Vladimir Lenin coined the phrase “the commanding heights” to symbolize the sectors of the economy that largely control or support others, such as oil, railroads, banking, steel and foreign trade. From the late 1920s until the 1980s nearly all products, resources and services in the Soviet Union were owned and operated by the government. Like 20th century communist Russia, the United States is experiencing a period in which the majority in government view themselves as controlling the commanding heights of its economy. Prior to his election in November 2008 Barack Obama gave notice of the agenda about to be implemented when he said,
“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”
This fundamental transformation is the achievement of the Left’s wet dream of the Great Communist Revolution, the transformation of America from free market capitalism to government control of its commanding heights; an economy whereby the American people are dependent upon the government for all products, resources, and services, how they will be produced, and who is to produce them.
To understand the Left’s method and objective with the U.S economy, one needs to understand the purpose of the economic theory they implemented immediately upon gaining control of both the executive and legislative branches to “solve” the financial crisis. The economic principles of John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) are highly prized by the Left because they provide rulers with plausible justification for their control of the population. In his book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Keynes begins
“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.
“Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
The U.S. economic crisis was precipitated in late June 2008 by Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer’s intentional leak of a memo questioning the solvency of IndyMac bank. The memo triggered a deposit run on IndyMac which led to its failure. The combination of IndyMac’s failure, Lehman Brothers collapse and Fannie Mae’s impending subprime mortgage crash effected a gathering storm in the markets until September 15th when, in a matter of hours, a colossal drawdown of money market accounts in the U.S. caused the disappearance of $550 billion from the American banking system. Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania stated if authorities had not closed the banks that day, $5.5 trillion would have been withdrawn from US banks, which would have caused the collapse of the U.S.
Combined with mortgage industry failures, this electronic run on banks handed the Democrats in Congress the justification to utilize the panic for political benefit and initiate the nationalization of the banking and mortgage industries under the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP.) This early October Surprise propelled Barack Obama into office and provided further ammunition for his administration’s deliberate takeover of the private market. As White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel says,
“Never let a serious crisis go to waste… it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.”
Immediately upon his inauguration, the Obama administration moved to seize control of the leading U.S. economic sectors. Igniting the first generational theft in the history of the United States, Congressional Democrats passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a.k.a. the Democrat Stimulus Slushfund, with a $787 billion pricetag. Estimates are that the true ten year cost of the Stimulus package is $3.27 trillion.
Within months the administration commandeered more than 30% of US economy, quadrupled the National Debt, drove national unemployment to almost 18%, and engineered their future control of the remaining economy. After mandating federal control of TARP-assisted bank pay structures, they explored ways to dictate pay at private companies, violated existing contract law, and promoted the completion of bank nationalization by demanding direct ownership in banks that might not otherwise survive the downturn.
Using TARP bailout funds gained through the threat of financial Armageddon and martial law, the government now holds majority ownership in GMAC, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG, as well as a large share of Citigroup. Despite the legal promise that all TARP funds outlayed would be returned to the taxpayer upon collection by the federal government, President Obama continues to reallocate TARP funds at his whim.
Control of the banking and mortgage industries is only one phase of the Left’s agenda. Executive and legislative endeavors have been established to control telecommunications, airline and railroad industries, subway and light-railway systems, the tobacco industry, healthcare and energy. Two-thirds of the American auto industry has been nationalized, violating existing bankruptcy and contract law between debtors and creditors as the administration handed controlling interest of Chrysler to the United Auto Workers Union.
House and Senate Democrats are currently pushing legislation which orders a complete overhaul of the financial regulatory system and forces the largest financial firms to pay in advance for possible future failures. The Financial Regulatory Reform Bill will give regulators and the executive branch unprecedented power over banks, bank holding companies, insurance companies, hedge funds, finance companies and any other company that might be deemed too big to fail. It will create a new consumer protection agency with near limitless power and institute a $50 billion permanent TARP. According to former Treasury official Peter J. Wallison, the bill will “essentially turn over control of the financial system to the government and seriously impair competition in all areas of finance.” Investor’s Business Daily notes,
“If we are seeing a far-left coup against capitalism in this country, this bill could deliver the death blow, marching Wall Street down a road to serfdom in the name of ’social justice.’ ”
In a move to gain control of an additional 18% of the U.S. economy Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats are attempting to ram ’single-payer’ universal healthcare into law against the will of the American people. House Democrats proposed the unconstitutional “Slaughter Rule” to pass healthcare by “deeming” the bill to have been passed and avoiding a direct vote on the legislation. Democrats believe the Constitution’s Article I, Section VII, Clause II no longer applies to them and the “process doesn’t matter.” Representative Alcee Hastings of Florida noted,
“I wish that I had been there when Thomas Edison made the remark that I think applies here: ‘There ain’t no rules around here — we’re trying to accomplish something.’ And therefore, when the deal goes down, all this talk about rules, we make ‘em up as we go along.”
If the current health care legislation is signed into law U.S. residents will be mandated by federal law to purchase health insurance, more than 100 new government agencies will be created, the federal government will gain access to private individual bank accounts, and the IRS will become the police force ensuring Americans have “acceptable” coverage. Failure by individuals to pay for mandated coverage will be punishable by fine and/or imprisonment. Heavy fines will be imposed on private businesses who fail to fund coverage for employees or if any employee uses federal subsidies to purchase health insurance, compelling many companies to drop existing health care packages or reduce the number of employees. Businesses who cannot afford the increased exenditures may go out of business.
Accounting gimmicks and political trickery aside, the actual cost of implementing the healthcare bill adds billions to the CBO’s $940 billion preliminary estimate. Financing the legislation for ten years to provide five years of benfits will lead to exponential growth of the program’s cost thereafter, and can only be achieved through increased fees and taxation on citizens, manufacturers, insurers and employers.
But the healthcare legislation is not actually meant to provide benefits to Americans. It’s a means to an end. Pedro do la Torre, of the Center for American Progress, confirmed nationalization of student loans was planned to coincide with passage of the healthcare bill,
“It was the plan all along. When the budget came out for 2010, instructions were given for reconciliation for both healthcare and student loans.”
Using the Cloward-Piven strategy the Obama administration is overwhelming the system at lightening speed as they seize control of as many sectors of the American economy as possible. Tune in tomorrow for Part 2 of this series as we focus on how the Left will bring their wet dream of the Great Communist Revolution to fruition unless stopped.
Part 1 of this series introduced the Left’s wet dream of the Great Communist Revolution, the transformation of America from free market capitalism to government control of all economic sectors; whereby the American people are dependent upon the government for all products, resources, and services, how they will be produced, and who is to produce them. This is the Left’s bloodless coup d’etat in America.
Sunday night the House of Representatives voted for the passage of nationalized healthcare and the Obama administration now controls another 18% of the American economy, individuals are mandated to purchase a service under penalty of fine and/or imprisonment, and the IRS is set to enforce the law once signed by President Obama. Part 2 focuses on the remaining sectors under attack and how the Left may succeed in bringing their wet dream of the Great Communist Revolution to fruition.
From the outset the Obama administration implemented the Cloward-Piven strategy to overwhelm the American economic and financial systems in order to successfully seize control and implement their radical agenda. Using the deception of Cap-and-Trade they aim to takeover an additional 8% of the American economy.
The energy sector will fall under the control of the federal government through a convoluted attempt at economic central planning, increasing regulation and taxation of the American people to unprecedented levels. A Heritage Foundation study of the House Waxman-Markey legislation finds that the law “would make the United States about $9.4 trillion poorer mostly from reduced economic productivity and job loss.”
The bill raises the cost of energy high enough that individuals and businesses will be forced to use less of it, thereby centralizing control of the industry in the hands of the federal government. Furthermore, this bill contains a “placeholder“ for legislation to be inserted AFTER enactment, and an “emergency provision” that gives the President “almost limitless power over private economic activity and individual liberty.”
If the aforementioned economic seizures don’t ensure the downfall of capitalism and the American republic, the Obama administration is hedging their bets by debauching the U.S currency and bankrupting the country. The administration’s perpetual massive spending has reached epic proportions and is unsustainable. Despite a $2.2 trillion budget for 2010, massive government spending prompted Congress recently to raise the debt ceiling an additional $1.9 trillion, or just over $6,500 per person, making it the largest debt limit increase in U.S. history. The President’s 2011 budget is an estimated $3.8 trillion.
Increased spending, and its accompanying debt, will increase taxation to levels high enough to create disincentives to undertake private enterprise. Once this level is achieved, it remains for the government to fill in the resulting gap with public spending, such that private enterprise will be under the control of the federal government or will be producing products and services at the behest of the federal government.
The US debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio is estimated to climb to 97.5% this year, an increase from 87.4%. And worse, the debt-to-GDP ratio does not include unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare, or the $5 Trillion in Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac mortgage-backed debt.
Moody’s Investors Service has warned the US is close to losing its triple-A credit status if the country doesn’t get a grip on its deficit spending, if interest costs rise, if growth further weakens, or if the US government fails to successfully unwind its bank bailout plans.
President Obama has turned what began as a financial crisis into a recession. If not halted, his continued radical policies will initiate a steep depression throughout the country. Once the administration’s takeover of the U.S. economic sectors is complete, they will successful govern every aspect of American life. Those areas they fail to overtake initially will be implemented through seemingly benign legislation and progressively moved forward to achieve their end result.
State-led economies using Keynesian economics fail as the cost of the welfare state spins out of control. Individuals and special interest groups learn how to “game” the system and are no longer productive members of society. It is an experiment that is certain to fail. The Obama administration is focused on the power and control Keynesian economics provides them and their associates; the plausible justification conferred for their control of all U.S. economic sectors.
The radical Left’s transformation of America’s guiding economic principles from free market capitalism to absolute control by the federal government is nearing achievement. President Obama has succeeded in conquering a large portion of the U.S. economic sectors and is “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” as the radical Left’s wet dream of the Great Communist Revolution nears climax. If healthcare reform and cap-and-trade are signed into law the federal government will control 56% of the U.S. economy. In the name of economic development and national security, what shall they next declare their need to control?
“Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.” – Ronald Reagan
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