Tag Archives: Economics

News

It’s official: Obama’s socialism will lead to fascism

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Homeland Security's new enemy!
Homeland Security's worst enemy! (H/T Nice Deb)

Looks like Obama suspended the war on terror abroad… only to start it up again… at home!

What is fascism and how is it caused?

Fascism is the political system that results when the state imposes its values on its citizens and represses individual values. The traditional view of free-market capitalist conservatives is that socialist efforts to “fix” financial inequalities by redistributing wealth in a planned economy inevitably ends in fascism. This is despite the fact that fascism is never the desired or intended result of well-meaning socialists.

This thesis is presented in a famous book called “The Road to Serfdom“, written by Nobel prize winning economist F.A. Hayek. This is the book that guided champions of free-market capitalism and individual liberty such as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and today, Stephen Harper.

What the Department of Homeland Security wrote

Let’s take a look at the latest report from Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security.

Michelle Malkin has the complete story here. (H/T The Western Experience)

Yesterday, Roger Hedgecock and the Liberty Papers posted an unclassified DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis report titled:

Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.

The “report” (PDF file here) was one of the most embarrassingly shoddy pieces of propaganda I’d ever read out of DHS. I couldn’t believe it was real.

…I spent the day chasing down DHS spokespeople…[and] the press office got back to me and verified that the document is indeed for real.

Below, Michelle has the actual quotes from the DHS report.

Here are some questions for you:
Are you for federalism? Are you for limited government? Are you for immigration law enforcement? Are you pro-life?

If you answered “yes”, then the Obama regime thinks that you are a potential terrorist:

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

Here are some more questions for you:
Are you a free-market capitalist? Are you in favor of personal responsibility? Are you for legal firearm ownership?

If you answered “yes”, then the Obama regime thinks that you are a potential terrorist:

Rightwing extremists are harnessing this historical election as a recruitment tool. Many rightwing extremists are antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and citizenship, the expansion of social programs to minorities, and restrictions on firearms ownership and use. Rightwing extremists are increasingly galvanized by these concerns and leverage them as drivers for recruitment. From the 2008 election timeframe to the present, rightwing extremists have capitalized on related racial and political prejudices in expanded propaganda campaigns, thereby reaching out to a wider audience of potential sympathizers.

And there’s more in the report:

Over the past five years, various rightwing extremists, including militias and white supremacists, have adopted the immigration issue as a call to action, rallying point, and recruiting tool. Debates over appropriate immigration levels and enforcement policy generally fall within the realm of protected political speech under the First Amendment, but in some cases, anti-immigration or strident pro-enforcement fervor has been directed against specific groups and has the potential to turn violent.

And more:

DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat. These skills and knowledge have the potential to boost the capabilities of extremists—including lone wolves or small terrorist cells—to carry out violence. The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today.

And more:

DHS/I&A will be working with its state and local partners over the next several months to ascertain with greater regional specificity the rise in rightwing extremist activity in the United States, with a particular emphasis on the political, economic, and social factors that drive rightwing extremist radicalization.

The Anchoress, unlike me, is more calm and circumspect. But, with her characteristic perceptiveness, she adds this warning:

Dissent – normal, healthy political dissent – which was “patriotic” just six months ago, and expressed without encumbrance throughout our history (until now) seems to be under attack….

As some of us have noted, everything that was projected on to the Bush administration is finding real expression in the Obama administration. I’m still waiting for the part where those who predicted that “Bush will declare martial law and never allow another election” pooh-pooh the right who say it of Obama. You know it will happen.

So, you see…we’re in a bad place, in these United States.

So let’s be clear. In my opinion, the United States is now on the road to fascism. Every single person who voted for Obama put us on that road to fascism. The United States of the Founding Fathers has been obliterated by the government-run schools, the leftist media, and our own invincible hedonism. Our liberty, and the liberty of nations struggling against socialism, (i.e. – fascism), worldwide, is now in jeopardy.

To end on a positive note, Open Market has something hopeful to say about possible remedies:

Government agencies that investigate people for their “politically incorrect” views can be held liable for violating the First Amendment, as happened in White v. Lee (2000), where a federal appeals court held that federal fair-housing officials could be sued individually for punitive damages for investigating citizens who spoke out against a group home for the disabled (in that case, mentally-ill substance-abusers).

Let’s hope that Bush appointed enough strict constructionist judges, he was pretty good at doing that.

Further study

Nice Deb is making light of the story here by comparing Democrats like Obama’s friend Bill Ayers, (a non-terrorist who just tried to blow some innocent people up), with authentic terrorists like little Republican girls who still believe in the Constitution.

Here are books on liberty that people today don’t read, but they should. They really should. Because God knows, those secularist socialists in the government, and the people who voted them in, sure haven’t. Atheistic communism lead to the deaths of 100 million people in the 20th century alone. Is that what we have to look forward to in this country? Ideas have consequences.

An abridged version of The Road to Serfdom is here.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin’s syndicated column is here.

News

Cap and trade will raise electricity prices and increase unemployment

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Representative Michele Bachmann
Representative Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachmann has a post on her blog about a new study by a Spanish economist regarding the cost of green job initiatives.

Excerpt:

A study directed by Dr. Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at Juan Carlos University in Madrid, concluded that every “green job” created in Spain resulted in 2.2 other jobs being destroyed.

The study emphasized that only 10% of the “green jobs” created could be considered permanent – such as maintenance of renewable power systems. The remaining jobs consisted of temporary jobs in construction, fabrication and installation jobs; along with administrative positions, marketing, and engineering projects.

Spain has been providing subsidies to create green jobs, and this is viewed by some as a model for future US energy policy.

Bachmann continues:

“If U.S. subsidies to renewable producers achieve the same result — and President Obama has held Spain up as a model for how to subsidize renewables — the U.S. could lose 6.6 million to 11 million jobs while it creates three million largely temporary ‘green jobs.'”

Furthermore, Dr. Calzada stated that “the loss of jobs could be greater if you account for the amount of lost industry that moves out of the country due to higher energy prices.”

Thomas J. Pyle of the Institute for Energy Research adds:

“As this study makes clear, Spain has spent billions in taxpayer resources to subsidize renewable energy programs in an effort to jumpstart its ailing economy – and what they’ve gotten in return are fewer jobs, skyrocketing debt and some of the highest and most regressive energy prices in the developed world. Now, as U.S. policy-makers prepare to embark Americans upon a similar course, this report offers our first realistic glimpse into what we should expect in return for that unprecedented sacrifice of public resources and personal autonomy.”

The IER has a list of the key findings from the study in that post.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air adds:

Why did the jobs disappear?  In part because of the higher capital confiscation of the government, and in part because the green policies pushed industry out of Spain. Actually, the study didn’t count jobs lost through “industrial relocation”, which in this case amounts to capital flight.  The largest stainless-steel producer in Spain directly linked its decision to move operations to South America to the higher energy costs imposed by the government.

In the US, we could see a massive flight, and not just in manufacturing.  High-tech industries that rely on cheap energy could be forced to find less expensive environments. Bloomberg’s economist notes that Microsoft and Google have already relocated their servers once to get cheaper energy.  The Internet is flexible enough to allow employers to go almost anywhere in the world to host their servers, and in this economy, there will be plenty of competition for them.

In a related post, Gateway Pundit notes that the cap and trade policies of the Democrats will also cause consumer electricity prices to soar.

Excerpt:

Democrats know that their cap and trade energy policies will devastate the economy.

…Cap and trade policies would likely cost American families $700 to $1,400 dollars per family per year according to the video above. The Department of Energy estimated GDP losses would be between $444 billion and $1.308 trillion over the 21-year period. Cap and trade also could cost the US 4 million jobs. In Missouri and the Midwest where energy is “cheap” it would cause electricity rates to double.

And, it would likely do nothing to help with the make-believe global warming junk science.

And GP also links to this video showing what we can expect from the Democrats on this issue:

Further study

I posted a list a while back of the expected increases in electricity prices, broken down by state, here. More about the impact on consumers from John Boehner is here.

More about the rise in unemployment we can expect from green jobs initiatives is here. Info about Obama’s tax hikes on energy producers is here. Information about possible carbon tariffs is here.

Information about the recent Cato statement of 700 scientists who dissent from man-made global warming is here.

Commentary

Millions Will Lose Health Care from their Employer Under the Democrats’ Plan

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House Republican Leader John Boehner
House Republican Leader John Boehner

I spotted this scary post over at John Boehner’s blog. The post, written by Kevin Lewis, links to this AP article that highlights a new study from the Lewin Group. I blogged before about the Democrats’ plan to equalize life outcomes and redistribute wealth by nationalizing health care. Now we get more details of how they’ll do it.

Here is a summary of the Democrats’ plan:

President Barack Obama and many Democrats want to create a government insurance plan to compete with private plans that now cover about 170 million Americans. The issue is major sticking point for Republicans and the insurance industry.

And the predicted results of that plan:

The Lewin study found that if such a plan were open to all employers and individuals, and if it paid doctors and hospitals the same as Medicare, the government plan would quickly grow to 131 million members, while enrollment in private insurance plans would plummet.

“The private insurance industry might just fizzle out altogether,” said John Sheils, a Lewin vice president and leading author of the study.

By paying Medicare rates the government plan would be able to set premiums well below what private plans charge. Monthly premiums for family coverage would be $761 in the government plan, compared with an average of $970 in private plans, the study estimated. Employers and individuals would flock to the public plan to cut costs.

Lewis cites two of the study‘s key findings:

“If as the President proposed, eligibility is limited to only small employers, individuals and the self-employed … The number of people with private coverage would fall by 32.0 million people.”

“If the public plan is opened to all employers as proposed by former Senators Clinton and Edwards, at Medicare payment levels … The number of people with private health insurance would decline by 119.1 million people. This would be a two-thirds reduction in the number of people with private coverage (currently 170 million people).”

More here at the Heritage Foundation.

Further study

Here are some previous links that are relevant: