Obama Socialism

Labor Unions Prolonged the Depression

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WSJ Excerpt…

By the mid-1930s, the U.S. economy appeared to be climbing out of the Great Depression. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), which had bottomed out at 41 in 1932, was advancing. It increased 73% from the beginning of 1935 through the end of 1936, when it hit 180. The number of unemployed, 13 million in 1933, dropped to 9.5 million in 1935 and 7.6 million in 1936.

Then, in 1937, the DJIA plunged 33% in what is often called “a depression within a depression.” Joblessness skyrocketed.

A principal factor in the meltdown that year was the U.S. Supreme Court’s surprise 5-4 decision in early April to uphold the constitutionality of the Wagner Act, which had passed two years earlier. This measure, which is still the basis of our labor relations regime, authorized union officials to seek and obtain the power to act as the “exclusive” (that is, the monopoly) bargaining agent over all the front-line employees, including union nonmembers as well as members, in a unionized workplace.

As Amity Shlaes observed in her recent history of the Great Depression, “The Forgotten Man,” within a few months after the Wagner Act was upheld, industrial production began to plummet and “the jobs started to disappear, with unemployment moving back to 1931 levels,” even as the number of workers under union control was “growing astoundingly.”

Given the reality of unions in the workplace, the law meant that efficiency and profitability were compromised, by forcing employers to equally reward their most productive and least productive employees. Therefore subsequent wage increases for some workers led to widespread job losses.

Pre-Depression-era growth and prosperity did not return to the private sector until the early 1950s, when the spread of state right-to-work laws prohibiting forced union membership and dues greatly reduced the detrimental effects of the Wagner Act.

The U.S. has just experienced another stock market crash, and Barack Obama, the candidate now favored to be the next president, is in favor of what amounts to a new Wagner Act.

“I owe those unions,” Mr. Obama explained in his 2006 political memoir, “The Audacity of Hope.” “When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away. I don’t consider this corrupting in any way . . .”

John McCain voted against card-check legislation in 2007, and has pledged to veto such legislation as president. He also supports a national right-to-work law that would repeal all current federal labor law provisions authorizing forced union dues and fees. Unfortunately, his campaign has done little to alert the nation to the dangers of the card-check bill.

Before they cast their votes, the American people ought to be aware of Mr. Obama’s commitment to the passage of a new Wagner Act, and of what the economic consequences of such a law are almost certain to be.

Very much worth a read, READ IT HERE

WSJ: Obama’s ‘Redistribution’ Constitution

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The left will own the courts. This is why we need to own guns against a government that hates us. The future is very bleak for American under Hussein, Surrender Poodle (Pelosi), and Mormon in Name Only (Reid).

The Wall Street Journal published a piece online today about the ability Obama will have of restocking the courts against the values and wishes of more than half of America’s sleeping conservative population who don’t seem to be interested enough to vote this year (you deserve what you get, but I don’t so go to the trouble of voting against Obama).

One of the great unappreciated stories of the past eight years is how thoroughly Senate Democrats thwarted efforts by President Bush to appoint judges to the lower federal courts.

Consider the most important lower federal court in the country: the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In his two terms as president, Ronald Reagan appointed eight judges, an average of one a year, to this court. They included Robert Bork, Antonin Scalia, Kenneth Starr, Larry Silberman, Stephen Williams, James Buckley, Douglas Ginsburg and David Sentelle. In his two terms, George W. Bush was able to name only four: John Roberts, Janice Rogers Brown, Thomas Griffith and Brett Kavanaugh.

Although two seats on this court are vacant, Bush nominee Peter Keisler has been denied even a committee vote for two years. If Barack Obama wins the presidency, he will almost certainly fill those two vacant seats, the seats of two older Clinton appointees who will retire, and most likely the seats of four older Reagan and George H.W. Bush appointees who may retire as well.

The net result is that the legal left will once again have a majority on the nation’s most important regulatory court of appeals.

The balance will shift as well on almost all of the 12 other federal appeals courts. Nine of the 13 will probably swing to the left if Mr. Obama is elected (not counting the Ninth Circuit, which the left solidly controls today). Circuit majorities are likely at stake in this presidential election for the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeal. That includes the federal appeals courts for New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and virtually every other major center of finance in the country.

On the Supreme Court, six of the current nine justices will be 70 years old or older on January 20, 2009. There is a widespread expectation that the next president could make four appointments in just his first term, with maybe two more in a second term. Here too we are poised for heavy change.

These numbers ought to raise serious concern because of Mr. Obama’s extreme left-wing views about the role of judges. He believes — and he is quite open about this — that judges ought to decide cases in light of the empathy they ought to feel for the little guy in any lawsuit.

Speaking in July 2007 at a conference of Planned Parenthood, he said: “[W]e need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.”

On this view, plaintiffs should usually win against defendants in civil cases; criminals in cases against the police; consumers, employees and stockholders in suits brought against corporations; and citizens in suits brought against the government. Empathy, not justice, ought to be the mission of the federal courts, and the redistribution of wealth should be their mantra.

In a Sept. 6, 2001, interview with Chicago Public Radio station WBEZ-FM, Mr. Obama noted that the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren “never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society,” and “to that extent as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical.”

He also noted that the Court “didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it has been interpreted.” That is to say, he noted that the U.S. Constitution as written is only a guarantee of negative liberties from government — and not an entitlement to a right to welfare or economic justice.

This raises the question of whether Mr. Obama can in good faith take the presidential oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution” as he must do if he is to take office. Does Mr. Obama support the Constitution as it is written, or does he support amendments to guarantee welfare? Is his provision of a “tax cut” to millions of Americans who currently pay no taxes merely a foreshadowing of constitutional rights to welfare, health care, Social Security, vacation time and the redistribution of wealth? Perhaps the candidate ought to be asked to answer these questions before the election rather than after.

Every new federal judge has been required by federal law to take an oath of office in which he swears that he will “administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich.” Mr. Obama’s emphasis on empathy in essence requires the appointment of judges committed in advance to violating this oath. To the traditional view of justice as a blindfolded person weighing legal claims fairly on a scale, he wants to tear the blindfold off, so the judge can rule for the party he empathizes with most.

The legal left wants Americans to imagine that the federal courts are very right-wing now, and that Mr. Obama will merely stem some great right-wing federal judicial tide. The reality is completely different. The federal courts hang in the balance, and it is the left which is poised to capture them.

A whole generation of Americans has come of age since the nation experienced the bad judicial appointments and foolish economic and regulatory policy of the Johnson and Carter administrations. If Mr. Obama wins we could possibly see any or all of the following: a federal constitutional right to welfare; a federal constitutional mandate of affirmative action wherever there are racial disparities, without regard to proof of discriminatory intent; a right for government-financed abortions through the third trimester of pregnancy; the abolition of capital punishment and the mass freeing of criminal defendants; ruinous shareholder suits against corporate officers and directors; and approval of huge punitive damage awards, like those imposed against tobacco companies, against many legitimate businesses such as those selling fattening food.

Nothing less than the very idea of liberty and the rule of law are at stake in this election. We should not let Mr. Obama replace justice with empathy in our nation’s courtrooms.

Mr. Calabresi is a co-founder of the Federalist Society and a professor of law at Northwestern University.

READ IT HERE

OBAMA MUST BE STOPPED!

Washington Post’s Krauthammer: McCain for President

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By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, October 24, 2008

Contrarian that I am, I’m voting for John McCain. I’m not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it’s over before it’s over. I’m talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they’re left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.

I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe — neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) — yelling “Stop!” I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I’d rather lose an election than lose my bearings.

First, I’ll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The “erratic” temperament issue, for example. As if McCain’s risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.

McCain the “erratic” is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.

Nor will I countenance the “dirty campaign” pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed that McCain supports “cutting Social Security benefits in half.” And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.

McCain’s critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What’s astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.

Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama’s most egregious association — with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who’s been cramming on these issues for the past year, who’s never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of “a world that stands as one”), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as “the tragedy of 9/11,” a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

There’s just no comparison. Obama’s own running mate warned this week that Obama’s youth and inexperience will invite a crisis — indeed a crisis “generated” precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?

And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he’s been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.

The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

Today’s economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I’m for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Obama and the Tax Tipping Point

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Another great WSJ op-ed piece…

Other nations have tried the ideology of fairness in the place of incentives and found that reward without work is a recipe for decline. In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher took on the unions and slashed taxes to restore growth and jobs in Great Britain. In Germany a few years ago, Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder defied his party’s dogma and loosened labor’s grip on the economy to end stagnation. And more recently in France, Nicolas Sarkozy was swept to power on a platform of restoring flexibility to the economy.

The sequence is always the same. High-tax, big-spending policies force the economy to lose momentum. Then growth in government spending outstrips revenues. Fiscal and trade deficits soar. Public debt, excessive taxation and unemployment follow. The central bank tries to solve the problem by printing money. International competitiveness is lost and the currency depreciates. The system stagnates. And then a frightened electorate returns conservatives to power.

The economic tides will not stand still while Washington experiments with European-type social democracy, even though the dollar’s role as the global reserve currency will buy some time. Our trademark competitive advantage will be lost, and once lost, it will be hard to regain. There are too many emerging economies focused on prosperity and not redistribution for the U.S. to easily recapture its role of global economic leader.

Tomorrow’s children may come to question why their parents sold their birthright for a mess of “fairness” — whatever that will signify when jobs are scarce and American opportunity is no longer the envy of the world.

READ IT HERE

FT: Most Americans Do Better with McCain Tax Plan

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The Financial Times posted a piece comparing the McCain and Obama tax plans in a clearer and more concise way, called “McCain is no salesman on tax proposals”. Here are some highlights…

So much has gone wrong for John McCain that it is surprising he is not further behind in the polls. He has been a victim of circumstances and his own bad judgment. Some of his errors, however, are more perplexing than others. How is it, for example, that Mr McCain has been so thoroughly outmanoeuvred on tax policy?

Both candidates have offered complex tax proposals. Proliferating alternative baselines (with or without the extension of the Bush tax cuts, with or without a “patch” for the alternative minimum tax, and so forth) deepen the confusion. Unable to fathom the details, voters are left to weigh the competing slogans. Mr Obama promises to cut taxes for 95 per cent of working families. Mr McCain says the rich need a tax cut, too. Guess who wins that argument.

Here is a fact you might not have noticed. It certainly seems to have slipped by most Americans. The typical US household would get a bigger tax cut under Mr McCain’s proposals than under Mr Obama’s. I know a few politicians who could do something with that…

Mr McCain wants to abolish the tax-break for employer-provided healthcare and replace it with a refundable $5,000 credit. Mr Obama says that a family health plan might cost $12,000 a year – leaving families who buy their own policy $7,000 worse off. This is incorrect. So far as I know, Mr McCain has never taken the trouble to explain why.

Suppose a family currently has a $12,000 policy provided by an employer. Under the McCain proposal, instead of attracting relief as at present, this benefit would be taxed as ordinary employment income – but the extra tax paid would be more than offset by the new $5,000 credit. In the first analysis, nothing changes so far as employers are concerned: all the action is on the employee’s pay cheque. The policy delivers a net tax cut to middle-income households and is enough to make the McCain tax plan on average a better overall deal for them than the Obama plan…

As well as failing to drive this home, Mr McCain has only weakly resisted his opponent’s notion that “wealthy companies” can afford to pay more. Business taxes, in the end, are paid by people – in lower wages, higher prices and lower dividends in their 401k plans. The point is not just that US corporate taxes are high by international standards and that this discourages investment and employment but that the burden eventually falls on ordinary Americans. Perhaps Mr McCain’s recent emphasis on corporate greed makes it difficult for him to point this out.

When Mr McCain misrepresents Mr Obama, he cannot even do it plausibly. Mr Obama is indeed planning to cut taxes for 95 per cent of working families. Rather than saying, “No he isn’t”, Mr McCain could have said: “Look at what his changes do to marginal tax rates, at the bottom of the income scale (as benefits are phased out), as well as at the top.” Rather than saying, “He wants to raise your taxes,” he could have said, “His spending plans will force him to raise your taxes.”

Critical reading…READ IT HERE

GET OUT THE VOTE!

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We conservatives need to get out the vote now more than ever. Much like the Democrats encourage each other, with the motivation and intention to skew the election results away from the stance of the population, rather than any interest they claim to have in providing fairness and true representation of the country’s views. They know this with total clarity and have combined to that end with great sinister cooperation.

We need to spread the word far and wide that in every town, in every county, in every state (even the liberal ones) we need to make our voices heard and our votes counted. It’s easy and doesn’t take much time, and even if it did freedom isn’t free and being busy is no excuse.

First, vote yourself. No matter how much you’re certain of the positive or negative outcome regardless of your vote, you need to be counted or you can’t complain about the result. Second, spread the word to your conservative family, friends, and neighbors. Press them with reason that voting is the only way to bring about change since we’re not quite yet to a point where we need a coup.

It’s common knowledge that when we conservatives vote, we win. We’re always the majority in common sense, charity, and altruistic (largely Christian) effort to truly lift the less fortunate from the chains the Democrats have forged around their necks.

We’re the majority of the country’s population for heaven’s sake!

But unfortunately, we’re far behind in activism and “community organization” and representation in the media. This is likely due to the fact that we’re busy working on the American Dream, with little time for protesting outside corporations all day with signs and slogans (where do they get the time?) Our singlular focus on getting a piece of the pie must change, until the country changes and we can all go back to focusing on our pursuit of happiness and prosperity.

We must gain a greater awareness of the state of the nation. Our inaction is causing a shift in power as the Democrats register and hype those over which they preside as masters and keepers. Our inaction leads to the persistence of the programs and policies we so often decry. Our inaction will keep the country in the depth of recession and depression. Will it be another 50 years like the Democrats and closet-Socialists gave us? It’s up to us.

Democrat policies and the communities the left organizes are the source of our financial crisis. This kind of policy, enforced by the same guilty parties, will never lead to a better outcome. They need to be removed from office and their policies discontinued.

Vote and help those around you to vote. Plan a carpool for election day, make reminder calls, take the time to persuade and befriend those you know are conservative and remind them of the urgency of the emergency in this country. We are on the verge of an all Democrat government siege. That kind of crisis is actually far more dangerous, and in more widespread and moral ways, than the current mortgage crisis. There’s no doubt about it.

Please be sure to vote and open your mouth. The liberals around you will try to suppress you, as that is the only way they will win. But stand for your values. Again, please be sure to vote and open your mouth.

Video: Escaped The Plantation, Voting McCain

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Perhaps the best speech given during this entire campaign cycle.

The O-Team
More genius by ZO. See more great clips here

Obama’s Socialist Tax, In His Own Words

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Obama’s mouth keeps on giving. Unfortunately, his mouth is writing check his butt can’t cash. The Tickler appeals to all readers, use your brain and show up to vote. We can’t let this guy get into office.

Plumber: “Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn’t it.”

Obama: “It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind ya, that they have a chance for success too. I think that when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody.” Obama the crooked imbecile on the stump (see the video here)

From the desk of the Tickler’s wife…

Here are some key takeaways from the WSJ piece on the true nature of Obama’s tax “cuts”:

Here’s the political catch. All but the clean car credit would be “refundable,” which is Washington-speak for the fact that you can receive these checks even if you have no income-tax liability. In other words, they are an income transfer — a federal check — from taxpayers to nontaxpayers. Once upon a time we called this “welfare,” or in George McGovern’s 1972 campaign a “Demogrant.” Mr. Obama’s genius is to call it a tax cut.

The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis estimates that by 2011, under the Obama plan, an additional 10 million filers would pay zero taxes while cashing checks from the IRS.

The total annual expenditures on refundable “tax credits” would rise over the next 10 years by $647 billion to $1.054 trillion, according to the Tax Policy Center. This means that the tax-credit welfare state would soon cost four times actual cash welfare. By redefining such income payments as “tax credits,” the Obama campaign also redefines them away as a tax share of GDP. Presto, the federal tax burden looks much smaller than it really is.

Read the article here