Jim Stillman
Nevar
Obama's non-socialistic ambitious plans
March 5th 2009 15:57
Bank in the day, bad people – that is, those with whom we disagree – were branded “communists” not because they necessarily followed, believed in or even understood the precepts of that social-economic viewpoint. Today, the curse word of those opposed to the newly freely elected president is “socialist”. Again, the word is shorthand for many proposals of the Obama plans to develop a plan for affordable, universal health care, a restructure of the tax system, a fostering of the development of alternate energy, a recognition that the deficit will, at least in the short term, increase and federal government participation in a variety of areas to which the Right opposes, from a guarantee of education, free availability of birth control and on and on.
Are there non-ideological grounds to be raised in opposition to the broad nature of the Obama “wish list”? Certainly. I would suggest that the President, in his wish to correct all of the matters ignored or mishandled by the past Bush administration, has failed to establish priorities. We have to reverse ill-advised policies from the past, but it must be acknowledged that it cannot be done immediately and simultaneously. It took many years to create the banking and financial market mess, to reduce this country’s prestige and influence in the world, and to sacrifice the essential liberties of our citizens; it is unrealistic and disingenuous to expect a 180° change in direction and result in weeks or even months.
On the other hand, one must acknowledge that President Obama has, every week and often every day, announced a specific program to correct ill-advised Bush-Rove decisions or to address specific concerns. Just this week a way to save millions of Americans from losing their homes through foreclosure was announced, and policy changes in awarding lucrative defense contracts to “friends” like Halliburton and Blackwater have been put into place.
It is in the area of suggesting priorities that a newly energized Republican party could play a role. Instead, GOP leaders seem intent to revert to a playbook that has been repudiated by the American people; there are two aspects of their plan, cut taxes and cut more taxes. Another “plan” is to brand those supporting the president as “socialists” in the hope, if not anticipation, that the public will be frightened sufficiently to cause the Democratic programs to fail.
Harold Meyerson, writing in The Washington Post, addressed the charge of “socialist”
.
So let’s stop all the silly stuff about the Obama plan a blueprint for socialism or communism or any other “ism”; rather possible solutions for the problems now being faced should be the topic of the day. In future posts, some of these issues and possible ways to correct them will be discussed. While readers are free, of course, to continuing to comment on my diminished mental capacity, a more fruitful discussion would result from suggesting specific ways to meet the challenges.
If you have strongly held opinions with regard to the issues raised in this column, either supporting or opposing, please take the time to add a comment. You may email me at jstillman@iqzero.net if you are inclined to expand on your rejection of ideas or facts presented herein. Please don’t bother suggesting that I am an idiot, spew excrement or a tool of enemy nations as I have already been told.
Are there non-ideological grounds to be raised in opposition to the broad nature of the Obama “wish list”? Certainly. I would suggest that the President, in his wish to correct all of the matters ignored or mishandled by the past Bush administration, has failed to establish priorities. We have to reverse ill-advised policies from the past, but it must be acknowledged that it cannot be done immediately and simultaneously. It took many years to create the banking and financial market mess, to reduce this country’s prestige and influence in the world, and to sacrifice the essential liberties of our citizens; it is unrealistic and disingenuous to expect a 180° change in direction and result in weeks or even months.
On the other hand, one must acknowledge that President Obama has, every week and often every day, announced a specific program to correct ill-advised Bush-Rove decisions or to address specific concerns. Just this week a way to save millions of Americans from losing their homes through foreclosure was announced, and policy changes in awarding lucrative defense contracts to “friends” like Halliburton and Blackwater have been put into place.
It is in the area of suggesting priorities that a newly energized Republican party could play a role. Instead, GOP leaders seem intent to revert to a playbook that has been repudiated by the American people; there are two aspects of their plan, cut taxes and cut more taxes. Another “plan” is to brand those supporting the president as “socialists” in the hope, if not anticipation, that the public will be frightened sufficiently to cause the Democratic programs to fail.
Harold Meyerson, writing in The Washington Post, addressed the charge of “socialist”
.
[In] the United States, conservatives have never bashed socialism because its specter was actually stalking America. Rather, they've wielded the cudgel against such progressive reforms as free universal education, the minimum wage or tighter financial regulations. Their signal success is to have kept the United States free from the taint of universal health care. The result: We have the world's highest health-care costs, borne by businesses and employees that cannot afford them; nearly 50 million Americans have no coverage; infant mortality rates are higher than those in 41 nations -- but at least (phew!) we don't have socialized medicine.
Give conservatives credit for their consistency: They attacked Roosevelt as a socialist as they are now attacking Obama, when in fact Obama, like Roosevelt before him, is engaged not in creating socialism but in rebooting a crashed capitalist system. The spending in Obama's stimulus plan isn't a socialist takeover. It's the only way to inject money into a system in which private-sector investment, consumption and exports -- the other three possible engines of growth -- are locked down. Investing more tax dollars in education and research and development is a way to use public funds to create a more competitive private sector. Keeping our banks from speculating madly with our money is a way to keep banking alive.
Give conservatives credit for their consistency: They attacked Roosevelt as a socialist as they are now attacking Obama, when in fact Obama, like Roosevelt before him, is engaged not in creating socialism but in rebooting a crashed capitalist system. The spending in Obama's stimulus plan isn't a socialist takeover. It's the only way to inject money into a system in which private-sector investment, consumption and exports -- the other three possible engines of growth -- are locked down. Investing more tax dollars in education and research and development is a way to use public funds to create a more competitive private sector. Keeping our banks from speculating madly with our money is a way to keep banking alive.
So let’s stop all the silly stuff about the Obama plan a blueprint for socialism or communism or any other “ism”; rather possible solutions for the problems now being faced should be the topic of the day. In future posts, some of these issues and possible ways to correct them will be discussed. While readers are free, of course, to continuing to comment on my diminished mental capacity, a more fruitful discussion would result from suggesting specific ways to meet the challenges.
If you have strongly held opinions with regard to the issues raised in this column, either supporting or opposing, please take the time to add a comment. You may email me at jstillman@iqzero.net if you are inclined to expand on your rejection of ideas or facts presented herein. Please don’t bother suggesting that I am an idiot, spew excrement or a tool of enemy nations as I have already been told.
The substance of this article has been published by the author at Examiner.com.
| 97 |
| Vote |
Add To: 
subscribe to this blog
Comment by Anonymous
You're right, instead there are provisions in the stimulus to help Obama friends like ACORN and La Raza. There is a ton of money going to GE's wind turbine and other "green energy" projects, nevermind their ownership of the NBC line of Obama propaganda "news" stations.
Public officials work for companies and organizations they philosophically agree with when in the private sector. It's fairly unavoidable that those same people end up benefitting from their elections.
We have the world's highest health care costs for two reasons: we have the best health care in the world (people come here from all over the world for treatment they can't get in their own countries) and all Americans bear the burden for 14 million uninsured illegal immigrants that can't and don't pay for their care in America's emergency rooms.
To solve the second half he's going to have to make taxpayers provide insurance to illegal aliens or raise taxes to cover the cost or limit what government health care covers. The U.K. has done all three and their health care system is still going broke.
And yes, raising taxes on the rich to give tax CREDIT based refunds to those who file but don't pay taxes is redistribution of wealth, which is Socialism.
According to 2006 statistics, 40,000 people, or about 1%, pay 60% of the taxes paid in New York City. The top 2% of taxpayers in this country ALREADY pay 86% of the tax burden. Yet he wants to take more from those people, who provide the jobs in this country, to give it to the people that work for them. Well, there will be fewer people working because of it, making them more dependent on government and locking them in as voters, if they aren't smart enough to see what's been done to them. That's why there's the class warfare and the demonizing of rich people.
There's been a lot of demonizing of all the bonuses people got in 2008. I understand those that asked for government money, but bonuses are taxed at 50% flat, not at the 35% top rate for income. How much money would the already suffering New York tax coffers have lost if not able to tax those bonuses because the people never got them and their companies didn't have a tax bill? A lot.
Comment by Edward Allen
Sanity Road
To the writer of the post:
While attempting to whitewash and smooth over the term "socialist" and remove the word's definition and implications as far away from B.O. and his programs is dubious at best. People can see right through the words written. Quoting the likes of Harold Meyerson, in the Washington Post, only discredits you in the minds of pragmatic thinkers by exposing your real orientation.
You say that the Republicans miss the point by using "a playbook that has been repudiated by the American people." By wording your phrase in this manner, you leave the impression on the readers that the entire American voting public rejected ALL of the Republican agenda. Yet B.O. won by just over 50%. This tells a thinking person that the election was just about split (The techniques used by the Democrats, however, leave many questions unanswered as to how they reached even that percentage.) Republicans won most all the geographical areas outside the major cities--where the non-taxed outnumber the taxed by a large margin. . If that is a repudiation of former ways, then tell us how this is.
Bush made some big mistakes, but his major problems have resulted from a downturn in the economy which was orchestrated by the opposition using the open-credit mortgage enticements from Congress. It was also caused by the repeal of the Glass-Stegall Act in 1999--the timing of which could not have been better since a lame duck President had nothing to lose, and everything to gain, by doing so to satisfy his lobby. Once those ill-advised actions took hold, the resulting downward spiral only grew out of control, even more than its original proponents had envisioned.
You seem to miss the point that governmental success depends on taxing productive people who are motivated. Socialism has proven time and again that it overwhelmingly removes incentives and motivation. This is why it fails so miserably to excite the people toward working harder and producing more.
All these social programs that you, and your untrained Mentor espouse, need tax money. More taxation on businesses mean something has to be cut to afford paying the higher taxes. Workers are one of the first places managers look to cut expenses. Fewer workers mean fewer tax dollars. It is a slippery slope we are onto right now and taxing more of the producers harder will only discourage them.
Attempting to satisfy the never-lessening appetites of those on the receiving end by taking away from those on the productive side will only remove the real workers' desire to produce, and it will lessen the tax base even further. If you continue this ever-bloating road to taxation and give-aways, you will lead this country to bankruptcy, if you have not already done it. Why cannot you Liberals get this basic economic fact?
Comment by Randy Inman
Waxing Political
Football Dogz
NCstuff
Do I think President Obama is a socialist or communist? Yes I do. Do I thiink most of his followers are? No, simply misguided people who thought change was the cure all.
Comment by Jeff Musall
Comment by Jonathan Biviano
Marriage Bits
The only reason Obama's socialistic leanings will fail to take hold, IMO, is because they are eating their benefactors too soon. They on one hand want to do everything they want to do on the back of the rich, yet they are demonizing them at the same time. Usually, socialists wait to demonize the rich until after the first or second round of tax increases fail to produce enough dollars and they need to shift blame.
Witness AIG. Here's a company that is paying bonuses that were contracted to be paid back in 2007, scheduled for this month. Chris Dodd, D-CT, added an amendment to the stimulus that the executive compensation limits in the stimulus wouldn't apply to bonuses contracted before the stimulus passed.
Then these same people complaining about an amount equal to .1% (that's one tenth of one percent, of "taxpayer money" going to RETENTION bonuses to keep the best people to keep the company going) shrug off the waste of earmarks that are 2%, or 20 times more percentage wise, and billions of dollars not millions of dollars as "only a small part of the budget."
So, they knew these bonuses were coming, they knew when they were coming and they knew how much, but they kept quiet about it until they needed to demonize rich people again. What happens the day after they start the news channels chattering on about AIG? They begin to push a budget bill that includes an effective tax rate increase on the rich from 35% to 55-65%. The point is for us to now be distracted or angry to the point of allowing it to go through.
Comment by Edward Allen
Sanity Road
Without responding to causative factors I have raised, or the sponsorship and backing of B.O.--which is questioned by over half of the American people, you state emphatically that B.O. is not a socialist. Please provide some facts to support your position.
You further suggest to the readers that I am a "conservative" who is basically clueless. As for "conservative," I am defined as a fiscal conservative, but am also described as a human rights liberal. As for being "without a clue," there are countless learned individuals, in and out of academia, who would debate you on that statement too.
Basically, Mr. Musall, you have not identified the tree (me) by its fruit, but have missed the point that this tree has been grafted by, not only an extensive education in these matters, but also by enough life experiences to bear many fruits. In words you may understand better, you do not know me. So please, at least give me the courtesy of not discrediting that which you know nothing about.
Please stick to the issues. If you have something concrete with which to add, we welcome it.
Comment by Edward Allen
Sanity Road
Without responding to causative factors I have raised, or the sponsorship and backing of B.O.--which is questioned by over half of the American people, you state emphatically that B.O. is not a socialist. Please provide some facts to support your position.
You further suggest to the readers that I am a "conservative" who is basically clueless. As for "conservative," I am defined as a fiscal conservative, but am also described as a human rights liberal. As for being "without a clue," there are countless learned individuals, in and out of academia, who would debate you on that statement too.
Basically, Mr. Musall, you have not identified the tree (me) by its fruit, but have missed the point that this tree has been grafted by, not only an extensive education in these matters, but also by enough life experiences to bear many fruits. In words you may understand better, you do not know me. So please, at least give me the courtesy of not discrediting that which you know nothing about.
Please stick to the issues. If you have something concrete with which to add, we welcome it.