Tag Archives: Socialism

News

MUST-READ: Wall Street bankers gave Obama millions in campaign contributions

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Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner reports on Obama’s new bank bailout bill.

Excerpt:

President Obama likes to say we need to clean up Wall Street.  But let’s be clear: He is pushing a job-killing bailout bill for Wall Street that benefits his top financial contributor from the 2008 campaign – a firm that just happens to be under investigation by the SEC for defrauding investors.

Despite the President’s rhetoric, his support for the Democrats’ bailout bills gives big Wall Street banks a permanent, taxpayer-funded safety net by designating them “too big to fail.”

[…]Goldman Sachs, recently charged with defrauding investors, was President Obama’s top Wall Street contributor during the 2008 election cycle, donating nearly $1 million to his campaign.

  • Securities & investment firms in general were the fifth largest contributor to President Obama’s 2008 campaign, donating nearly $15 million.
  • Big banks also donated more than $3 million to Obama during the 2008 election cycle.

And some details about what the new bank bailout does:

  • The Dodd Gives Wall Street a Pre-Existing $50 Billion Bailout Slush Fund. Sen. Dodd’s financial bailout bill would create a $50 billion ‘orderly resolution fund’ ($150 billion in Rep. Barney Frank’s bill) that could be repeatedly replenished from industry assessment.
  • The Dodd Bill Gives Wall Street a Treasury-Backed Credit Line.  The FDIC would be authorized to borrow from Treasury up to the amount of cash left in the ‘resolution fund’ plus 90 percent of the value of the assets of any and all too-big-to-fail firms in its control.
  • The Dodd Bill Provides a Government-Guaranteed to Wall Street Debt.  The FDIC would be authorized to guarantee the debt of any solvent bank, bank holding company, or affiliate in any amount subject only to an aggregate debt limit set by the Treasury Department.
  • The Dodd Bill Institutionalizes Unlimited Wall Street Bailouts.  The FDIC, as the resolution agency for too-big-to-fail firms, would be given wide latitude to use resources to make payments to anyone in any amounts, at their own discretion.

Now let’s hear more about the rich bankers from Goldman Sachs.

Goldman Sachs

This Newsbusters article explains Goldman Sachs’ connections to the White House:

  • White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel used to work for Goldman Sachs.
  • Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner used to work for Goldman Sachs.

And the Washington Examiner reports that:

  • Former White House counsel Greg Craig is now employed by Goldman Sachs.

Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs are often filled with Democrats.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

And don’t forget that the government-backed companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were run by Democrats, and they were also bailed out by the Democrats.

Excerpt:

Freddie and Fannie used huge lobbying budgets and political contributions to keep regulators off their backs.

A group called the Center for Responsive Politics keeps track of which politicians get Fannie and Freddie political contributions. The top three U.S. senators getting big Fannie and Freddie political bucks were Democrats and No. 2 is Sen. Barack Obama.

Now remember, he’s only been in the Senate four years, but he still managed to grab the No. 2 spot ahead of John Kerry — decades in the Senate — and Chris Dodd, who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

Fannie and Freddie have been creations of the congressional Democrats and the Clinton White House, designed to make mortgages available to more people and, as it turns out, some people who couldn’t afford them.

Fannie and Freddie have also been places for big Washington Democrats to go to work in the semi-private sector and pocket millions. The Clinton administration’s White House Budget Director Franklin Raines ran Fannie and collected $50 million. Jamie Gorelick — Clinton Justice Department official — worked for Fannie and took home $26 million. Big Democrat Jim Johnson, recently on Obama’s VP search committee, has hauled in millions from his Fannie Mae CEO job.

Political contributions and bailouts. Is there a connection?

News

MUST-READ: New York Times critiques socialized medicine

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Ed Morrissey links to this New York Times article from Hot Air.

Excerpt:

New York’s insurance system has been a working laboratory for the core provision of the new federal health care law — insurance even for those who are already sick and facing huge medical bills — and an expensive lesson in unplanned consequences.

[…]The problem stems in part from the state’s high medical costs and in part from its stringent requirements for insurance companies in the individual and small group market. In 1993, motivated by stories of suffering AIDS patients, the state became one of the first to require insurers to extend individual or small group coverage to anyone with pre-existing illnesses.

New York also became one of the few states that require insurers within each region of the state to charge the same rates for the same benefits, regardless of whether people are old or young, male or female, smokers or nonsmokers, high risk or low risk.

Healthy people, in effect, began to subsidize people who needed more health care. The healthier customers soon discovered that the high premiums were not worth it and dropped out of the plans. The pool of insured people shrank to the point where many of them had high health care needs. Without healthier people to spread the risk, their premiums skyrocketed, a phenomenon known in the trade as the “adverse selection death spiral.”

Obama plans to get around the problem of healthy young people opting out of paying for other people’s health care by fining them.

The new federal health care law tries to avoid the death spiral by requiring everyone to have insurance and penalizing those who do not, as well as offering subsidies to low-income customers.

[…]Under the federal law, those who refuse coverage will have to pay an annual penalty of $695 per person, up to $2,085 per family, or 2.5 percent of their household income, whichever is greater. The penalty will be phased in from 2014 to 2016.

How does this reduce health care costs? It doesn’t. But it does explain why we have so many uninsured in this country – they don’t buy insurance because government regulations requiring mandatory coverages have made it a bad deal for them. Young men don’t need to pay for in vitro fertilization and sex changes. They don’t use it, so why should they agree to pay for other people’s problems? They have their own lives to live.

Ed Morrissey explains:

If nothing else, this proves a couple of points that critics have made all along.  The mandates are nothing more than a way to get the young to create a proxy welfare state by forcing them into a usurious insurance model.  It does nothing to reduce actual costs, and in fact makes cost increases both more likely and more amplified.

Now you understand socialized medicine. The left plays on people’s fears and insecurities in order to gain control of the economy. They promise to take care of people, so that people can stop worrying about taking responsibility for their own choices. Once the leftists are elected, they take money from the young people who don’t understand what is happening to them, and they give it away to special interests in order to buy votes.

Commentary

Who is right about social justice: Glenn Beck or Jim Wallis?

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Here is a Washington post editorial by the executive producer of the Glenn Beck show. (H/T Michelle Malkin)

Social justice is often used as a code word by the left to promote government-controlled redistribution of wealth to favored special interest groups at the expense of other unfavored groups in order to keep the party in power in power. It’s vote buying, essentially, but with the illusion of helping others. And the goal is the equalization of material wealth regardless of personal choices, including moral choices.

Recently, Glenn Beck warned his viewers to beware of churches that push social justice as though it were sanctioned by Christianity somehow.

This is part of the information Glenn revealed in a special TV show about American extremism of the 20th century. In the context of promoting that special, he began talking about how the far left was once again using this terminology to politicize churches. The specific example he named was Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

He told his listeners that if they were in a church that preaches Jeremiah Wright-style social justice, they should leave–or at least get educated on what exactly that means. It took him all of eight seconds to clarify the type of church he was speaking of, but that was long enough for most in the media to end the transcript.

Suddenly, Glenn was accused of attacking the central tenants of the bible, because he supposedly believed that any church that wants to help the poor should be immediately evacuated. This absurd narrative is mainly the product of Rev. Jim Wallis.

To restate the obvious, some simply use the term “social justice” as a substitute for “outreach to the poor.” This is not the kind of “social justice” Glenn was talking about. The fact that this term has been utilized for purposes other than good Christian charity is well documented.

[…]But for Wallis to continue getting attention, he must act as if he believes Glenn is against churches helping the poor. Any honest observer would realize that isn’t the case. Is anyone on earth against charitable outreach to the poor?

Certainly not Glenn.

In his book Arguing With Idiots, Glenn describes helping those less fortunate as an “obligation.” He wrote that capitalism “will inevitably fail if individuals stop caring about the welfare of others.” He just believes the bulk of the help should come from people like you and me, not government bureaucracy. When is the last time you felt charitable on April 15?

[…]Wallis is just as revealing when speaking of his current economic views: “I’m not a liberal, I’m a radical.” Asked if he was calling for the redistribution of wealth across society, he responded: “Absolutely. Without any hesitation. That’s what the gospel is all about.” This is a man that believes an affluent church is no less than “an affront to the gospel” and he’s talking about Glenn being divisive?

I think it’s important to understand just how radical people are when they pass themselves off as Christians, yet have no place for individual charity or the notion of private property, both of which are central in the Bible. I think that Jesus expects us to work in order to have things to share with others, because in that sharing, we can imitate him. The money I earn by the sweat of my brow should not be used by popular people in government to buy votes by subsidizing destructive behaviors, all while blaming me for the behaviors of others.

So I favor capitalism, free markets, private property, the rule of law and voluntary charity by individuals and private organizations – like CHURCHES! To understand what capitalism is, you can watch this lecture entitled “Money, Greed and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem” by Jay W. Richards, delivered at the Heritage Foundation think tank, and televised by C-SPAN2.

If you can’t see the Richards video, here is an audio lecture by Jay Richards on the “Myths Christians Believe about Wealth and Poverty“. Also, why not check out this series of 4 sermons by Wayne Grudem on the relationship between Christianity and economics? (a PDF outline is here). Here’s a lecture featuring Jay Richards from the libertarian Cato Institute. And you can listen to Ron Nash’s course on Christianity and economics.

More posts from Neil Simpson on Jim Wallis and his Sojourners group:

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