socialism

Racist, Communist, America-Bashing Obama Adviser Resigns, Over Wacky 9/11 Conspiracy Theory

by Hans Bader on September 7, 2009 · 1 comment

in Energy, Environment, International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

Obama’s racist, communist, America-bashing Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones, has resigned after revelations that he was a 9/11 “Truther,” who believed that George Bush may have been behind the terrorist attacks on 9/11.

But Obama has long been aware of Jones’ extremism, wacky statements, and arrest record, which would have come to light months ago during the White House vetting process, as former White House staffer Jeffrey Lord and National Review‘s Andrew McCarthy note. The Secret Service would have investigated Jones’ past and Marxist views and informed Obama about them.

As the Washington Examiner‘s Byron York noted, most of the media systematically ignored revelations about Jones’ disturbing past and extremist views, seeking to prevent damage to the Obama Administration. Despite weeks of controversy over Jones’ extreme views on talk radio, blogs, and Fox News, newspapers like the New York Times, and TV networks like ABC and NBC, refused to cover the controversy until after Jones resigned, while the Washington Post and CBS covered the story only when his resignation was imminent.

Slate journalist Mickey Kaus, who voted for Obama but has been critical of the Administration, ridicules newspapers like the New York Times for deliberately concealing the Van Jones controversy in order to protect the Obama Administration. “‘Readers of the print edition will never have heard of the presidential appointee so controversial the President had to dump him. Is this a milestone in the decline of the NYT?’ . . .It seems this may be just another installment of the NYT’s running feature, ‘You Know That Guy You’ve Never Heard About? Well, He’s Gone.’”

Jones is a race-baiter, “self-avowed communist” and Truther who believed that George Bush may have been behind the 9/11 attacks.

Why even a Democratic White House would hire Jones is beyond understanding. In 1998, Jones defended Al Qaeda and bashed Bill Clinton. Why would Obama even think of hiring someone who said a few years ago that he was part of a “global struggle against the U.S.”?

Jones has also glorified convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, in a campaign that likened supporters of the murdered police officer to the KKK.

Jones, who set up a group that is orchestrating advertiser boycotts of Obama’s media critics, was until recently a “member of a radical communist group that was dedicated to ‘organizing a revolutionary movement in America.’”

Jones also claimed that mass murder is a white characteristic, saying that the Columbine killers would not have committed their crimes had they not been white. “‘You’ve never seen a Columbine done by a black child,’ Jones, who’s African-American, said in the 2005 video. ‘Never. They always say, “We can’t believe it happened here. We can’t believe these suburban white kids.” It’s only them.’”

Many officials in the Obama Administration are sympathetic to Marxist regimes. For example, Obama’s appointee to be the FCC’s “diversity officer” is Mark Lloyd, a big fan of Venezuela’s socialist dictator, Hugo Chavez. Although Chavez has shot unarmed demonstrators, Lloyd has called socialist Venezuela a model, praised its authoritarian leader’s “incredible revolution” and defended his attacks on independent media.

Obama’s nominee to be Assistant Secretary of State, Arturo Valenzuela, has a reputation as a loud defender of Venezuelan dictator Chavez’s terrible record on freedom of the press. Valenzuela is a big supporter of imposing sanctions on Honduras, which ousted its left-wing would-be dictator. Americans for Limited Government says that “Arturo Valenzuela has never met a Marxist dictator that he didn’t embrace.” ALG’s assessment of Valenzuela is echoed by liberal Latin America expert Martin Edwin Andersen.

The Obama Administration is extremely hostile to non-communist Honduras and its democratically-elected legislature, demanding that they allow the return to power of Honduras’s bullying ex-president and would-be dictator. The ex-president’s removal was perfectly constitutional, say many experts, such as attorneys Octavio Sanchez, Miguel Estrada, and Dan Miller, former Assistant Secretary of State Kim Holmes, Stanford’s William Ratliff, and “even left-liberal analysts.”

The Obama Administration cites the UN’s support for the bullying ex-president to justify demanding that Honduras allow him to return. But the UN is openly biased in favor of left-wing dictators.

The UN has just declared Fidel Castro, the longtime Communist dictator of Cuba, the “World Hero of Solidarity.” Castro killed thousands and thousands of people during his rule, torturing some to death (including a few American citizens), and Cuba remains an oppressive dictatorship even today.

So it’s not surprising that the UN backs Honduras’s bullying ex-president Manuel Zelaya, given his fondness for left-wing rhetoric. (Two months ago, soldiers acting on orders of Honduras’s Supreme Court arrested Zelaya after he systematically abused his powers. After the Court quite legally declared that Zelaya was no longer president, he was duly replaced by Honduras’s Congress with a civilian, the Congressional Speaker).

The Obama Administration recently decided to impose sanctions on Honduras, and indicated it will not recognize future democratic elections in Honduras unless Honduras first lets ex-president Zelaya return to power.

“Green jobs” is a scam and excuse for vast amounts of corporate welfare, as is the cap-and-trade “global warming” scheme backed by Obama, which would rip off the public and do nothing to protect the environment, while enriching politically-connected companies like General Electric and destroying millions of jobs.

UN Declares Dictator Fidel Castro a “World Hero”

by Hans Bader on September 4, 2009 · 14 comments

in International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

The UN has declared Fidel Castro, the longtime Communist dictator of Cuba, the “World Hero of Solidarity.” Castro killed thousands and thousands of people during his rule, torturing some to death (including a few American citizens), and Cuba remains an oppressive dictatorship even today.

The award was presented to Castro by the President of the UN General Assembly, Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann. D’Escoto Brockmann also successfully lobbied the Obama Administration to demand that Honduras allow the return to power of its ex-president and would-be dictator, Manuel Zelaya. (Two months ago, soldiers acting on orders of Honduras’s Supreme Court arrested Zelaya after he systematically abused his powers. After the Court quite legally declared that Zelaya was no longer president, he was duly replaced by Honduras’s Congress with a civilian, the Congressional Speaker). The Obama Administration recently decided to impose sanctions on Honduras, and indicated it will not recognize future democratic elections in Honduras unless Honduras first lets ex-president Zelaya return to power.

Marxism seems to be back in fashion in Washington these days. Obama’s green jobs czar is the race-baiter Van Jones, a “a self-avowed communist” and Truther who believed that George Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks. Jones, who is busy orchestrating advertiser boycotts of Obama’s media critics, was until recently a “member of a radical communist group that was dedicated to ‘organizing a revolutionary movement in America.’”

The race-baiting liberal Congresswoman Diane Watson (D-CA) recently praised Fidel Castro as a genius who “kicked out the wealthy” from Cuba.

Many officials in the Obama Administration are sympathetic to Marxist regimes. For example, Obama’s appointee to be the FCC’s “diversity officer” is Mark Lloyd, a big fan of Venezuela’s socialist dictator, Hugo Chavez. Although Chavez has shot unarmed demonstrators, Lloyd has called socialist Venezuela a model, praised its authoritarian leader’s “incredible revolution” and defended his attacks on independent media. Obama’s nominee to be Assistant Secretary of State, Arturo Valenzuela, has a reputation as a loud defender of Venezuelan dictator Chavez’s terrible record on freedom of the press.

By contrast, the Obama Administration is extremely hostile to non-communist Honduras and its democratically-elected legislature, demanding that they allow the return to power of Honduras’s bullying ex-president and would-be dictator. The ex-president’s removal was perfectly constitutional, say many experts, such as attorneys Octavio Sanchez, Miguel Estrada, and Dan Miller, former Assistant Secretary of State Kim Holmes, and Stanford’s William Ratliff.

“Markets fail. Use markets.”

by Ivan Osorio on August 6, 2009

in Culture, Economy

At EconLog, Arnold Kling knocks down a favorite leftist straw man: the infallible market. By citing suboptimal outcomes that result from market transactions, such market critics believe, they can justify state intervention. But, as Kling makes clear, that just doesn’t follow.

1. Unfettered free markets nearly always produce sub-optimal outcomes.

2. When economists or other technocrats know how to use public policy (taxes, spending, regulation) to improve outcomes, they should be given the authority to do so.

3. Technocrats know how to improve outcomes in many areas.

4. Therefore, it would be wise to cede authority to technocrats in many areas.

5. Conservatives and libertarians disagree with (1) and (2)

(5) is something that I am suggesting that progressives believe. However, if progressives believe this about me, they are wrong. I disagree with (3) much more than I disagree with (1) or (2). I think markets nearly always produce sub-optimal outcomes, and I think that if technocrats know better they deserve a shot. However, I think that most of the time technocrats know far less than they think they know, and I think that markets are often better at self-correcting than technocrats are at fixing them. Hence, my Masonomics line is that “Markets fail. Use markets.”

If as a Progressive you believe (1) -(3) but think (4) sounds totalitarian, then that is your dilemma, not mine.

Indeed, leftists like to deride “market utopians.” Unfortunately for them, there is no such creature.

LibertyWeek 50: Detroit Bribe City

by Richard Morrison on July 6, 2009

in CEI Projects, Podcast

We celebrate our golden anniversary with Episode 50 of the LibertyWeek podcast, brought to you by host Richard Morrison and special guest co-hosts Jeremy Lott and Michelle Minton. We start with plans for new enviro-cops in the UK, the latest bribery scandal out of Detroit, and the sweet taste of free beer in North Carolina. We then move on to analysis of the political turmoil in Honduras and Michelle’s recap of the Washington D.C. TEA Party on Independence Day.

D.C. Tea Party and the 1,000,000 Teabags

by Richard Morrison on April 16, 2009

in Video, Zeitgeist

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bour14qOiE 285 234]

The Socialism that Dare not Speak its Name

by Ivan Osorio on March 13, 2009 · 2 comments

in Economy, Labor, Personal Liberty, Zeitgeist

“Socialism” is dead, according to Matthew Dallek, writing in the Politico. I put the term in quotes, because what Dallek defines as socialism is so very narrow, that most gradients of socialistic policies are bound to escape his definition.

Even amid the current economic emergency, there is no viable Socialist Party in the United States, nor is there a serious socialist movement, as there was when Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs won nearly 1 million votes in both the 1912 and 1920 presidential elections and when Socialists won more than 1,000 state and local elected offices nationwide a century ago. Most socialists and communists were expelled from America’s labor unions during the early Cold War.

Moreover, millions of voters under 35 have no direct experience with socialism as adults. Thus, it’s hard for them to see how socialism poses any kind of a threat to democratic capitalism. In their adult lifetimes, the Berlin Wall was a historic site, and détente lacked all meaning in foreign affairs. But the pseudo-controversy about Obama’s allegedly socialistic tendencies is particularly surreal because even CPAC heroes William F. Buckley Jr. and Ronald Reagan muted, and mostly abandoned, the liberal-as-socialist trope in the early-to-mid-’60s.

Dallek seems fairly passionate over what is essentially a semantic point, one which he seems to argue is crucial for Republicans to understand if they are to regain political viability. Call me a stickler for words, but policies that would nationalize entire industries — from airport screening to health care — or socialize risk — from corporate bailouts to subsidized insurance — are socialistic by any sensible definition. You don’t need to embrace an ideology in toto to move in the direction of its vision of society.

Furthermore, you don’t need to define an ideology by its most vicious manifestation to recognize elements of it when they appear. There are other strands of socialism beside Soviet-style communism.

Ultimately, Dallek’s argument seems to rest on the notion that if you just don’t label somethign as “socialist,” then it isn’t.

Which would be great comfort to Teamsters President James Hoffa, who, in the Detroit News, offers an unusual definition of democracy.

Sen. Robert Wagner of New York sponsored the law in 1935 that bears his name. The Wagner Act recognized the right of workers to form unions. Wagner understood that the difference between despotism and democracy is not the secret ballot, but whether workers have the right to bargain collectively.

Not free elections, not a free press, not private property, but the ability to form and join unions. By that definition, PRI-era Mexico and Peron-era Argentina would qualify as exemplars of democracy. I’ll give Hoffa the benefit of the doubt as to whether he’s making a sloppy omission here, but taking his statement at face value, such a definition of democracy rests on redistribution as a core value and is therefore socialistic, at least in part.

In his article, Hoffa argues in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which, contrary to his protestations, would make secret ballot elections in union organizing a dead letter. Also part of EFCA is a provision that carries a socialistic trait: loss of control over one’s private property.

As former National Labor Relations Board members Peter Hurtgen and John Irving note in The Wall Street Journal, EFCA’s binding arbitration provision would empower a federally appointed arbitrating panel to impose a contract if a newly organized company and the union are unable to reach a contract after 120 days to an enormous extent.

An arbitration panel’s power to dictate terms is virtually limitless. Such panels could impose uncompetitive wage rates and unworkable work rules. Arbitrators could also impose mandatory union dues and discharge for failure to pay.

Arbitration panels are by definition a stranger to the work place. Yet real, private agreements are products of the needs, desires, capabilities and resources of the negotiating parties who are anything but.

In effect, this would mean that a business owner would lose an enormous amount of control over an important area of his own business, which would erode his right to dispose of his property, at least to some extent.

This may all seem over the top to some, but I don’t see any need to mince words, and neither did F.A. Hayek.

Fore more on EFCA, see here.

Should the U.S. Government Nationalize “Broken” Banks?

by Richard Morrison on February 3, 2009 · 1 comment

in Bailout Watch, Economy

Such is the title of the latest BusinessWeek.com debate. Taking the “con” side is CEI’s own Eli Lehrer, who argues (in part):

Long-term government bank ownership, in any case, would simply make the country poorer. Banks actually create money when they lend it out, but doing so only has positive overall economic consequences when the loans get repaid. Government-owned banks would face enormous, understandable pressure to lend to politically powerful groups and industries that can’t reasonably repay their loans. Even the best managers couldn’t overcome this pressure.

Even in the “post-partisan” paradise of the Obama Era, public choice still matters!

*Photo credit: Declan McCullagh.

CEI Partners with NTU to Launch BeyondBailouts.org

by Cord Blomquist on October 22, 2008 · 3 comments

in Bailout Watch

Did the free market cause the financial crisis?  Was it unbridled capitalism?

The Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Taxpayers Union don’t believe for a minute that capitalism caused the financial crisis.  How can we be so confident?  Because capitalism doesn’t exist in the United States, especially in the financial sector.

Nearly every industry in the U.S. finds itself making regular pilgrimages to Washington to seek special favors—subsidies for this or that, regulations that harm competitors or smaller firms, or trade deals that benefit their industry while hurting the American consumer.  No, America doesn’t have a capitalist system, we have a system of special favors, handouts, and perversion of the free market.

That’s why we’ve launched BeyondBailouts.org.  The financial system should be a free market one, not one controlled by the government, because government control and influence over the financial system is to blame for much of the current crisis.

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae bought up bad loans, pushing the industry to make more of them.  The Fed played fast and loose with monetary policy by making money so cheap that financiers used it recklessly.  Our tax policies and myriad Federal programs are geared toward pushing people into homes they can’t afford.  Many of these policies were put into place by corrupt politicians bankrolled by those who sought to make a fast buck while distorting the free market.

Tell Congress enough is enough.  Write your Member of Congress and sign our petition at BeyondBailouts.org.

Latin America Should be on Washington’s Agenda

by Silvia Santacruz on October 9, 2008 · 2 comments

in International, Politics as Usual

Yesterday, Nelson Cunningham, one of the panelists at a Hudson Institute conference on Latin America’s “Radical Populism Challenge” commented that it is better that the presidential campaign and debates don’t even mention the region. He said that speaking of Latin America would only bring bad news: illegal immigration and drug-trafficking.

As a Latin American myself, I could not disagree more. The region is one of the United States’ most important commercial partners, with U.S. exports valued at more than $150 billion a year, almost as much as its exports to the European Union, as Inter American Dialogue President Peter Hakim notes.

A more balanced argument was delivered by Jaime Daremblum, director of Hudson’s Center for Latin American Studies, who moderated the panel, but didn’t argue with the speaker. In his article, “What Will the Election Mean for Latin America?,” he shows how the 9/11 terrorist attacks pushed Latin America to the background of the U.S. foreign policy discussion. Meanwhile, Russia is gaining ground exploring oil fields in Venezuela.

The same controversial panelist also commented that Senator Barack Obama, if he becomes President, would probably enjoy future good relationship with Latin America—because of his Indonesian background. It is not clear how his Indonesian experience can increase his interest in a region he didn’t consider visiting during his international campaign.

[click to continue…]

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →