Let’s take a step back and recognize the breadth and width of the Obama administration’s assault on the US economy.
We tend to divide ourselves along economic lines, upper, middle and lower or working class. It’s clear that Barack Obama has a plan for all three levels.
If you’re a top earner, in his mind you’ve “made enough money” and should pay more in taxes. That’s his plan for the wealthy: Pay more taxes.
This will take some money out of investments and companies and send it to the government. Some jobs will be either lost or aborted.
For the middle class, Barack Obama offers the dishonestly named Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare. By 2016, ObamaCare will force millions of Americans either to buy health insurance or pay a fine. He sold the law as a cost reducer, but estimates reveal that many Americans will see their premiums rise steeply, some by as much as 85%. Many American families will be paying $20,000 per year for health insurance. Most middle class families will not be able to afford this.
For those entering the job market and at the lower end of income, Obama is now pushing a hike in the minimum wage. This, he says, will give millions of Americans a “living wage.”
The minimum wage =!= a “living wage.” The minimum wage is supposed to be for entry level jobs, and as a worker progresses, they should expect raises commensurate with their job performance and the health of the company they work for. Hiking the minimum wage by fiat, as Obama intends to do, will certainly help some number of workers, but at the price of killing many jobs and raising the overall barrier to entry for younger and entry level workers. Employers faced with the decision to take on a 14-year-old at $9 an hour will think twice if their business is at all marginal or the kid lacks experience.
At the same time, the employer is faced with ObamaCare’s 30-hour benefit cutoff — ObamaCare mandates that employers provide health benefits to all workers who work 30 hours per week or more. So many employers will make the rational decision to cut their workers to less than 30 hours to avoid ObamaCare.
They will lay some off, because of the minimum wage hike.
They will lay some more off, because of the tax hikes that are hitting those who happen to fall into Obama’s “you’ve made enough money” brackets.
Obama’s energy policies are contributing to high fuel prices, which drag the economy even more.
If this continues, and it will, it’s hard to see how we avoid a full-blown depression. Assuming we’re not already heading for one.
By the way, if you’re thinking about obtaining any new education to crosstrain into another career, the cost of higher ed has only gone up about 400% in the past few years.
All of these deliberate policies work together like the body of an anaconda, strangling the economy across the throat, the midsection and the legs.
Obama just happens to have targeted one of the few government spending sectors that actually contributes positively to the economy and to technology, while keeping our nation secure, too: the sequestration.
None of this is happening by accident. It’s too deliberate, too systematic.
After looking at all this, two words come to mind: Cloward-Piven.
Don’t know much about history
Don’t know much about producing energy
Don’t know much about an economics book
Don’t know much about the constitutional law I took
But I do know that I would love imposing Marxism on you
And I know that if you would just love Lenin too
What a wonderful socialist country this would be
La ta ta ta ta ta ta
(History)
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh
(Producing energy)
La ta ta ta ta ta ta
(Economics book)
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh
(Constitutional law I took)
But I do know that I would love imposing Marxism on you
And I know that if you would just love Lenin too
What a wonderful socialist country this would be
Well summarized.
Don’t forget Obamao and company’s poisoning the education system with useless standards and leftist indoctrination, dividing the country at every opportunity, sweeping aside any semblance of accountability, and thus you have not only lo-fo voters who can’t see basic cause and effect about anything, but future generations of easily manipulated, angry subjects.
At least gun control debate is stimulating the fire arms industry, along with other goods and services for disaster preparation.
Unfortunately, there are many more people reading OMG! or watching YouTube right now instead of reading this site.
None of this is happening by accident. It’s too deliberate, too systematic.
After looking at all this, two words come to mind: Cloward-Piven.
The Obama administration in a nut shell.
In other words, if he was trying to wreck the system, what would he do differently?
It’s time to refocus our efforts away from trying to save the country. It’s too late. It’s time for each of us to do whatever we have to do to save ourselves.
My first thought on this is look at all the new jobs it will generate. Companies can just hire twice as many people at twenty hour work weeks.
A wag once said, “Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity”.
The trouble I have with the malice argument — and to be sure, there are some who hold malice toward the country at large –is that most of what Obama has proposed or adopted is now more or less in the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Rather it seems to me it is the fantasy land that the progressives live in – solar energy at the snap of Obama’s fingers and all the rest — that is now getting a full road test, with the inevitable result. Obama is just the first Prog to come along with the suaveness to get it done. Would AlGore have been better?
There is a reason why things are as they are now, or at least were before Obama, and when they are changed radically by folks who have no idea why they are as they are, disaster awaits.
The plan is marxism / feudalism, with the political criminals on top so securely that they won’t ever be able to be deposed. Like their nirvana, the USSR, but without the bad clothes and boring arts.
Destroying the economy is a tactic.
Hopefully, the economic collapse will be soft enough and the infrastructure and othe supporting conditions not that bad of a shape that they can ride it out and come out on top– power and high livin’ (er, “social justice”) for the progressive elite forever! (Hope is not a method, unfortunately.)
Before we can do anything useful it seems necessary to take back control of the Republican Party. That will be a bit of chore, but it’s possible.
The accompanying thumbnail of a coiled anaconda is so small that it looks more like a pile of dog poop. But that is every bit as good a symbol of Obamaism as the one the author chose.
We all know what Obama is trying to do but what we don’t know is why so little is being done to stop him.
Republicans do control one House and they have already let him get away with way too much.
As I said a number of times, the GOP is playing politics with someone who is moving war against America’s might.
They keep going to a gun fight with a kniromneyfe.
They don’t know their enemy, they lose.
They like the way things are going. They are getting rich, without any heat. They think the boy king is just one of the good ole boys, and that their turn will come soon enough. People in the country who have a bone to pick with it just need to get their own gig and stop criticizing them for bidness as usual.
Re:
“…..but what we don’t know is why so little is being done to stop him.”
Indeed. This is where this lifelong Republican throws up his hands; and this further emphasizes that we’re literally mired now in a previously unknown social-revolutionary type of political inertia that seems somehow to prevent Republican initiatives to thwart this arriviste creature Obama. We have him on office now because we have a majority of voters dumbed down to the point of thinking that being “cool” is an end in itself. These uneducatable voters will be the downfall of this country. But, it’s politically incorrect to mention the deadly fact of the electorate majority being uneducatable.
There is such abundant evidence that Socialism simply doesn’t work in the long run, that it’s baffling why these brilliant liberal university socialism advocates can’t see it. They’ve willfully blinded themselves. So, in time, this awful Cloward-Piven strategy demands that a new alleviating “policy” be immediately set up……but nowhere do we see this new policy explained in detail, even by the flaming liberals.
We need testicular stridency from the Republican side of the aisle immediately….we need a Counter Revolution….but we’re just flailing lots of the same old chaff.
“There is such abundant evidence that Socialism simply doesn’t work in the long run, that it’s baffling why these brilliant liberal university socialism advocates can’t see it”
My only response would be is that they are not “brilliant.” They are programmed and until we learn how to get into the minds of the mindless, we will face defeat.
It’s not being “a mindless robot” when left/liberals do it, I guess.
Socialism has always been their answer for everything (in one form or another) because, like any other yen for the misbegotten, they’ve never had to live under it and know how much tyrannical poverty sucks (like, say, in North Korea)… and been this way for a couple of generations, just taking it on left/liberal faith. Talk about “useful idiots.”
Thank you NEA. You’ve done your job well, dumbing down an entire society in under 2 generations and making our defeat complete. And all without a shot being fired. Well f**king done.
And then I realize that there may still be hope. Even if the teachers refuse to do their jobs, even if they refuse to teach history, then Reality itself will be more than happy to step in and fill the void and teach those lessons. And I think Reality will be a hard and unforgiving taskmaster.
LET THE F**KING LESSONS BEGIN.
I already know how. I just don’t know if I can take it!
To paraphrase Rush Limbaugh, perhaps socialism doesn’t work as advertised, yet works as intended.
It takes a long time for an economy as great as ours to be ground down to failure. Meantime, think of all the jobs in the bureaucracies, all the loot from government spending, all the opportunities to impose the progs social preferences on everybody, there will be to enjoy.
Yes, it is deliberate.
But the GOP has NEVER said it, it has never mobilized the whole Country against the subversives.
We would have lost anyway, probably. But today we would be in great shape to fight against the Great Helmsman Obamao. And we could slowly wake up the Country.
The GOP today is the bourgeois selling the rope to hang him as described by Lenin.
Well, it worked to destroy the Confederacy. No reason it shouldn’t suffocate an America that stubbornly still tunes in to sad capitalists Ozzie and Harriet every night while the wife brings the family apple pies she just baked.
While I admit I’ve had a lot of fun with some thin skins here regarding the Confederacy, the reasons the Union invaded the South, the legitimacy of Lincoln’s actions, etc., gotta say at this point that a reconstituted Confederacy may be the best last option for this region at this point if the economy goes into full meltdown Great Depression and worse mode – complete with a collapsed currency and ineffectual national government in the midst of widespread and devastating poverty and loss of homes and even potential starvation on a massive scale….
When government is widely seen as ineffective- or worse is seen as working against the will and interests of the people – then that government losses legitimacy and runs the risk of collapse.
If this government collapses, would a majority really want to resurrect and rebuild that beast?
We are already in a global depression.
Twentieth century social welfare programs are successfully masking the economic pain. Combined with an ever expanding government and non-profit economy fueled by sovereign debt and the depression is hidden.
There is no way out. The post Bretton Woods economic system is in a death spiral. Conservatives, libertarians, independents must find and define a new path. All this blather about Obama’s economic policies, the GOP, etc. etc. is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Neither political party offers any sort of sustainable socio-economic model. Give the Obama Dems credit, they at least promote an agenda. They are all in.
What do conservatives and the GOP offer? I certainly do not know. The old system is terminal. Conservatives better get out front and define the future.
“social welfare programs are successfully masking the economic pain”
exactly. If you lost your job but were somehow able to borrow $100,000 (paying back about $12 a month), your family could think everything was just fine for quite a while.
But eventually, the hammer would fall, and your lifestyle wouldn’t decrease by a fraction, you would lose everything.
Unless you are a dreamy-eyed lib who assumes the creditors of the United State will say, “oh you know that multi-trillion dollar debt you owe us? Forget about it. We don’t need it”, then you know that there is going to be a financial cataclysm to end all cataclysms. Or maybe they think our economy is suddenly going to increase 20% a year for a few decades, or green energy will change everything. Idiots, fools, and dangerous slime balls.
“Unless you are a dreamy-eyed lib who assumes the creditors of the United State will say, “oh you know that multi-trillion dollar debt you owe us? Forget about it. We don’t need it”…..”
Are you kiddin’, weo? Liberals don’t even think that deep. Seriously. Most have no idea that there is a debt. “Duh, we always vote for da Democrat. They’re fer da little guy. ‘Sides, my friends are all Democrats.
You’re right yooper. Probably 99% of liberals aren’t capable of thinking beyond the picking the other guy’s pocket.
I was thinking about the progressive “intellectuals”, the math whizzes who look at 4 new trillion in new debt and say “I cut the deficit by 2 trillion”.
As we have witnessed abroad – when the people are disarmed and too poor to fight, they are at the mercy of their leaders. The path to escape is very narrow or non existant.
Perhaps we should concentrate less on what Obama is doing and get more involved in what our republican leaders aren’t doing.
They obviously don’t hear us, or perhaps they just don’t care. Sometimes bed partners are hard to separate. I might also add, words unspoken are never heard.
Are we also guilty for not speaking louder?
Left/liberals yearn to be the tyranny we refused from King George III and want to take our guns for the same reason he did: Annoying peasants shouldn’t be armed.
It’s the Year of the Snake, fitting don’t you think?
The Plan, The Whole Plan, and Nothing But The Plan:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/sns-pod-1934-cartoon-pic,0,7114709.photo
The same as FDR’s plan.
You’re right, left/liberals are nothing if not predictable.
The next fiscal excuse will be that Europe is back in recession, and it is dragging our economy down. The truth is the exact opposite. Our economy scraping along the bottom of the barrell for 4 years is dragging the globe down.
Our economy is so big, I do not see any way out other than America leading the way. Maybe Obama and the rest of the progressives don’t see that.
In the end, either societies misery, and – or crash will get us out of this hell.
I never worry too much…I have plenty of guns and ammo!
The progressives’ apparent plan: Collapse the current economy, impose “emergency” tyranny, martial law, etc. when that happens, then replace the Dollar with a new unspoiled currency (c’mon, the “Amero,” right?) and start over with an equal “social justice” distribution of wealth (ensured by ivasive gov’t power, which left/liberal politicians and cronies will enjoy wielding for the “common good,” of course).
(Too bad the Cloward-Piven strategy revolves around state/local left/liberals being bailed out and empowered by federal gov’t… in this scaled-up case the federal gov’t would be both collapsed and bail everything out. Hope they’ve got enough food, water, fuel, ammo and other resources they’ll need stashed to last long enough to pull off their plan before plain ol’ consumption pulls the plug, if so, but somehow I doubt it. All they have to do is not succeed long enough and they lose because there’s no resupply… but the whole country will be destroyed by that point. Didn’t they ever see The Road Warrior?)
It’s an intuitive plan: Collapse the economy, impose/sustain order in the interim from pre-assembled stockpile, reboot economy with new currency and repudiated debts (viola, fresh start) just like in a third world country. Too bad it’s not rational– implicit best-case assumption that collapse won’t be too bad or too long, not to mention that people will let us repudiate debt or the rest of the world won’t be hurt by it.
One does not get a billion bucks to run for POTUS, and then do as one pleases. The agenda is to weaken America. DaOne is helping the agenda along, and appears to enjoy it.
BLT Marxism in a nut shell.
Bulls-eye.
I disagree with the tone and content of these comments: the goal of a just society is well served by a fair and rational tax policy, including provisions to reduce the marked maldistribution of wealth that has accumulated during the last 40 years. The ratio of CEO salary to mean employee salary, for example, has risen to extreme levels. Whether one is on the Left or Right, one can compare American trends to those of other developed societies and seek public policies that integrate economic growth with social justice. The proper balance is open to discussion and debate. It would be legitimate to analyze the policies of Pres Obama by both criteria: such analysis is likely to conclude that the net effect of the Administration’s proposals will block economic growth and to an extent that will hurt all segments of American society, including the poor and middle class.
A proper balance that left/liberals can feel good about controlling and imposing upon everyone else, comrade!
“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always… always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” –George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
(Remember, Orwell had been a leftist and knew them well.)
You can vote on CEO pay by not doing business with a company, you cannot opt out of the minimum wage. Their pay is directly related to the perceived value they bring to a company as is a minimum wage worker. one other point: A minimum wage is just that. A minimum. If you are 40 and working for $7.50 an hour, you bring little of value to the table.
If you are 40 and making only minimum wage, you have seriously made a mistake somewhere along the line and should be reevaluating some of your life choices. It is not the responsibility of society to compensate for lack of good judgement on the part of the individual.
That’s odd, I don’t recall redistributing wealth as being one of the basic tenets of the Constitution…… Could ya point out that provision to me?
I have been reminding my assosiates of Cloward Piven since 2008. To use another analogy: Barry wants to rebuild the nation, but you have to destroy to rebuild. Mission accomplished.
Our Coming Environmental Catastrophe: Geoengineering and Weather Warfare
The environmental movement has developed a single-minded obsession with the supposed effects of carbon dioxide on the global climate. Rather than CO2 gas, however, the technologies that are now being proposed to mitigate this supposed problem might be the real cause of our coming environmental calamity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUZ_5xR8j8s&feature=player_embedded#at=48
After viewing you should realize this is all about control!
Unfortunately we now have two “big government, crony capitalist” political parties here in the USA. We can flip flop between the Democratic party and the Republican party all we want, but all that happens is the same. Back in 1983 I gave up on both and became a Libertarian. They do have their “flaws” too, but at least the basic philosophy of Libertarianism (minimum government, maximum freedom) makes a lot of sense. Take health care as an example. Why does it cost so much? The answer is that health care is a government enforced monopoly from A to Z. Half of the patients in a doctor’s waiting room are there because the doctor holds the power of denying them medicine if they don’t do as he wishes. Tbe health insurance industry is in on the deal too. The drug companies have profits of 17% a year. Whereas “Big Oil” is down around 5%. The private health insurance industry delivers 80 cents worth of benefits on the average to every $1 of premiums paid in. That’s a “mark up” about like what the credit card companies get. 20%. All the professions are the same way, all are dependent upon big government to provide them the monopoly they need to earn the big bucks. No different really than the Wall Streeters and the big banks, both of whom are also dependent upon “big government”. Obviously there was a lot of “fraud” committed by the banks and Wall Street that caused the “crash”. But as the federal government is in effect their “puppet” today, no one ended serving time for doing something that would have given any of us at least ten years in federal prison. The felons in Congress of course saw that their fellow felons didn’t suffer from the crash. Only the taxpayers got “took” for all those trillions of dollars it took to make “the powers that be” whole once again. So when the country goes bankrupt, well, we will at least know who was responsible!
This is classic Progressive New Left Activist’s ploy to “overwhelm the system” with excessive rules, regulations, Executive Orders, proposal to amendments, baseless recall movements, et al in order to achieve their ultimate “Cloward-Piven” goals. A “top down/bottom up and insideout” take over of everything American, American exceptionalism. Ultimately destroying “Rule of Law,” its foundations in US Constitution; Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence.
This movement had its origins in the 1900′s, ebbing and rising these last 40-odd years. Now, with social media, these techie nerds have been hi-jacked by “politik operatives” aiding and abetting them in their quest for unconditional surrender of every American to “their vision of America’s future.”
This was expected…its Progressive New Left Activists march towards their goals of “wearing down Americans’ will to fight” all these frivolous efforts at destroying everything American and American exceptionalism (read: ACLU). Gird ones Loins…this is the start of Obama’s second term in office and his “bases” efforts to overthrow (by a silent “coup d’etat”) America. It’s unfolding right before We The People’s very eyes…wake-up for Pete’s Sake!!!Damn!Pray. Amen.
Unfortunately, left/liberals are destroying the very freedom and prosperity they take for granted and think they are “spreading the weallth around” for everyone (including themselves, at the same or even greater levels, of course) to enjoy. Silly left/liberals…