent will see it rise to near 40 percent and will lose a fifth of the value of their deductions for taxes, mortgage interest and charitable contributions. Yet, two-thirds of small businesses are taxed at the same rate as individuals. Consider what this means to the owner of a restaurant and bar in Los Angeles open from noon to midnight, where a husband and wife each put in 80 hours a week. At year’s end, the couple finds they have actually made a profit of $500,000 that they can take home in salary. What is the Obama-Schwarzenegger tax take on that salary? Their U.S. tax rate will have hit 39.6 percent. Their California income tax will have hit 9.55 percent. Medicare payroll taxes on the proprietor as both employer and salaried employee will be $14,500. Social Security payroll taxes for the proprietor as both employer and employee will be $13,243. In short, U.S. and state income and payroll taxes will consume half of all the pair earned for some 8,000 hours of work. From that ravaged salary they must pay a state sales tax of 8.25 percent, gas taxes for the 50-mile commute, and tens of thousands in property taxes on both their restaurant and home. And, after being pilloried by politicians for having feasted in the Bush era, they are now told the tax deduction they get for contributing to the church is to be cut 20 percent, while millions of Obama voters, who paid no U.S. income tax at all, will be getting a tax cut — i.e., a fat little check — in April. Any wonder native-born Californians are fleeing the Golden Land? Markets are not infallible. But the stock market has long been a “lead indicator” of where the economy will be six months from now. What are the markets, the collective decisions of millions of investors, saying? Having fallen every month since Obama’s election, with January and February the worst two months in history, they are telling us the stimulus package will not work, that Tim Geithner is clueless about how to save the banks, that the Obama budget portends disaster for the republic. The president says he is gearing up for a fight on his budget. Good. Let’s give him one. buchanan.org/blog/pjb-pitchfork-time-1465