Never let a crisis go to waste!

That is something of a mantra for the Obama administration. In an incredibly bold admission, Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both stated publicly that a good crisis shouldn’t be wasted. In other words, use the economic crisis and ensuing panic to push through your agenda that perhaps would be unpalatable during normal times. Rest assured that in these early days, President Obama and his puppet-masters in the Congress and liberal special interest groups will waste no time cramming as much socialism into place as possible. His poll numbers are waning fast, in spite of the rosy reports from the complicit media. Time is not on his side, so we find ourselves watching the spectacle of a two month overhaul of the relationship between the public and private sector that we have not seen in generations, perhaps ever.

The first two waves have been passed, the pork and social engineering filled “stimulus package” and the massive deficit expanding Federal budget. Next up for Obama is socialized medicine, accomplished through a vastly expanded Federal health insurance mandate along with the whispering of “The Return of Porkulus”. Already, before a nickel of the first “stimulus” bill has been spent, some loyal Democrats in safe seats (i.e. David Obey of Wisconsin) are hinting around at the need for a second stimulus package, likely as large if not larger, than the first one. This is a clever bit of old school politics as usual (weren’t we promised “change”?). Rather than the President coming right out and saying he wants another stimulus bill, he has his loyalist troops raise the issue, sort of easing you into it. Once the initial outrage starts to settle down, Obama can roll out his panic mode speeches, assuring us of calamities unimaginable if we don’t pass yet another stimulus bill. The threat of calamity worked well once, why not a second time?

One major piece of legislation that is a crown jewel in the Obama crown is the so-called card check legislation. It also is getting very little attention because the details would strike most Americans as being, for lack of a better word, un-American. In a nutshell, this legislation will change the way unions organize by allowing a workplace to be collectively bargained if they get more than 50% of employees to sign a card. This is not a secret ballot. It is Joe the local union organizer walking up to you and asking you to sign a card. If you don’t, that amounts to a vote against the union and you can be assured that your public vote of “no” will be remembered. Certainly there has never been even a whiff of intimidation tactics being employed by labor unions toward recalcitrant workers who didn’t sign on to the union agenda! Ask anyone trying to cross a picket line. The reason we have a secret ballot in this country for virtually ever election, including voting for class president and dog catcher, is to allow people to vote their conscience without fear of intimidation or reprisal. Now in a bold effort to take that basic American protection away from American workers, we see what amounts to a green light for intimidation of workers by union organizers. Funny, I thought the Democrats were supposed to be the party watching out for the working man? I guess that only applies if you are a union working man.

Ominously, the economy is showing early signs of recovery as the credit markets start to stabilize. That has nothing to do with anything done by the Obama administration (which has done nothing to address the credit crisis even though virtually every expert agrees that the credit market collapse was the impetus of the general economic malaise), but be sure that as the economy naturally rebounds as it always does and does so in spite of Obama’s policies, Obama and his media cronies will spin the recovery as a vindication of his big government policies, and give him the cover he needs to further march us down the road of European style socialism and economic ruin.