Posted by
Old Bill on Wednesday, August 12, 2009 8:40:49 PM
"A crisis," says Rahm Emmanuel, "is too important an opportunity to allow to go to waste. What I mean is, it's possible to do so many things that in normal times you wouldn't think you could do."
In Chinese, the ideograph for 'crisis' is a combination of the ideographs for 'opportunity' and 'danger'. It is safe to asssume that Rahm Emmanuel, in his unguarded moment of blissful self-expression (let it all hang out, Rahm baby) speaks not for himself alone, but for his entire circle of like-minded political intimates, the allies of decades of political warfare, including, but certainly not limited to, Barack and Michelle Obama, the current Co-Presidents of the United States. What are the 'opportunities' he (and they) have in mind, and what, exactly, are the dangers--the dangers to us? What, indeed, is this 'crisis' of which he is obviously so enamored?
The 'crisis' is, putatively, the economic disaster embodied in the financial collapse of the real estate market and, subsequently (but not necessarily inevitably) the collapse of many of America's greatest financial corporations. Let us recall that America has undergone the collapse of real estate bubbles before (anyone old enough to remember the 1990-91 real estate collapse, and the decade-long struggle to recapture value and equity?) without causing the gigantic financial panic which the current bubble-burst has caused. Hmmmm....subprime loans and derivatives, anyone?
If this weren't enough, the contraction of America's manufacturing economy, hastened by the transferrence of plants overseas in pursuit of lower labor costs, lower taxes, and less environmental/regulatory strangulation, has been aggravated by the irresponsible mismanagement of Detroit by corporate boards and labor union bosses focused on the short term and ignoring the consequences of their give-them-everything contracts. Thus, in 2007 it was Toyota which sold over 10 million autos in the USA, producing a profit of $18 billion. GM, which also sold over 10 million cars in the USA that year lost over $38 billion the same year.
That's right--they lost an average of $3800 every time they sold a car off the lot. You can't solve this problem by increasing your volume, you have to reduce your unit costs. Instead, Obama Motors and Fiat/Chrysler have been handed to the same labor union bosses who put them in this hole in the first place, while the secured senior creditors have been bullied and intimidated to give up their claims to compensation almost altogether--by who? By the Obama Gang who 'couldn't let this opportunity go to waste.' So much for the Rule of Law and the Sanctity of Contract. But then, as Newsweek gleefully informs us, 'We're all Socialists Now!'--or are we?
This contraction of American business, caused initially by the financial panic of 2008 and subsequently exacerbated greatly by the political panic of 2009 (which began the day Obama was elected, and has only gotten worse since his inauguration, with every successive assault on American business, from the takeover of Detroit to the Stimulus to Acorn and the Democrat Party Machines Bill, to the current all-out war to takeover America's HealthCare Industry) has driven unemployment from 5% to 9.5% in a few months; and look for it to go over 10% soon, and for a long time.
Bearing in mind that economists universally consider an involuntary unemployment rate of 4% to be the virtually irreduceable minimum in an industrial economy, this means that the avoidable unemployment resulting from policy blunders (both corporate, governmental, and labor union) has skyrocketed from 1% under Bush&Co. to 6% today. This has led to a crisis of confidence among the American people, especially the entrepeneurs who start businesses and decide whether or not to expand them. They have responded, logically, by cancelling all plans to spend money on anything not absolutely necessary, let alone expand their business, let alone start a new one, which would have created jobs, profits, technological progress and government revenue, in that order.
In a similar crisis of confidence in 1933, FDR told the American people: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Obama@Co. have told the American people "Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better." Perhaps they don't want the crisis of confidence to end? Absolutely they don't. You see, restoring economic growth, employment, business profits, property values and the all-important stock market values that determine so much of Americans' personal wealth and retirement income is not on the Obama Gang's list of priorities. Remember: this is the President whose best friends and favorite teachers, by his own admission (read his autobiographies) were "the Marxists" on campus; these are the the Democrat Politicians and Bureaucrats who think "profits are immoral" (thank you, nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters, for another uncharacteristic moment of honest self-revelation).
This is not merely rhetoric to inspire class hatred and attract the votes of the vindictive ignoramuses of all classes, although these are certainly aimed at. The Obama Gang really feel this in their guts; it defines who they are: Leftists of all stripes: some Marxists, some not, some communist, some merely socialist--but all dedicated to the goal of taking the profits out of business, and taking business--and property--out of the hands of private owners and stockholders who start and run businesses in prusuit of their own dreams, and putting those businesses in the hands of the Federal Government.
Obama@Co. dream of making every worker in the United States, ultimately, literally and permanently, a government employee. It means making the bottom line for every enterprise in the United States depend not on producing a better product at a lower price than the competition, but rather making every industry a government monopoly just like the Postal Service or the military, with a bottom line dependent, literally, on the budget appropriated by Congress. It means making every person in the United States utterly dependent on the Federal government for their employment, and hence their family's income, hence utterly subservient to a pyramidal hierarchy of Democrat Party appointees with President Obama, or his Democrat Party successor, at the top.
Don't believe it? How else can you really explain the Obama health-care takeover scheme? The voracious appetite for auto-makers? The determination to control the wages of every worker in every financial company, whether it is a recipient of government money or not? Make no mistake--this White House is not about growing the economy (like Reagan and Kennedy), or even growing the Federal government (like LBJ, RMN, Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton)--oh no: this White House is all about one ultimate goal, which they pursue relentlessly, ruthlessly and with a single-minded determination unique in American Presidential history--the transformation of the United States from a free-enterprise democracy into a government-franchised monopoly (or oligopoly) socialist economy, and a one-party political system a la Mexico under the PRI.
Their dream is to create a Socialist America where no one will be allowed to own a business of any size--not even a lemonade stand--without the politically-determined approval of their local Acorn Party Boss, and no large enterprise will exist which is not actually owned outright by the Federal Government, whether a manufacturer (Obama Motors), a service provider (can you say 'Michelle Memorial Hospital'?) or a financial Manipulator of Other People's Money (the new monopoly powerhouse: Goldman-Sachs-Clinton-Obama, with the authority to regulate all banks and financial enterprises legally delegated by Congress; you know, the way they delegated control of the nation's currency to the privately-owned Federal Reserve System). This is not a logical contradiction; socialism/statism has, more often than not, taken the form of a Big Business-Big Government-Billionaire Public-Private Partnership; they used to call it 'mercantilism'--but what's in a name? Lord North and King George III would have understood perfectly. More about political terms next time.
Anyone care to check and see which auto dealerships have been forced out of business by their new franchisor, the Federal Auto Czar? (Acting, of course, through the oh-so independent corporate boards of directors, they assure us). It's the dealers who made contributions to Republican candidates. This is how one-party dictatorships are established in fact: simply deprive the opposition of the opportunity to make money. Business will be restricted to those who are members and supporters of the right party, and the right candidates. Losers need not apply for either jobs or contracts, let alone franchises or loans. If 'single payer' (monopsony--look it up) is so great for healthcare, why not for everything? Of course, he who pays the piper calls the tune.
Of course, all this is nothing less than a revolution. But isn't that what Marxists and other socialists have always wanted to bring about in America? Who expects to benefit from this leftist revolution? Not only the welfare class who beleive they have been promised a middle-class standard of living without the outrageous demand that they find jobs and work (after all, isn't everyone entitled to a house and a car and a vacaation, as well as food, education and medical care?) Little do they realize they will be lucky to get a tiny cubicle in the project (Cabrini Green, here we go again) a seat on a bus--or subway--and a long wait in a line at the Federal Health Clinic, before being seen not by a doctor, but by a graduate of the Practical Medical Technician 12-month program ath the local government junior college. After all, what do you really need to see a doctor for anyway? Who do you think you are--a Congressman (excuse me: Congressperson)?
This brings us to the people who will really benefit from all this 'change'--the Billionaire Bolsheviks such as George Soros who expect to become at least Commissar of something or other, or preferraably 'Czar'. Perhaps they will be content to remain in the background, as they do now, serving as the President's 'kitchen cabinet' and continuing to make their annual billions, but now guaranteed a monopoly by their victorious and wholly-owned subsidiary, the Democrat Party. They will finally be free of the dreadful need to persuade ordinary people---mere customers---to favor them with our $, rather than some upstart competitor. The last thing a Bill Gates wants is an economic system that provides economic opportunity---and start-up capital---to a new Bill Gates.
The really big winners, though, will be the politicians and bureaucrats---let's call them the 'Politicrats'---whose rise has been the result not of inventing any new product or method of production, or developing any new means of serving the public by offering better service at a lower price, but simply the result of ingratiating themselves (like the courtiers of every royal court from Pharoah to George III) with the bosses of their political party, or its annointed subsidiary bosses (sotocapos) in their particular agency, company, factory, campus or union.
This is the revolution truly aimed at by the Obama Gang, the graduates of Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation and a hundred other left-wing breeding grounds created by malefactors of great wealth who find socialist statism---what Mussolini used to call 'corporativism'---a surer road to power and permanent wealth than competitive, free-enterprise, American-style capitalism. They will henceforth be the genuine controllers---the de facto owners---of literally everything. Hope and Change indeed.