BUSH EMBRACES OBAMA'S SOCIALISM

BUSH EMBRACES OBAMA'S SOCIALISM



By Cliff Kincaid

October 28, 2008
NewsWithViews.com

http://www.newswithviews.com/Kincaid/cliff264.htm

In one of the few tough media interviews of the Democratic ticket, veteran WFTV-Channel 9 (Orlando, Florida) anchor-reporter Barbara West grilled Joe Biden about Barack Obama’s “Marxist” views on the economy. West, who compared Obama’s “spread the wealth around” comment to the ideology of Karl Marx, should be congratulated for bringing one of the key issues to the forefront of the campaign. Needless to say, the Obama-Biden campaign is outraged that a reporter had the audacity to even mention any of this.

The point was that Obama is a socialist. Biden called the accusation “ridiculous.”

The problem for the Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin is that their fellow Republican, President George W. Bush, may do more damage to American-style capitalism during his last months in office than Obama could ever do in a four-year term as president.

In short, we already have a socialist president—and his name is Bush.

Bush’s latest scheme, as he explained in his Saturday radio address, is a November 15 “international summit,” including the United Nations Secretary-General, to “begin developing principles of reform for regulatory bodies and institutions related to our financial sectors.” This is bureaucratic doublespeak for what has been called “global governance.” Some may fear with good reason that world government and global taxes are on the way in and U.S. sovereignty is on the way out.

Kept hidden from the American people is the fact that the U.N., under its new General Assembly President, Miguel D’Escoto, a sort of Jeremiah Wright on a global level, is working to take advantage of the continuing crisis.

D’Escoto is the renegade Catholic Priest and former foreign minister of Communist Sandinista Nicaragua who advocates Marxist-oriented liberation theology and won the Lenin Peace Prize from the old Soviet Union. He is in a position to influence the conduct of Bush’s “international summit” and may even show up there.

D’Escoto says that “there is growing recognition that the current financial turmoil cannot be solved through piecemeal responses at the national and regional level but requires coordinated global efforts that should be led by the United Nations,” according to an Associated Press story. This means it has to be a U.N.-managed or supervised process, in order to loot the U.S. and benefit the rest of the world.

Bush’s “international summit” fits perfectly into D’Escoto’s anti-American plans.



Killing Capitalism

Bush insists that the nations at this summit must “recommit to the fundamentals of long-term economic growth—free markets, free enterprise, and free trade.” He has got to be kidding.

While mouthing platitudes about free enterprise, Bush has already authorized several socialist-style schemes, including a $700-billion “bailout” of Wall Street, nationalization of mortgage companies, massive subsidies to American International Group (AIG), and the federal government taking ownership stakes in big banks. The estimated cost is already $1.8 trillion—more than $17,000 per American household.

It is important to note that none of this has stabilized the financial system, although that is what we were told by the media would happen.

It is also newsworthy that Bush has escaped criticism from McCain and Palin for “spreading the wealth around.” Perhaps this is because McCain voted for this Bush brand of socialism. Of course, so did Obama.

It is time for the conservative media to hold the Republican ticket accountable for their president’s embrace of socialism.



Chris Wallace Grills McCain

On October 19, an effort was made in this regard. McCain appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and was asked about socialism by host Chris Wallace. McCain said he was against it. “I believe in wealth creation by Joe the Plumber,” McCain said.

Wallace shot back: “But, Senator, you voted for the $700-billion bailout that’s being used partially to nationalize American banks. Isn’t that socialism?”

McCain answered: “That is reacting to a crisis that’s due to greed and excess in Washington.” He went on to say that “They’re bailing out the banks. They’re bailing out these institutions.”

“But you voted for that,” Wallace countered. “Of course,” McCain replied. “It was a package that had to be enacted because the economy was about to go into the tank.”

So McCain is critical of a socialist scheme he voted for! No wonder his criticism of Obama’s socialism is starting to ring hollow.

On Saturday, as Bush was verbally promoting adherence to free market principles, the major media were reporting that the administration’s socialist financial takeover plan was now being dramatically expanded into taking financial stakes in insurance companies. This is another desperate sign that things continue to get worse.

Our media are still calling all of this a “bailout” or a “rescue.” They don’t want to use the accurate word “socialism.” It’s as if they don’t want the American people to realize that everything their ancestors fought and died for is being frittered away.



Mysterious Meltdown

Incredibly, we have no definitive explanation of why a global financial crisis suddenly materialized just six weeks before U.S. presidential and congressional elections. Instead, controversial hedge fund operators like George Soros, an Obama backer who was convicted of insider trading in France and was in the news earlier this year for his possible role in betting on a U.S. economic collapse, have largely escaped scrutiny.

“The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is scheduled to hold a hearing about regulation next month with five hedge fund managers,” including Soros, the New York Times reported last Wednesday. Soros is one of several hedge fund operators who reportedly made more than $1 billion last year. But this hearing could occur after the elections and after the Soros-supported Democrats take the White House and increase their numbers in Congress.

Soros is being treated deferentially by such media personalities as Bill Moyers of the Public Broadcasting Service and Fareed Zakaria of CNN.

“In the interest of full disclosure,” declared Moyers before his Soros interview, “you should know that I served three years on the board of George Soros’ foundation, the Open Society Institute, dealing with such issues as a free press, the rule of law, and human rights. But I’ve had no involvement in his political activities and nothing to do with his business interests unfortunately.”

No involvement in his political activities? The Open Society Institute was designed to promote his political activities. Who does Moyers think he’s kidding?

While the media and Congress seem reluctant to get to the bottom of what really happened, Bush participates in a masquerade of his own, giving lip service to capitalism while his administration takes us down the road of socialism. He seems to be acting like a puppet of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the “Armand Hammer of Communist China,” as Frank Gaffney once described him, alluding to the businessman who did favors for the Soviets. China’s reported role in pulling the plug on the U.S. financial system, and Paulson’s demand that he be given the ability to bail out foreign banks in China holding U.S. assets, cry out for media scrutiny. But Bush went along with Paulson’s plan, which might be viewed as a comedy of errors were it not for the fact that many Americans are losing their life savings.

There was only one problem with the Bush/Paulson plan—socialism doesn’t work.

Now, having failed on the domestic level to “rescue” the economy or anything else, Bush is counting on the “international community,” largely populated by socialists, communists and assorted dictators, to figure everything out. This is one mistake on top of many others. But this mistake could not only compound the problem but leave us in the grip of global elites who intend to loot our wealth and savings to an even greater degree.

If Bush doesn’t know what’s going on, those on the international Left certainly do.



Taking it to the Next Level

Calling the global financial crisis an “historic opportunity,” a coalition of “progressive” individuals, social movements and non-governmental organizations met in Beijing on October 15 and issued a statement urging the “radical economic transformation” of the global economy. They advocate a “global taxation system,” including what are known as “Tobin taxes, on the movements of speculative capital,” and “stringent progressive carbon taxes on those [nations] with the biggest carbon footprints.”

Of course, U.S. taxpayers will be hardest hit by any such scheme.

Their plan also includes phasing out the U.S. dollar as the international reserve currency and establishing “a people’s inquiry into the mechanisms necessary for a just international monetary system.”

They intend to bring the U.S. into a system of international socialism, with new and more powerful global agencies deciding our economic and financial fate. We will pay for the international bureaucrats and foreign elites to rule us. It will mark the end of the American system of self-government.

At the same time, the Left wants to make sure that “aid transfers do not fall as a result of the crisis.” Foreign aid must not only continue, they say, it must be expanded. The primary vehicle for this is the Millennium Development Goals project of the United Nations, whereby nations such as the U.S. are supposed to provide .7 percent of their Gross National Product (GNP) in foreign aid.

The hope of the international Left is that Bush’s November 15 summit can be manipulated to provide a cover for forcing the U.S. and the other nations to agree to global socialist proposals to manage the world economy.

Here’s what they say: “The past few months have seen one of the most significant financial crises in North American and European history. The response was just as historic. To stave off regional and global recessions and restore stability and confidence in the market, northern governments are pursuing a massive and unprecedented program of government intervention, nationalizing banks, injecting massive subsidies into ailing institutions and re-regulating their financial sectors.”

But they want to go further. The new process must be “inclusive and participatory of all governments of the world,” they say. This is globalism gone mad.



Setting the Stage for Obama

Their point man is Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in 2001 and is now a Columbia University professor. Stiglitz has been appointed by D’Escoto to chair a high-level U.N. task force to review the global financial system.

His first book, Globalization and its Discontents, was praised by George Soros as “Penetrating, insightful.... A seminal work that must be read.” In it, Stiglitz suggested that while a global tax on currency transactions, the so-called Tobin Tax, was being seriously studied in Europe, it might involve serious “implementation problems.” But with his subsequent book, Making Globalization Work, those problems have vanished, as he argues for a variety of global tax schemes that would cost American taxpayers billions of dollars.

Stiglitz, a financial contributor to Obama’s presidential campaign and major backer of the national Democratic Party, is in a perfect position to guide the transition into a global socialist economy.

On October 23, at a U.N. meeting, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with Stiglitz to discuss the financial crisis and the November 15 global summit. One of the other economists in attendance was Jeffrey Sachs, also of Columbia University, and the head of the U.N. office that supervises foreign aid commitments and contributions to the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Sachs has estimated that the U.S. is short by $65 billion-a-year in foreign aid, which adds up to $845 billion over the 13-year period during which nations are supposed to attain the MDGs. Through references to various U.N. resolutions and conferences, as well as the MDGs, Obama’s Global Poverty Act is designed to make the U.S. comply with the requirement of .7 percent of GNP being provided for “official development assistance.” Sachs has stated openly that a global tax will be necessary to force the U.S. to come up with the money.

At the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in September, Obama reaffirmed his own “embracing” of the MDGs and noted, “This will take more resources from the United States, and as President I will increase our foreign assistance to provide them.” On top of that, Obama supports the Jubilee Act, which would cancel as much as $75 billion of third world debt. That adds up to $920 billion more in taxpayer money on top of the estimated $1.8 trillion in national and domestic spending to deal with the current crisis.

We are facing the bankruptcy of the United States.


McCain hasn’t officially endorsed the Global Poverty Act or the Jubilee Act. But both have passed the House of Representatives and both were also approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, headed by Obama running mate and Senator Joseph Biden. This is the same Joe Biden who denies that his running mate is a socialist.

The irony is that the same socialist process begun by the Republican president, Bush, could be dramatically expanded under a Democratic President, Obama. This time, the “bailouts” and “rescues” will be global in nature and used to benefit the rest of the world, using U.S. tax dollars.


The inevitable result will be global government financed by global taxes. The last time this was tried in America was when King George attempted to impose taxes on what became the founders of the greatest country in human history, the United States of America.

The cry of “no taxation without representation” led to a revolution.

© 2008 Cliff Kincaid - All Rights Reserved

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Cliff Kincaid, a veteran journalist and media critic, Cliff concentrated in journalism and communications at the University of Toledo, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Cliff has written or co-authored nine books on media and cultural affairs and foreign policy issues.

Cliff has appeared on Hannity & Colmes, The O’Reilly Factor, Crossfire and has been published in the Washington Post, Washington Times, Chronicles, Human Events and Insight.

Web Site: www.AIM.org

E-Mail: cliff.kincaid@aim.org