If this doesn’t scare you

There are a couple of planks in the Obama administration’s effort to “not waste a good crisis” and radically expand the scope and power of the Federal government. Part of that is increased spending and taxation, bringing more and more of the economic production of the country under the direct control of the central government. Another major part, and one that is less onerous to the average citizen, is a dramatic increase in the regulatory powers of the Federal government over the private sector. Set aside the idea that the Feds in an oversight function over the private sector is like a blind and deaf lifeguard who can’t swim. Set aside also the fact that the big collapses we have seen have included some already heavily regulated industries and a couple of companies that are creations of and were protected by the same government that wants MORE control (i.e. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). Just read the following synopsis of former tax cheat and current Secretary of the Treasury Geithner’s plan for “fixing” the private sector.

The Treasury has been rolling out its proposals piecemeal. It announced Wednesday a central plank of the U.S. effort: a call to give powers to the Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to seize any company whose collapse could put the broader economy at risk.

Read that again:

The Treasury has been rolling out its proposals piecemeal. It announced Wednesday a central plank of the U.S. effort: a call to give powers to the Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to seize any company whose collapse could put the broader economy at risk.

So if you are too successful and get really big, the government can seize you. Of course, the details are a bit sketchy…

It isn't clear which companies would be brought under this umbrella. Administration officials believe they could include banks' parent companies, insurance conglomerates and certain hedge funds, among others. They said it would depend on a company's size, leverage, reliance on short-term funding and role in the financial system.

So the plan is pretty vague in terms of what this all looks like. I can tell you what it looks like, it looks like another step toward socialism. Given this vague plan, what is to stop the gubmint from seizing companies on whatever pretense they like?

"Because we have learned from the current crisis that destabilizing dangers can come from financial institutions besides banks, our plan will give the government the tools to limit the risk-taking at firms that could set off cascading damage," Mr. Geithner told the Council on Foreign Relations on Wednesday, the same day the Treasury laid out how such a process might work.

Government officials believe the new authority might give policy makers a powerful club to demand strategic or management changes at companies.

We already have limits on risk. It is called the market. If you take a bad risk, you fail and someone else wins. That is capitalism. Business is predicated on taking calculated risks, and there has always been a trade-off for risk and return. Nothing good comes from this intervention, where the government can decide that company A is too big for its britches, steps in and seizes it. Never mind that the biggest skewing of the risk-reward system is the Federal government stepping in to prop up failed companies, thus rewarding and subsidizing failure. Let’s give them more power (and more of our money) to tinker around with the financial system and the private sector!

The proposal would allow the FDIC to sell the company's assets and renegotiate or reject existing contracts. This could give the government leverage to ban bonuses at struggling firms, but it could also raise questions among counterparties as to whether existing contracts might survive government seizure.

The FDIC would also be able to replace directors and senior executives and "none of these actions would be subject to the approval of the institution's creditors or other stakeholders," the Treasury said.

That throws a monkey wrench into the whole system. Businesses operate by being able to raise capital. They raise capital by borrowing from banks and by issuing debt (which is basically what a bond is). They also raise capital by issuing stock to shareholders who become the owners of the company. They do business by entering into contracts with suppliers, customers and employees. When you add into the equation that the government can arbitrarily grab a business and toss all of the contracts out of the window, that means that doing business with bigger businesses becomes extremely risky. If you are an executive, you will shy away from working at a company where your employment contract and bonus structure can be negated by an act of the government. If you are a supplier, you will negotiate higher prices to offset the risk that the government will come in and redo your contracts. If you are a customer and contract for goods or services with a business, you have to build in the uncertainty that your business arrangements can be done away with at the stroke of a pen, leaving you with no legal recourse. In essence, this makes private companies wards of the state because the relationship between debt holders (people who hold corporate bonds) and stakeholders (people who own the company through stock, the shareholders) is radically changed. No longer will they have the final say on the way companies are run, now that power lies in the hands of bureaucrats

I actually think that President Obama and Secretary Geithner are fully aware of this. For all of his flowery talk of how he believes in the private sector, I don’t believe it for a second because his policies don’t match his rhetoric. His walk doesn’t match his teleprompter talk. As it becomes harder and harder for the bigger companies to do business, eventually the case can be made to nationalize them. One of the hallmarks of communism is the state holding the means of production. In a post-industrial society, it is less important to hold factories and farms, and far more important to control information and capital. That is the path we are on, as finances, the auto industry, socialized health care, control of our children virtually from the moment of birth with the “Zero to Five” plan, universal preschool and universal college, all adds up to the Federal government holding all of the strings of the economy. Think about the real means of production today and then look at the moves proposed by the administration. It becomes really easy to see that the dreams of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao and Castro are seeing their fruition. Not in Cuba or China or Venezuela, but right here in America. As America goes, so the world goes. The Marxist radicals have always known this and they have their greatest opening in 100 years right now, right here.

Redundancy Alert!

Chavez Urges Obama to Turn to Socialism

In a plea evoking Darth Vader's attempt to turn Luke Skywalker to the dark side, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Friday urged President Obama to join the socialist movement.

"I recommend to Obama -- they're criticizing him because they say he's moving towards socialism -- come Obama, ally with us on the path to socialism, it's the only road," he said on Venezuelan state television, according to a Bloomberg report.

"Imagine a socialist revolution in the U.S. Nothing is impossible," he added

Um, like he isn't aleady charging headlong that way as it is? Encouraging Obama to embrace socialism is like encouraging me to eat jelly donuts. Neither of us needs any encouragement.

It is bad and our “leader” is making it worse

We are in the midst of an economic collapse that is rapidly changing the financial landscape of America. Every day it seems we get more bad news. Today, we get the grim news that unemployment is at 8.1%, the economy lost 651,000 jobs last month and the total for the recession tips the scale at 4 million jobs lost. With the looming prospect of General Motors seeking bankruptcy protection and a number of banks in real danger of collapsing, the economy is really on the precipice of a serious turn for the worse (believe it or not). Americans, especially older Americans, are faced with a retirement date that is moving further away each day. These are scary times for a lot of people. America needs clear, positive leadership. That is not what we are getting.

As Peggy Noonan pointed out in the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, President Obama sees this crisis as an opportunity to push through sweeping changes to our nation. Changes in how we do business, health care, taxes, banking, defense. Seismic changes to the relationship between the government and the people, with the government taking on a much larger and vastly more expensive role in American life. All under the guise of fixing what ails our nation. The recession is providing political camouflage for new policies of tax increases, socialized medicine, massive income redistributionist policies and an exploding national debt.

This is a time for leadership, a time for stabilization. Americans need to turn on the TV and see our President being frank and honest about the challenges we face, but also providing the leadership and vision we need to get out of the economic morass we are in. What we are getting instead is a man who is trying to build a legacy, making a name for himself at the expense of the economy and the long term future of America. Most Presidents, especially two term presidents late in their second term, start to worry about what their “legacy” will be. How will history and future generations of Americans view their Presidency? President Obama seems to be preoccupied with trying to forge his legacy RIGHT NOW, in March of 2009, a scant two months into his administration. Instead of being a leader, taking charge and leading this country forward, when Obama acts or speaks he seems to make things worse. The stock market should have stabilized by now, but it continues to drop because the policies being put forth by this administration are hurting America’s hopes for long term growth and economic vitality. We need solutions that will stabilize the economy and address the fundamental problems, painful though that will be. Instead we get massive pork spending under the guise of “stimulus”. The same institution that brings you the DMV is about to seize an enormous parcel of the economic system of this country and turn it into an inefficient, wealth destroying shell of itself that looks more like the weak economies of once great nations in Europe and a lot less like the economy that had been the envy of the rest of the world throughout my lifetime.

Millions of older Americans have seen their invested wealth evaporate. That is not a big deal for me. At 37, I am entering my peak earning years and this is a great time to sock money away. But for those who are approaching retirement age or are already retired, the stock market downturn has turned into a free for all. Where is the leadership? We cannot count on future generations making up the shortfall because the ranks of the elderly continue to grow and the replacement rate of new workers continues to fall, thanks to the new American worldview that children are a burden, an economic line item and a threat to the environment.

I am pretty sure that the Obama team, like most of America, has little idea what has gotten us into this situation and even less idea of how to get us out. I also don’t think that they care. This is an opportunity the likes of which the American Left has not had since before Nixon to radically reshape this nation and they are not wasting a minute in enacting it. One hopes that the enduring legacy of the Obama administration is not that they used the current recession as cover for a Leftward lurch because in normal times the American people would reject neo-socialism. This is a time for us to be getting the truth from our leaders, but unfortunately the truth is a scarce commodity that is becoming increasingly rare.

Has the world forgotten? Have we?

As we march in a seemingly inexorable fashion towards socialism, I have to wonder if people remember what life under a truly socialistic society is like? Younger people don’t because for them the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact are things of the past they probably have barely heard of (especially in a public school). I know I am going to sound really old here, but people under 30 really have never lived with the threat of totalitarianism. Sure we have terrorism, but blowing up buildings is not going to lead to a full scale war or conquest. Growing up as I did in the 80’s, the threat of the Soviets was a very real one. Movies like Red Dawn that depicted a Soviet invasion of America resonated with us. We know now that the Soviets were far less militarily adept than we gave them credit for, but they still had land based nuclear ICBMs, submarines with nuclear missiles and an enormous military that was facing our forces across Europe. It is in vogue now, especially among detractors of Ronald Reagan to pooh pooh the military capability of the Soviets, but I remember vividly the parades through Red Square, column after column of troops, tanks and trucks towing Soviet ICBMs. I went to an elementary school with nuclear fallout shelter signs on the wall, a daily reminder that there was a nation bent on world conquest with nuclear weapons. I still have a book from the 80’s on Soviet military power and overblown a bit or not, the Soviets were a formidable force and the last national power that really came close to rivaling the United States. So I remember all too well what rotten fruits come from the various branches of socialism /communism/ Marxism.

To hear people today, wearing their Che Guevara t-shirts and praising Cuban health care, socialism is the way to go. But outside of the comfy confines of Hollywood and universities full of overindulged college kids, lifelong “grad students” and professors who teach because they are unable to get real jobs, people realize that socialism doesn’t work and hasn’t worked. Ever. Americans do not flee from Miami and take rickety boats to Cuba, not even the slovenly Michael Moore who thinks that Cuba is some sort of paradise but still chooses to live in luxury in New York. Nobody got shot trying to climb the Berlin Wall going from west to east. Taiwan is not threatening to retake mainland Red China by force.

Socialism invariably leads to authoritarian government and history has demonstrated again and again that authoritarian government inevitably leads to totalitarianism. Look at the worst human rights violators of the past century and the present age: Nazi Germany. Stalinist Soviet Russia. Fascist Italy under Mussolini. The Khmer Rouge. Maoist China. Castro’s Cuba. These are not nations led by Jerry Falwell-esque conservative Christians. They are lead universally by totalitarian regimes, every one some version of socialism. Even Nazi Germany fits this bill. What was the full name of the Nazi Party? The National Socialist German Workers' Party. People label conservatives “Nazis” all the time, but Adolf Hitler has a lot more in common with socialists in this country than he does with Rush Limbaugh.

The more responsibility and freedom people abdicate to the government, the more it seeks. It feeds upon itself because it is an unsustainable system. As systems fail, more and more power is consolidated into the government. This causes more systems to fail as the inefficiencies of centralized governmental bureaucracies spawn more instability. Eventually the only thing holding it together is brute force and fear. For all of the talk about being a “Worker’s Paradise”, the only thing keeping Russians in the Soviet Union was the threat of the KGB, Siberian gulags and barbed wire.

The more power shifts away from the people and into the hands of the government, the less free those people become. We have apparently forgotten this in our headlong quest to abdicate as much personal freedom and responsibility as possible into the hands of our benevolent government in the hope that by doing so we can trade freedom for security. That is a false hope as those political prisoners languishing in Castro’s prisons and the women who stood for hours in bread lines in Soviet Russia can attest. Socialism doesn’t improve the financial security of all people, it drags everyone down into the same impoverished state except for the bureaucrats who run everything. Far from an egalitarian society, socialism merely replaces the middle class and the upper class with powerful bureaucrats at the top and a bunch of miserable workers at the bottom. The rich capitalist is replaced by the tin pot dictator government official.

So we find ourselves in America in 2009 facing a precarious situation: we are in a dangerous world with enemies all about seeking to overthrow our nation. We have virtually unimpeded illegal immigration at the same time that we have growing unemployment and instability in the financial markets. In our national commercial institutions, the two of the three main drivers of our economy are in serious trouble, i.e. the auto industry and our financial markets (the agricultural industry is the third). People are afraid, they are losing jobs, cars, houses. I expect a massive wave of bankruptcies, personal and business, in 2009 as job losses mount. There are far too many people looking for a quick fix and far too many power hungry politicians more than willing to give them just that. That is a recipe for protectionism and socialism and eventually totalitarianism.

Once in place, the shackles of totalitarianism are hard to throw off without bloodshed. America stands at a precipice and is in danger of falling. Don’t expect to hear voices of sanity coming out of Washington, D.C. because it is in the hands of people who have an ideology that at its intellectual core is hard to distinguish from Marxism. They may not advocate totalitarianism now but it is the inevitable end result of the policies they do advocate. At some point everyone comes to a point of resistance to authoritarianism and it is at that point that socialism enforces its ideology at the end of a gun barrel. If America falls to socialism, there is not a free nation out there to fight for us, there are no Ronald Reagan’s in China. We must make a stand, here and now, or lose the freedoms that so many men have died for forever.

Welcome to the U.S.S.A.

The United Socialist States of America

Here is a brilliant idea from our "conservative" leadership in response to the credit crisis.

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration is considering taking ownership stakes in certain U.S. banks as an option for dealing with a severe global credit crisis.

An administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because no decision has been made, said the $700 billion rescue package passed by Congress last week allows the Treasury Department to inject fresh capital into financial institutions and get ownership shares in return.

This official said all the new powers granted in the legislation were being considered as the administration seeks to deal with a serious credit crisis that has caused the biggest upheavals on Wall Street in seven decades and continues to roil global markets.

Supporters of this approach, such as Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., argue that injecting fresh capital into U.S. banks who want to participate in the program would be an effective way to bolster banks' balance sheets and get them to resume lending. Taxpayers would benefit because the government would receive an equity stake in the bank in return for providing the capital.

How exactly is that a reasonable response under our Constitution? It doesn't sound like something that jives with American political thought. It does sound like a different political document though:

Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

Those words come from the Communist Manifesto, the fifth plank. The White House is now taking economic advice from Charles Schumer, part of which includes the state taking the means of production and credit as we buy up banks, increase regulation and potentially bailout auto makers. What next, buying General Motors and have Uncle Same getting into the auto business? Why not state commune farms? State oil companies? Call Hugo Chavez and Raul Castro, have them over to the White House! What communism failed to accomplish by military force will be finally accomplished by apathy and overwhelming self-interest. In our desire to protect our own self-interest, we are willing what we hold most dear. Of course most people have no idea what ideals we should cherish and what our country was founded on (hint, it wasn't the government holding your hand and correcting every mistake)

Heck, we might as well elect Barack Obama. Better the socialist who admits it than the socialist who pretends to believe in the free market and calls himself a conservative. We are experiencing a leadership gap in this country, no one is willing to stand up and tell people the hard truth because the soft lie is so much easier to pass. These seem like small measures, a little here and a little there but they all end up inexorably at the same place. Once the bureaucracy gets it's claws into something, it never lets go.

Dosvidaniya America

The Bush Legacy: Barack Obama

Have you seen this man?

If things go the way they are looking, President Bush will be handing over the keys to the White House to Barack Obama and he will be largely to blame. With the nation in crisis financially, we needed someone to step up and lead this nation. Someone to reassure us but also to give us direction, someone to go before Congress and tell them what needed to be done instead of coming before them hat in hand like a beggar. Instead what we have gotten over the last few weeks, really over the last few years is a man who is the lamest of lame ducks, a man being carried along by the winds of change like a leaf in October.

Remember this guy?




Where did he go? He has been replaced by someone unrecognizable, someone who has been cowed by the media and the critics, someone who has let a greasy porkchop like Michael Moore and a raving lunatic like Keith Olbermann make him into a shadow. Love him or hate him, President Bush in the crisis days after September 11th was a leader. He was certain, he was firm and he had direction. We were in a crisis and he didn't hesitate to tell us that. He said it would be hard, and he said it would take time and he said it would require sacrifice. Like Ronald Reagan he was not interested in nuance, he was interested in results. Now, seven years later and facing a financial crisis, where is President Bush? His "leadership" is trying to push a boondoggle of a "bailout" through at a cost of hundreds of billions, and he failed to even do that until it was revamped with tons of pork spending to bring allegedly conscientious congressmen in line. He looks weak and is unable to support John McCain because McCain is fleeing from him as fast as Obama is trying to link them together.

There was a time when Americans would sacrifice for the greater good. When young men signed up to fight for their nation, and didn't decide later that they should pick and choose where to fight. There was a time when sacrifice didn't mean a 20 gig iPod instead of a 40 gig iPod. People gave up creature comforts and made sacrifices because we were in a crisis and we needed to pull together. Now? Now people want the nanny state. People know that McCain is more qualified to handle virtually any issue, but Obama makes them feel good. We are in a crisis but someone else, anyone else, needs to take responsibility. It isn't my fault I bought a house I couldn't afford! We desperately needed Bush to take charge, and he didn't. We needed John McCain to pick up the torch and he didn't. Is it any wonder that the gap between Obama and McCain is widening? No one cares about Bill Ayers, even though they should. They don't know who he even is. What they care about, right or wrong, is the economy and all they hear from the President is that the "economy is fundamentally stable", which it clearly is not. What they hear and see from McCain is more of the same Washington garbage. He should be running against Washington, and instead he is running against Bill Ayers.

If anyone sees the old President Bush, please tell him we need him back. Barring that we McCain to show the leadership I know he has. Tonight is the night, if he doesn't hammer Obama hard and show how dangerously naive and inexperienced he is, it is all over and we are looking at four years of neo-Marxist ideology in America.

Nobody says it quite like Voddie!

I love the way that Pastor Baucham can express things so clearly and succinctly. After reading his posts, I realize that I need to really work on my brevity. Pastor Baucham on "career women"...

Recently I have heard the Proverbs 31 reference over and over in support of “women pursuing careers” in politics, or otherwise. Let me say that I have never argued that a woman cannot or should not work (though this is precisely what evangelicals in the blogosphere and on the airwaves have accused me of). In fact, I am on record (see: Family Driven Faith, and my previous post) on the subject and I have been unambiguous. Ironically, my daughter, Jasmine works for me! She is my research assistant, and she runs our online store (the store is down right now as we outsource order fulfillment). How, then, do some accuse me of arguing that a woman cannot work?

While I would never argue that a woman cannot work, I have argued that a woman is required to be a “keeper at home” (Titus 2:5; cf. 1 Timothy 5:14), and that as such, she must prioritize her home and any ‘work’ she does must not be allowed to interfere with her primary calling as wife and mother. Hence, the farmer’s wife who helps with the harvest, the baker’s wife who works by his side, or the accountant’s wife who works as his receptionist in his home business are all in a different category than the so-called ‘career gal’ (not my term) who spends her life as a “helper fit” (Genesis 2:18) for another man (or a corporation) instead of her husband.

That is the crux of his argument, but I loved this paragraph...

Let me say (as Begg did) that I am not so ‘thick’ as to be completely unaware of the fact that there are many women (like my mother) who find themselves abandoned by sinful, self centered, immature, and/or irresponsible men (both the father of their children and their own fathers), and thus literally have no choice but to work and provide for their children. Nor do I fault women whose husbands have been disabled for one reason or another for having to become breadwinners. I am talking about our willful cultural acceptance of a view that sees women as a mere means of production. I’m talking about the idea set forth in the Marxist worldview that sees taking women out of the household as a twofold accomplishment. 1) It doubled the productivity of the collective, and 2) it placed children under the authority of the state (via government schools and daycare), which for the Marxist, is god incarnate.

That gets to the heart of the issue. Behind feminism is a socialist worldview. It is not about "equal rights", it is about a hunger for increased power that drives the Left. Is it any wonder that communist nations, for all their talk of egalitarianism, always end up with an authoritarian system with power isolated to a few elites and backed up by a mailed fist? Really, are families where both spouses work better off? After a punishing tax on two income homes, institutionalizing your children in outrageously expensive daycare, clothes, lunches, gas, etc. is the average family better off? I would argue no, but the societal norm is to look at women who "just stay home" as somehow inferior. Despite that, I talk to a lot of women who a) recognize how hard it is to care for your kids all day and b) would dearly love to be able to do just that. There is no higher calling and there is no Biblical mandate for parents to ship their kids off to the care of others, whether daycare or a public school (which are one and the same in a lot of ways!) just to meet the approval of a Godless society or to be able to afford a few more baubles and expensive vacations to make up for family time lost.