posted February 12, 2014 12:15 AM            

In fact, it's especially important to do so when it comes from our President.
Over the past two days, a couple of whoppers have emanated from Barack Obama.

The first was on Friday, July 13. By now, most people have seen the remarks, but here they are from the Rush Limbaugh show in case you missed them:

OBAMA: Look, i-i-if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own.

FOLLOWERS: That's right!

OBAMA: You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, "Well, it must be because I was just so smart!"

FOLLOWERS: (laughing)

OBAMA: There are a lot of smart people out there. "It must be because I worked harder than everybody else." Let me tell you something. There are a whole bunch of hardworkin' people out there!

FOLLOWERS: (cheers and applause)

OBAMA: If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help!

FOLLOWERS: Yeaaaaaah!

OBAMA: There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.

FOLLOWERS: Yeaaaaaah!

Rush was on a tear the following Monday, saying that Obama doesn't love America. In fact, I think he's close, but he doesn't go far enough. Said Rush, "You know, before Marx there was no such thing as class-driven economics." Later, he said, "I'll tell you what. I think it can now be said, without equivocation -- without equivocation -- that this man hates this country. He is trying -- Barack Obama is trying -- to dismantle, brick by brick, the American dream." This gets very close to the truth, but actually it's not quite clear enough.

Barack Obama is a Marxist, plain and simple. You don't need to know anything about his background, just listen - REALLY listen - to his words, and try to ignore his cool factor that has his supporters hypnotized. (By the way, if you ARE interested in his background, Obama's father was a leftist anti-colonialist subversive in Kenya, and his mother was a Marxist. His step father in Indonesia was also a Marxist. By his own account, Obama barely had any time in America to soak up any pro-capitalist, pro-freedom concepts at all. See for instance here, here, here and here.)

In case you are not convinced, we come to Obama's second whopper - the one on Monday that didn't get nearly as much play but is equally important (h/t to my friend Kevin):

Obama said today that (Rich people) are "keeping other folks down"

Here's the full quote: "We're not making huge amounts of money. God bless folks successful. My mom, my grandparents, the only thing they didn't like is when they felt like folks at the top were taking advantage of their position and not following the same rules as everybody else and keeping other folks down. And we don't want an economy in which some are being treated differently than others"

This is part and parcel to Marxist theory. The Communist Manifesto is based on the fundamental precept that there is a bourgeoise and a proletariat - the very definition of class-separated economics. This is the assumption that the haves and the have nots are constantly struggling to out-exploit each other, and that eventually the proletariat will have no choice but to rise up and engage in armed revolt against the fat cats who can't succeed unless there are more and newer people and markets to hold down while they attain success.

Here's how S R Larson described it today in The Liberty Bullhorn:

Socialism rests on four cornerstones:

The principle of redistribution. Socialists, and their ideological errand boys among America’s gullible East Coast liberals, always want new redistribution programs. The more, the merrier. The vast majority of government spending here in America, federal as well as at the state level, is designed to redistribute money and in-kind services between private citizens. The philosophical foundation of this principle is, according to socialists, the equality of humans: because all humans are equal, socialists say, they all have the same right to satisfy all of their needs. As a result, socialists claim that government has an obligation (much stronger than a right) to take from those who have more and give to those who have less. Anyone who wants to see what this leads to, this side of the Berlin Wall, need not look farther than Greece.
The labor theory of value. A staple of classical economics – which includes Marxism – is the axiom that economic value is proportionate to the amount of labor that goes into producing it. From this theory they derive a disdain for profits which could be defined as unjust according to the Marxist version of the labor theory of value. This theory is also the base for why many on the left fail to comprehend the use of a financial system – their theoreticians will say that there is no labor base for its value – and their lack of comprehension of the modern monetary system. The labor theory of value is also what the president relies on when he says that “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
The falling profit margin. A somewhat eclectic, and often overlooked, component of socialist theory, this one is as purely Marxist as anything can be. It has been given more prominence in modern socialist theory than it had in the early decades of the 20th century. It is used as an analytical vehicle to explain why Capitalism is unstable and unsustainable. Every time there is a recession socialists claim that Capitalism caused it because of the desire among Capitalists to accumulate ever more capital. Everyday socialist rhetoric does not talk about capital accumulation – they call it profits – and so they tie profits to recessions, unemployment and poverty. This motivates socialist attacks on private entrepreneurship as well as big corporations, and drives them to demand punitive taxes on profits and wealth.
Reform vs. revolution. Most of the socialist movement is reformist in the sense that it uses the means of legislative powers to achieve socialism. This is known as “social democracy” and distinguished from revolutionary “communism” by the preferred means of agenda advancement. The two have a common theoretical origin, predating Marx but earning its “scientific methodology” from him. The original socialist movement was entirely revolutionary, but the early versions of parliamentary democracy in Europe encouraged some socialists to split off from the revolutionaries. This “Bernstein faction” has proven a lot more politically resilient than its revolutionary cousin. The primary means of reformist socialism – or, again, social democracy – to expand government is taxation for the purpose of entitlement spending.
These cornerstones are not isolated, but interact and blend to feed the socialist policy agenda. Most daily practitioners of socialism are not aware of them, though the closer you get to the academic core of the modern American socialist movement, the more able people are to elaborate on these cornerstones. This means they are able to make a strong intellectual case for how they want to see America transformed.

It doesn't take much analysis to take Barack Obama's words at face value and conclude that he adheres to Marxist ideology. One cannot be a pro-free-market capitalist and assume that any success is built solely on exploitation of a lower class. Indeed, the assumption of the very existence of lower classes is un-American. Our society was built on the ideal of Liberty. That liberty is exactly what created our exceptional American society that has prospered like no other nation in history. One of the most important applications of Liberty is the ability of any individual to use their talents to prosper and rise up out of poverty, or to choose to stay right where they're at. In fact, the stats bear this out:

At around the 1:30 mark, a statistic is revealed that should forever put to bed the idea that the poor are a permanent class in a capitalistic society. Fully 86% of those below the poverty line in 1979 had moved out of poverty by 1988. EIGHTY SIX PERCENT.

If a better debunking of the baseline assumptions of Marxism is out there, I haven't seen it. This also torpedoes Obama's class warfare rhetoric, which should be recognized for what it is. It's nothing new, it's nothing unique, and this guy isn't smarter than the other leftists who have touted liberal talking points. This is nothing more than standard Marxist theory.

posted February 12, 2014 02:13 PM            

10 Planks as offered by Wikipedia:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
I assume this means private property of which there is still obviously plenty, and there's virtually no change in policy with regard to eminent domain. In Obama's time Republicans have sought to overturn eminent domain law as created before Obama's time in 2005. Can we call this a bogus charge?

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. Progressive income taxes haven't changed a lot under Obama. Yes, he's pushed for higher taxes sometimes, but so did Reagan. Taxes are still historically low. This is a terrible attempt at labeling Obama as Marxist. Nothing he's done in this area begins to approach anything out of line with previous administrations.

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance. Even if Obama favors re-institution of estate taxes that doesn't constitute an abolition of inheritance. Taxes which apply to estates or to inheritance in the United States trace back to the 18th century, so in any way that Obama's beliefs correlate to his predecessor's, he is equally as non-Marxist as those predecessors.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. Your article, I guess, is only citing the property of "rebels" as decided upon by that author. In his mind, people that illegally store their American-made money in tax havens are rebels, and Obama is trying to confiscate their property. FATCA was passed under Obama to try to stem the use of foreign tax havens. The House of Representatives passed the original version as part of the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act of 2010 on June 18, 2009 by a vote of 259-157. The Senate passed an amended bill on November 5, 2009 by a vote of 71-28. As I recall, Romney, who I presume is not considered a Marxist, also spoke of closing loopholes. Obama has not sought to "confiscate" any more taxes from expatriates than his predecessors.

5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. Not much new here under Obama. The author's contention is that Dodd-Frank increased such centralization. I believe that's a matter of opinion. Any criticism of the Central Bank held before Dodd Frank would consider this "plank" already fulfilled prior to Obama ever entering office.

6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. The reasoning of the author here is pretty vacuous. Obama complains about Fox like the prior administration complained about "mainstream media". Nothing Obama's done constitutes a "centralization" of the news. Nor does support of high speed rail constitute a centralization of transportation. This one's really dumb.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. Once again, a poor argument is attempted by the writer. Subsidizing energy is something the government has done for years extending beyond Obama's time. Moreover, it doesn't speak to this plank, which the author summarized as control over means of production. Clearly, the U.S. government is not in control of the means of production for vast amounts of American production.

8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. Another bad argument. First, the argument isn't really relative to the plank. There has been no establishment of "equal liability of all to labour." No forced servitude. No establishment of industrial or agricultural armies, particularly not ones beholden to the Federal government of the U.S.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country. Once again, the letter of the plank has not remotely been met. The author makes another vacuous attempt at argument here, but even he knows Obama doesn't satisfy this plank whatsoever.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form and combination of education with industrial production.[15] None of this plank has been Obama's doing either. We already had "free" education in public schools. We already removed children from factory labor. No Federal-level politician is trying to combine public education with industrial production. The author misses the point altogether, and talks about Obama's higher education goals.

posted February 12, 2014 03:27 PM            

quote:

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The answer is that to President Obama this is still not fair because he is a Marxist.

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No. The answer is in progressive taxation, a long held tradition to foster income equality employed by Presidents of both parties regardless of whether they were deemed Marxist or not. Ridiculous.

This article has a lot that can and should be fact-checked for obvious attempts at spinning information in a way favorable to the author's viewpoint. I think it's safe to say that this article in no way proves that Obama is a Marxist. It doesn't even really attempt to fulfill that criteria.

Your third article is almost as vacuous. It attempts the argument, but instead of sticking with Marxism, it spins Socialism.

Things like this may be true:

The Communist Manifesto is based on the fundamental precept that there is a bourgeoise and a proletariat - the very definition of class-separated economics. This is the assumption that the haves and the have nots are constantly struggling to out-exploit each other, and that eventually the proletariat will have no choice but to rise up and engage in armed revolt against the fat cats who can't succeed unless there are more and newer people and markets to hold down while they attain success.

But that doesn't make Obama an adherent to that philosophy. In my last post, I shared the actual planks of Marxism, which Obama obviously DOESN'T fit. If he doesn't match those parts of the philosophy, how is it that he nonetheless embodies the philosophy? He doesn't. Like everyone else, he pulls information from a variety of sources including his life in the United States. The author's early contention that Obama's family are Marxists is hyperbole.

This author's four pillars are equally ridiculous.

1. Redistribution of wealth. He talks about government programs which have been here longer than Obama's been President. You can't point to these programs as evidence that he's some Socialist when they've long existed. It's absurd.

2. The labor theory of value. Here he says Obama engages in class-ist rhetoric. That's not the definition of having a Labor Theory of Value. A Labor Theory of Value is where the price of any commodity depends on the amount of labor required. Obama doesn't speak to this theory whatsoever; not in class-ist rhetoric, and not in any economic sense as we're in an age where the labor put into goods varies based upon a lot of factors, and values certainly are not derived from purely labor costs [in a lot of instances, if not all].

Contrary to popular belief,[40] Marx opposed "ascribing a supernatural creative power to labor", arguing that:

Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much a source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which is itself only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power.[41]

Here Marx was distinguishing between exchange value (the subject of the Labor Theory of Value) and use value. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value

3. The Falling Profit Margin. He doesn't attempt to link this to Obama, instead opting to explain why Socialists tie profits to recessions.

4. Reform vs. revolution. Another explanation of terms, so that he can make his case for Obama being a Marxist below.

quote:

---

It doesn't take much analysis to take Barack Obama's words at face value and conclude that he adheres to Marxist ideology. One cannot be a pro-free-market capitalist and assume that any success is built solely on exploitation of a lower class.

---

Obama hasn't made that assumption. The author has clearly read this assumption into his interpretation of Obama, but it this assumption is not one that effectively defines Obama. Sure Obama can reasonably be interpreted as exploiting a sort of class warfare attitude in some cases. Philosophically, however, he has easily just as often made the case for people working their way up the economic ladder [the same way every populist President does]. If we're selectively choosing what we want to hear from Obama and ascribing a particular philosophy to our choice of his words, we could absolutely make him out to be like any of his predecessors.

quote:

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One of the most important applications of Liberty is the ability of any individual to use their talents to prosper and rise up out of poverty, or to choose to stay right where they're at.

---

Obama agrees:
"Hope is the bedrock of this nation. The belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be." - Obama

"For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we've been told that we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes we can." - Obama

"It's not ignoring the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it." - Obama

"Government that is fighting for working people day in and day out making sure that we are trying to allow them to live out the American dream." - Obama

"And it means also taking full responsibility for our own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism. They must always believe that they can write their own destiny." - Obama

"That is the true genius of America, a faith in the simple dreams of its people, the insistence on small miracles. That we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door. That we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe or hiring somebody's son. That we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted -- or at least, most of the time." - Obama

"Americans ... still believe in an America where anything's possible -- they just don't think their leaders do." - Obama

posted February 13, 2014 11:20 AM            

Column: The GOP Psyche: An Explainer

By Tina Dupuy On January 30, 2014 · Add Comment · In Column

I believe the Republican Party’s psychic break happened the moment their "compassionate conservative" economic philosophy melted the world’s economy. President Bush, the champion of deregulation, bailed out the banks and then offered: "I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system."

I know when I first heard it my head exploded. It sent the Republicans reeling.

They had always believed if liberals just stepped out of the way conservative alchemy would usher in a new golden age for America. Then the opposite happened.

This was the same historical moment the Party of Lincoln saw the star of the future first half-black allegedly liberal president with the middle name of Hussein rising, while the economy—spiked on their hyperbole and bluster—had busted. This was all that was needed to crack the collective psyche of America’s right wing.

And just to pry it open even further, the new overwhelmingly popular president whom they disavowed as a Bolshevik Nazi Black Panther Kenyan Illuminati Muslim Socialist, had ideas which were actually centrist Republican policies – shooting Osama bin Laden in the face, for example. Also shrinking the size of the federal workforce and therefore shrinking the size of the government, renewing the Bush Tax Cuts, reducing the deficit and cutting spending. Basic Republican staples when they actually live up to their rhetoric.

ObamaCare's individual mandate had been the Republican alternative to socialized medicine since the days of Nixon: Americans having private insurance instead of Medicare for all. Now the individual mandate, according to Republicans, IS socialized medicine.

Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort that arises when self-image conflicts with reality. This phrase was coined in the 1950s by psychologist Leon Festinger and fleshed out in his book “When Prophesy Fails.” Festinger found when believers are faced with a doomsday deadline that comes and goes, instead of disillusionment, they "often increased their enthusiasm and activity. They poured greater energy than ever before into obtaining new converts." Hence the rise of the tea party: Basically they’re the Grand Old Party fueled by the psychological backlash from failed prophesy.

Often the way this stress is dealt with is by re-defining values. It’s commonly referred to as moving the goal posts. This explains why the GOP used to be OK with secrecy, drones, bailouts, NSA spying and deficit spending—but now, post-Bush, see these things as tyranny. It's what Festinger called, "ingenious defenses with which people protect their convictions."

The GOP believes they’re patriots and the stewards of free markets. Once that belief collides with facts, like conservative policies asphyxiating the middle class, they have to make it the fault of an enemy. Meaning: To Republicans a Democratic twice elected (by huge margins) President has to be a foreign Muslim treasonous dictator whose economic policies are killing us all because otherwise everything they've ever held true is a lie.

This explains why Republicans have to be against anything proposed by the man the Heritage Foundation's president, Jim DeMint, hilariously calls our Imperial President. Unilaterally giving federal janitors a raise doesn't exactly make one Darth Vader unless your own sense of self is in a death grip.

In cognitive dissonance theory, proof doesn't matter in self-perception. History can be revised to gel with belief. For example: Ted Cruz, the architect of the 2013 government shutdown blames the disaster on President Obama and the Democrats. He has to. What he did was unpatriotic. In order for him to continue to see himself as a patriot, he has to convince himself (and us) that Obama did it.

The least radical guy in the country is now dubbed the most radical guy in history according to his dissident dissonance-sufferers. Now something as ubiquitous and usual as the executive order (FDR did 3,522 of them: Bush 291: Obama so far has done a paltry 168) is unprecedented, lawless and the end of the Republic!

What does this mean? It means we're dealing with people who are unstable. They've gone through a great trauma (the Bush years) and they’re still trying to piece themselves together. Their numbers are dwindling and it’s only the true believers left.

As the GOP struggles with their fractured identity Obama is making it worse by implementing their policies! He’s set to cut $9 billion from the food stamp program.

What does it mean for liberals and progressives? It means we’re defending Republican policies to Republicans who now deplore said policies as communist plots.

posted February 17, 2014 01:51 PM            

All should read this. It explains how lobbyists sneak supra-governmental powers into bills that seem innocuous enough at the time...in this case it has ledto two companies gaining control of many businesses and resources crucial to our survival...and the economy in general.