The Obama-Piven Strategy
We are in the middle of an epochal struggle over the direction of American economic policy.
The Democrats, who are currently in charge, want to follow a Keynesian model, which entails massive government spending — with its attendant tax increases and soaring deficit — to jump-start the economy.
The Republicans think the solution to our economic doldrums is to lower taxes and decrease spending, to stimulate business activity and help the nation climb out of its crippling debt.
And then there’s Barack Obama….
You might think he would be the natural spokesman for the Democratic strategy. And when the cameras are turned on, he is. But under the surface he’s also an advocate for a third economic policy, one that isn’t spoken of in polite company: The Cloward-Piven Strategy.
Problem is, the Cloward-Piven Strategy is not simply some alternate theory about the best way to rescue the American economy. Quite the opposite, in fact. Its goal is to intentionally ruin the economy, so as to arouse popular outcry for a revolutionary and fundamental change in our economic system.
I propose that President Obama is simultaneously trying to rescue the economy using the Keynesian/Democratic model while at the same time also trying to destroy the economy through the Cloward-Piven Strategy. His two mutually contradictory plans cancel each other out, rendering all his efforts self-negating, and this explains why the American economy has stalled.
I dub this the Obama-Piven Strategy. And it’s the reason why we remain mired in a deep recession. We are neither recovering, as the Keynesian model predicts, nor is capitalism collapsing, as the revolutionaries hope; the Obama-Piven strategy ensures that we remain in suspended animation between the two extremes.
(No offense to Cloward, it’s just that the “Obama-Piven Strategy” rolls off the tongue more easily than the “Cloward-Obama Strategy.”)
The Basics
The Cloward-Piven Strategy, for those of you unfamiliar with it, was named after its formulators, two Columbia University sociologists named Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. In an influential 1966 essay published in The Nation magazine, they outlined a strategy through which every American would receive a nationwide “guaranteed annual income.” To bring this about, they essentially recommended that as many people as possible should be enrolled in government welfare programs so as to intentionally bankrupt the system; our elected officials would then feel politically compelled to create an overarching permanent drastic solution to the welfare problem, restructuring our free-market economy along socialistic lines — what the authors described as “the outright redistribution of income.”
Now, I’m not here to assess the wisdom or likelihood of the Cloward-Piven Strategy. I’m only pointing out that its intent, unlike those of traditional economic theories, is to wreak havoc on and eventually destroy the American economy, as part of a larger political goal. And that its proposed mechanism for destroying the economy is to maximize the number of people receiving government benefits.
Handy Charts
The following four color-coded charts summarize the four economic theories competing for dominance in contemporary America.
We’ll start with the Republican Strategy, since for the purposes of this article it is (temporarily, at least) an outlier:
| The 2010 Republican Economic Strategy |
| • Reduce taxes and decrease spending |
| Goal: To improve the economy in the long run by stimulating business activity and lowering the deficit |
| Free market / small government fiscal theory |
Note that this is actually the Tea Party strategy; it has only recently been adopted (in theory, at least) by the Republican Party, which formerly had not been very strict about minimizing the deficit.
Next, the Democrats:
| The 2010 Democratic Economic Strategy |
| • Raise taxes and increase spending |
| Goal: To improve the economy in the short run by taking in higher revenue and distributing cash to stimulate consumption |
| Keynesian economics |
In a sane world, those would be the only two charts we’d need. But tucked away in our new president’s ideological baggage was yet a third strategy, which is not exactly equivalent to the other two:
| The 2010 Cloward-Piven Economic Strategy |
| • Increase government programs, welfare demands, handouts and benefits to as many people as possible |
| Goal: To destroy the economy as a necessary precursor to a more drastic redistributionist/socialist makeover of society |
| Intentionally bankrupting the capitalist system to initiate revolutionary change |
Now, if you were to combine the two strategies above, you’d get the actual current winner in the Battle of the Economic Theories, the self-defeating combo-strategy confusingly championed by the leader of our nation:
| The 2010 Obama-Piven Economic Strategy |
| • Increase government programs, handouts, benefits, taxes and spending as rapidly and drastically as possible |
| Goal: To simultaneously destroy and improve the economy |
| A muddled combination of the Democratic Strategy and the Cloward-Piven Strategy |
A Generalized Term
As originally formulated in their Nation essay, Cloward’s and Piven’s recommendations were highly specific to the 1966 political climate. They discuss at length the alliances of the mid-’60s Democratic Party, and derive their theories from the assumption that welfare programs are operated mostly at the state and local level (as many were, in those days). Consequently, 21st-century progressives seeking to quash discussion of Cloward-Piven often dismiss it as anachronistic and not relevant to the modern world, and point to the theory’s now-outdated specifics as proof that it’s no longer worth getting worked up over.
But when we speak of “The Cloward-Piven Strategy” in 2010, we are speaking of the generalized form of the theory. This often happens with political ideas: They emerge in a highly specific historical context, but later become universalized. For example, “fascism” no longer refers in common parlance to a bunch of Italian nationalists running around in black shirts, but rather has been generalized over the decades to describe any totalitarian attitude. Even Marxism, in its original formulation, concerned itself with Industrial-Revolution-era class distinctions which by now no longer even exist, yet we can still speak of Marxism in the modern era because we are referring to the principles underlying Marxism, not the idiosyncratic details spelled out in the mid-19th century.
And so, in a similar vein, when I discuss the “Cloward-Piven Strategy” in this essay, I’m speaking of the generalized principle behind the strategy, rather than the era-specific details about “Dixiecrats” and “the ghetto vote” mentioned in the Nation article.
In modern terms, the “Cloward-Piven Strategy” refers to the goal of bringing about a stealth economic revolution by intentionally overburdening the capitalist system with welfare demands until the economy collapses, necessitating a fundamental social restructuring.
Feature or Bug?
There is a stubborn whisper among the crowds at Tea Parties: that the ruinous “side-effects” of Obama’s economic measures and social programs are a feature, not a bug. In other words, despite a fawning media which strives to portray Obama as having only the best of intentions, many Americans suspect that Obama isn’t trying to rescue the economy at all, but instead is purposely trying to ruin America’s fiscal health not just currently but also for generations into the future. And that the ultimate purpose of this seemingly irrational agenda is to end capitalism as we know it and usher in a socialist economic system.
The Cloward-Piven Strategy is fairly well-known among the Tea Party cognoscenti and pro-capitalism pundits, but it remains obscure to the general populace. And while certain elements of the old-school far left openly embrace the notion behind the Cloward-Piven Strategy, many left-wing commentators heap scorn and mockery on any conservative who dares to mention it — and the very same progressives who struggle fiercely to enact the Cloward-Piven Strategy will simultaneously deride the “conspiracy thinking” of Republicans who point out the true goal of the progressive agenda.
Cloward-Piven: Playing by the Rules to Break the System
The federal government has all sorts of laws and regulations on the books that are not actively enforced — the most famous among these being laws against foreign citizens entering and remaining in the country illegally, which the federal authorities under Obama not only ignore but even vigorously oppose when any state (such as Arizona) attempts to enforce the feds’ own statutes.
Similarly, over the decades there have accumulated dozens of federal and state welfare programs, benefits, handouts, class-action suits, unending “emergency” loans and bailouts, scholarships and guarantees which have never been fully exploited by the eligible recipients. On this point, Cloward and Piven were entirely correct. They showed in their paper how the number of people eligible for welfare benefits far exceeded the number of people actually receiving them. For whatever reason — pride, ignorance, self-reliance, you-name-it — a significant number of people do not sign up for government handouts potentially due them. One can see a prototypical example of this happening on a micro-scale in San Francisco, when city-sponsored activists occasionally fan out on the streets to offer S.F.’s legions of homeless people free housing, food, job training and more — all just for the asking. The response? Often as not, the long-term homeless will turn down the offers, saying they would prefer to sleep in the park than in a shelter, would prefer to eat foraged food than at a soup kitchen, would prefer to remain defiantly self-reliant bums than become comfortable vassals of the welfare system.
Such an attitude is mystifying and infuriating to activists like Cloward and Piven, who see the poor as shock troops whose very poverty can be leveraged to topple the entire capitalist system. To discourage any sparks of self-reliance or proud independence amongst the poor, the left invented a profession called “community organizer,” whose very purpose is get the underclass addicted to government handouts — an essential component needed for the Cloward-Piven Strategy to work. What did you think “community organizers” do when they organize communities? Ever seen ACORN at work? “Community organizing” groups such as ACORN are in fact the physical embodiment of the Cloward-Piven Strategy. They exist to encourage as many people as possible to sign up for all the benefits, welfare programs and handouts for which they could conceivably be eligible (and, as various investigations have revealed, many benefits for which they aren’t).
Is it therefore any surprise that Barack Obama described himself as a community organizer and once worked with ACORN? With that sort of track record — not to mention that he also went to school at Columbia, where both Cloward and Piven taught and where their strategy was born, and that he himself said he hung out with “Marxist professors” in college — there’s no question that Obama must be intimately familiar with the Cloward-Piven Strategy and the principles behind it.
A Fiscal Pushmi-Pullyu
 |
| A fiscal pushmi-pullyu cozying up to a Keynesian donkey |
Remember, I’m not claiming that Obama is waging all-out war on our economy, purposely trying to undermine it. The paradox of the Obama-Piven Strategy is that it goes in both directions simultaneously, like a fiscal Pushmi-Pullyu (that two-headed creature in Dr. Dolittle). On one hand, Obama is a radicalized community organizer trying to bring down the capitalist system with an endless parade of demands and handouts. But on the other hand, he’s a mainstream Democrat cooperating with and promoting a widely respected economic theory — big-government Keynesianism — to save the capitalist system. Which is it, Mr. President? Are you with us, or against us? It seems, amazingly, that the answer is both: half the time he’s working to salvage the economy, and the other half he’s purposely trying to savage it.
How could this be? A growing number of Americans suspect that he’s not really conflicted at all, that he merely pretends to be a mainstream liberal trying in his clumsy way to rescue the economy, as a façade — but that his real sympathies lie with the far-far-left radicals who want to use Cloward-Piven to destroy capitalism now and forever.
Me, I have a different explanation. I think it’s unconscious. I think Obama is on auto-pilot and never really sat down and pondered the distinction between trying, on one hand, to save the economy with government spending and, on the other hand, to ruin the economy with…government spending. It all blurs together after a while, doesn’t it?
Keynes-Piven?
That’s because there is a bit of Cloward-Piven inherent in Keynesian theory itself. When Nancy Pelosi in all seriousness announces (as she did) that indefinitely extended unemployment benefits are a great way to stimulate the economy, then we’ve seemingly crossed the frontier into Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. Or have we? The original goal of Cloward-Piven, after all, was to bring about a “guaranteed annual income” for all Americans, and wouldn’t the arrival of permanent unemployment benefits for everyone essentially bring us to the same station, albeit by a different track?
Cloward-Piven’s idea rested on the old Marxist notion that in order to have a revolutionary change in the economic order, you first need to precipitate a major social or bureaucratic crisis which the populace will then demand be solved by junking the old system in toto and ushering in an entirely new structure. But the modern Democrat version of progressive economics seems to dispense with the need for a revolution altogether: Once you’re in power, with a cooperative media, you can simply declare that you already have the overwhelming popular mandate needed to bring about by legislative fiat the universal income distribution that those naive old Marxists thought could only be achieved by actual popular demand. Why waste time with a messy and unnecessary revolution when you can attain the same thing incrementally? If you control all branches of government and the media, who’s to stop you or argue?
Well, Tea Party activists and 40 filibustering Republican senators, that’s who. The Pelosi/Reid Incremental Cloward-Pivenistas marched up and down the field practically unopposed for over a year and were on the verge of sealing a permanent legislative victory when the fiscal conservatives suddenly began putting up a stubborn goal-line stand. A palpable sea-change in the electorate’s mood gave the Republicans the courage to become “The Party of No,” since it became self-evident in 2010 that a majority of Americans wanted someone to stop the Democratic plan of revolutionizing America without actually having a revolution.
Cloward and Piven stated that in order to usher in a socialistic system, we first must intentionally ruin the capitalist economy. Pelosi and Harry Reid are trying to achieve the same end goal but do so while capitalism is still healthy enough to fend for itself. Perhaps after all it is Pelosi and Reid and the Democrats who are naive: What 2010 has shown us is that Americans will not consent to smiley-face socialism. Maybe those old Marxists were right — you do need to have a total social and economic meltdown as a necessary precursor for revolution. And it hasn’t happened here yet.
You’ve Had Your Fun, Mr. President
Which half of our Jekyll-and-Hyde president will emerge dominant? Will he abandon his youthful dreams of a revolutionized America and age gracefully into a standard run-of-the-mill Keynesian liberal? Or will he drop the mask and go the full Cloward-Piven on us?
I say let’s take the choice out of his hands. If enough small-government fiscal conservatives win office this November, it won’t matter which side of his schizoid economic policy the president chooses. Instead, the Obama-Piven Strategy will mercifully be forever consigned to the dustbin of history.
Well so far even if we assume his intent is to ruin the econ and bring about nazism or communism you don’t seem to care much since he’s doing it legally in your view.
Get back to us when you feel like enforcing the US Constitution… and not just 2 out of 3 requires of every section.
You want to know how I know you didn’t read/comprehend the entire article?
you want to know how I know you missed the point the the comment above you?
Allow me to expound on Zombie’s premise (metaphorically)…
Zombie is pointing out that the Dems with their tax and spend and the Cloward Piven strategy with their “Break the piggy bank of capitalism” is a zero sum numb-nuts, full-on RETARDED GAME.
You devalue the dollar so that there is no ‘middle class’ any longer who PAYS most of the taxes (not the rich, ahem).
You terrify small business with 0bamacare and the ‘unknown’ factor.
You give ‘big breaks’ to big business even though they are in the same boat of ‘wtf?’ and so many obstructive laws building on top of another that they ‘outsource’ whilst America bleeds jobs.
You give ridiculous amounts of ‘handouts’ to ‘black farmers’, ‘union jerks’, ‘public sector pushing out private sector jobs’ and you’ve got, “The final stages of death of a republic and a democracy and the termination of individual liberty”…
Greece wasn’t an example enough? Have you numb nut leftist learned ANYTHING but your indoctrinated bullshit?
So, ‘share the wealth’…when everyone is jobless and nobody is ‘creating wealth’ will be a hollow, pathetic, disenchanted TRUTH about the LEFT and their ilk and their evil misers who are just as in bed with the FED as anyone else.
So, little person, lil’ guy who pays your FED INCOME taxes (which is not LEGAL), welcome to the Matrix.
*pops some popcorn*
YOU CANNOT ‘SPREAD’ wealth you summarily DESTROY via regulations and uncertainty.
You CANNOT ‘CREATE’ jobs that will increase the tax base by making the PUBLIC sector so gravy-train nigger rich that the PRIVATE sector cannot even PAY for it.
Get REAL, mutha fuckas.
Obama is absolutely hell bent on collapsing the system, all in order to redistribute it.
Aside from the fact that Obama was weaned on socialist/Marxist paradigms, he promised, yes promised, to remake the system.Why are people so shocked, shocked?
While the addled masses truly believed that Obama coined ‘hope and change’ as two ideas which would improve American life, he meant something entirely different.
His fervent hope was to first collapse the system, then to change it COMPLETELY.
In a real sense, it takes a diabolical mind (surely wifey had a hand in its coinage)to intentionally present a hopeful campaign slogan, lying to millions in the process. Machiavellian……
“diabolical mind” Concur, and could substitute the adjective *criminal.* For these types, the White House is a caravansary on the way to the Big House.
Yet there is another component, one Zombie has not factored into an otherwise brilliant analysis: Mohammedanism.
A diabolical mind has a goal. Zombie may be seeing clearly in saying this cat (cats are stealthy poachers) hasn’t thought things through, isn’t clear in his own mind regarding his premises. I’m inclined to agree that as proximately the case but ultimately not. To me, it looks, ultimately, more like taqiah masking Caliph plans and pretensions. This cat’s roots and principle supports are not in the USA.
Mohammedanism . which age are you from sire?
the opposition are shocked the poor are shocked some one want to make a change, the middle classes are shocked that the state will take over as it always promises to do despite democracy . the rich wont be shocked , the army will be shocked into killing there own people .
i am shocked that the destruction of the capitalism may be in my lifetime
President Obama is really taken a bum rap for an economy that isn’t his fault. The republicans in charge had a huge hand in STEALING everything, all the way from the Too Big To Fail blow out to the TART program.
Sorry, I meant TARP! Sometimes I get confused when my shoes are to tight and it cuts off oxygen to my brain (LOL!) ‘m’
We noticed.
That isn’t anything a good laxative wouldn’t fix.
Granted, Obama inherited GW Bush’s “I’m abandoning the free market system to save the free market system” TARP program, and then turbocharged the spending.
Quadrupling the deficit in the first three months of his (Obama) administration was not GW’s fault.
This is all on the Demonrats.
Remember, the Dems have had Congress since Jan, 2007. Every dollar spent by the government must originate in Congress. Obama voted for every spending program Congress passed.
Obama voted yes on both Bush programs. including Tarp,
Other than the fact that the Democrats have been setting economic policy since they gained both houses of congress when George Bush still had 2 years left, and that things were good until then, your analysis is, how do we put it? Crap.
Republicans certainly aren’t blameless, however, Congress controls the budget, institutes laws and tax codes, and the Democrats have controlled Congress since the beginning of 2007.
Taxing and spending out of a recession has NEVER worked.
Maybe someone should tell the democrats that when you are bailing something out like a boat you do not take water from the front of the boat and pour it into the rear of the boat, it is not going to save the boat from sinking, the same goes with the economy and it ain’t gonna work!
So let me get this straight; to prove that there was no Piven et al strategy, the Dems would have had to NOT renewed unemployment benefits?
The problem with these half-baked conspiracy theories is that they do not respond to the real fears that GWB and more than half the country had about the whole system collapsing, or how the still unemployed would get by NOW if their benefits were not extended. Obama-Pelosi-Reid are extending the benefits in order to make the system fail. not to help the unemployed? Let them eat cake? Yeah, it is troublesome to spend money we do not have to help the unemployed, but that hardly proves that the Dems are doing it to make the economy collapse.
Evidently, the author assumes that any other dastardly Piven strategies are not worth enumeration. I assume he means health care (and possibly continuing to fund Iraq and Afghanistan?) Evidently, I am just naive to believe that Obama-Reid-Pelosi would actually like unemployment to come down. Foolish me.
Imagine we didn’t have a godzilla of a federal government with it’s boot on the throat of this nation’s economy. People might actually have real, productive jobs and we wouldn’t be building an army of permanent dole collectors ala Western Europe.
I think Zombie is suggesting that it is a confused mixture of both Keynesian and Cloward-Piven, and not outright one or the other. It is an attempt to make sense out of what very well may be (as you indirectly leave open) that it is lunacy. In other words, What hath Liberals wrought? A two headed monster with no definable center.
Cloward-Piven is not designed to outright destroy the economy, but to destroy capitalism. Therefore, it is feasible that Obamacare, unemployment extensions, 700 billion in stimulus, etc is indeed the result of both systems working in whatever sync it do.
Great self-deprecatory humor. As if you could possibly know what you’re talking about! I love it. I used to find you an annoying hack, but this new turn to comedy suits you.
I agree, the entire premise of Zombie’s column is startling. However, let’s say that you are right and Zombie is wrong, what would Obama be doing differently? I can’t think of anything. So the results will be the same, regardless of motive.
Wrong? Being wrong is for people who have a minimal grounding in a field. This is just nonsense. Zombie is no more wrong when writing about economics, than Dr. Seuss erred when writing about cuisine in Green Eggs and Ham.
And yet, despite your assertions (based on what I have no idea) the destruction of our economy continues. Joblessness, robbing from Food Stamps to pay teachers unions, deficits so high our grandchildren will be saddled with them. Corporations with lots of cash, but afraid to hire. Banks only loaning money to the Feds (where they got the money in the first place) but not to the people. Oil drilling moratoriums. Takeover of auto manufacturing. Takeover of banking. Takeover of health care. Takeover of student loans. Takeover of Every Single Trivial Aspect of our Daily Lives. A country where we, the citizens must be accountable to every law (increasing by the hundreds every year) and they, the Ruling Class are accountable to Absolutely Nothing.
Of course, if you are in the Ruling Class, LIFE IS GOOD! In DC the business is Governance, and Business is BOOMING, jack. More offices and unelected czar positions than you can shake a stick at. Wagu steak and Beyonce Live. Oh, yeah. Golf every day and European vacations with your 40 person entourage.
In the Soviet Union, they were known as the Nomenclatura. None of this is new.
Yeah. That’s what was great about the Bush administration. He was really sticking it to the ruling class.
Ah yes. When all else fails, tu quoque attack on George W. Bush. That’s the way to win a debate.
Zombie has put up some interesting reflections on the economic behavior of the Obama-Reid-Pelosi circus, and there’s not (yet) any law requiring ‘grounding’ prior to sharing his conclusions with us. So we’ll gently deep-six the misdirection to Dr Seuss (it can go into the dustbin with the Pushme-Pullyu), and consider Zombie on the merits. He certainly has offered us a worthy conjecture. We’re still waiting for one from G.G.
My argument is based on the merits of Zombie’s writing. Meritless. This is what one would expect from someone who has absolutely no idea of current events or economics. Just to be clear, one doesn’t have to be an economist to speak of the economy. It does help if you know what you’re talking about. I’d say a trillions of dollars of bailouts, all by itself, designed to stimulate the economy from the top down, already put Zombie’s theory in severe crisis. It’s not really worth considering anything else IT had to say afterward. Indeed, my assertion works the other way around as well. If you value this input from this obvious ignoramus, then I don’t care whether you have a doctorate in Economics, you’re not worth paying attention to either.
‘My argument is based on the merits of Zombie’s writing. Meritless.’
You made no argument. You did not engage Zombie’s writing. I very much doubt you could even understand it based on your past performances.
Your time would be better served contemplating what you revealed in another thread to be your big attraction to PJM – conservative pee pees. There are sites for that. You could lose link to PJM, and everyone’s time would be better served.
Among the ad hominem attacks by Gould’s Ghost is an attempt to argue on merits. It only shows that GG didn’t even understand the basic premise of the article. The fact that Obama orchestrated a nearly trillion-dollar “stimulus” is consistent with one half of Zombie’s thesis — the Keynesian, traditional Democrat approach. No, GG, Zombie didn’t state that Obama was following a pure Cloward-Piven strategy. That should have been obvious from the title alone. And Gould’s Ghost has the arrogance to insult Zombie! GG – better stick to the ad hominem attacks, which have no effect on anything on this blog but are apparently therapeutic for you.
Here comes GG once again… telling us we’re conspiracy nuts, wrong, on and on.
However, here comes GG once again, with the name-calling and little-to-no facts to back his rants. And he does it with so few words and such applomb…
All of the reading that I’ve been doing (both for AND against) totally supports Zombie. And to think, I used to be a flaming liberal. Please forgive me Lord, I did not know what I was helping to destroy… MY COUNTRY!
God bless America!
Well let’s see, China and Germany are recovering faster than the U.S.
I wonder why that is. Things that make you go hmmm.
Appeasing the masses so that they don’t revolt is not new. The Roman Empire used bread and circuses to prolong their fall into degeneration. Now Obama-care, pot, mass media, unemployment checks, and untendered promises serve just as well when handed down by the elite ruling class. That strategy will work just fine until the money is worthless or the food trucks don’t enter the city or the lean hungry barbarians enter the population. Or, when the people who do like to work and don’t like massive taxes vote otherwise against public welfare.
We’ll see if he’s appeasing the masses in November.
What tilts the playing field is that 47% of those masses, pay no taxes.
I usually follow Zombie’s logic, but there is a huge leap here. Where is the evidence that this is what Obama intends? Where is the hard evidence that obama wants to destroy the US economy?
I think Obama is conflicted by (1) what he wants to do (European-style liberalism), (2) what he can get away with given congress, and (3) what will help him get reelected. If he couldn’t get single-payer passed, how could he hope to bring down the economy to cause a socialist revolution?
Sorry, just seems a little tinfoil-hat to me.
Didn’t get single payer passed? Go read some news archives from March 21, 2010. The bill that was passed then will cause collapse of the Health Insurance Industry through the various mandates and regulatory requirements, maybe even the entire insurance industry will collapse as well, sort of like an industry-specific Cloward-Piven strategy. It will be Single-Payer as surely as the sun rises in the morning.
As a firm believer in the “incompetence before malice” theory (a.k.a. Hanlon’s Rule), I surmise that 0bama is following a quite different strategy: the Two Thumbs strategy.
One thumb is lodged in his mouth, another up his nether orifice, and whenever he hears the word “change!” he exchanges both thumbs.
ROLICKINGLY(SP) FUNNY
It all boils down to buying votes. This is all that is going on, pure and simple. This is how it all ends. Or with half a million armed men marching on Washington DC. Neither outcome is good.
“I think it’s unconscious. I think Obama is on auto-pilot and never really sat down and pondered the distinction between trying, on one hand, to save the economy with government spending and, on the other hand, to ruin the economy with…government spending. It all blurs together after a while, doesn’t it?”
Clever, Mr. zombie, and it makes a lot of sense too.
I’ve always been strongly in the camp that believes the moron is a committed marxist, or black supremacist, or ruling class afficionado or something like that, but he does seem a little scatter-brained in his approach, doesn’t he?
We have the first party-boy, bath-house president. Before noon, he tokes in the smoke house. Between noon and 2 he destroys the economy. From 2 to 3 he gets a massage from his man servant. Between 3 and 5 he undermines national security. And then after 5, he GETS DOWN WID IT.
Being a revolutionary is just too taxing a job for somebody who has never worked a job in his life.
Maybe it’s the Obamy-Pivens-Buggaloo strategy?
Just thinking about it makes me want to take a little vacation.
I confess the onset of startlement at Zombie’s claims here. I don’t have a problem with the semi-intentional wreckage theory, except that it assumes the intelligence and purpose to mismanage the economy so as to produce the current spectacular failure. No, they’re not that smart. His economists respond to pressures from China, etc., fears of economic collapse and, quite possibly, instructions from time to time from Soros type and S Arabia. This is not Obie’s area of specialization. That’s foreign affairs, where his intentions are clearer and his hopes soar with the prospect of a minaret over Ground Zero.
No, that’s not working out well either. And neither is Israel going to commit suicide.
I propose that when Obama and the Dems get clobbered in Nov., and when he fails to run again in 2012, if not first impeached, then the public will have rejected him for perceived incompetence. That is, even if it’s all a clear-eyed strategy, the public doesn’t look for it, doesn’t see it. So it doesn’t much matter if it doesn’t explain WHY they throw him out. Hopefully he would leave by the janitor’s exit, as did Dalia Lama and Bibi-yahu.
Richard W said, “deficits so high our grandchildren will be saddled with them.”
Unfortunately, Richard, you have misunderstood. It is not the goal of the Obama administration to pile deficits on your children and grandchildren. It is to ensure that you do not have any grandchildren or at least a reduced number. According to the Deep Left, there are too many people in the world and that number has to be reduced by not favoring family life through government policy.
So, you don’t believe me!
From Kiplinger Report, Joan Pryde – senior tax editor:
“Higher taxes on marriage and family. The “marriage penalty” (narrower tax brackets for married couples)will return from the first dollar of income. The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child. The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level. The dependent care and adoption tax credits will be cut.”
“The ‘Special Needs Kids Tax’: This provision of Obamacare imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs) of $2500. (Currently, there is no federal limit.) There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States and many use FSAs to pay for special needs education….Under [current] tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education.”
Addendum: Again from Kiplinger Report: “Guess what – now your [health] insurance is income on your W-2s….W-2 tax form sent by your employer will be increased to show the value of whatever health insurance you are given by the company. It does not matter if that’s a private concern or government body of some sort. If you’re retired? So what; your gross will go up by the amount of insurance you get.
Don’t believe me, here is the citation: on page 25 0f 29: Title IX Revenue Provisions – Subtitle A: “requires employers to include in the W-2 form of each employee the aggregate cost of applicable employer sponsored group health coverage that is excluded from employees gross income.”
I’ve suspected a similar situation, but one that (to me) is more straightforward and less theoretical. It’s comprised of two major conflicting drives.
In late 2008, Rahm Emmanuel famously let slip with, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” Clearly, then, the group in Washington feels the need to maintain a level of constant crisis in order to maximize its power. We can call them power-augmenters.
On the other hand, candidate Obama had used the phrase, “spread the wealth around,” just a couple of weeks earlier — showing him to have the standard zero-sum mindset of a redistributionist. In his mind, there is a fixed amount of “wealth”, with “haves” and “have-nots”, and it’s all about taking from one to give to the other….while maybe skimming a little off as a reward for your efforts.
Unfortunately, in the real world, most of the wealth that exists is due to the efforts of wealth creators — who may be “haves” or “have-nots” at any point in time, but certainly are not incentivized by having redistributionists shiffling the cards halfway through playing their hands — and tend to shy away from crises until the dust settles.
Which leaves us with the current situation — the creation of crises in order to more effectively rob Peter to pay Paul, and the realization that the crisis level cannot become so high that both Peter and Paul stop baking pies from which slices may be taken.
GDP measures turnover, not wealth — but the private sector GDP serves as a rough proxy for wealth creation. It is cratering, and the only reason that overall GDP hasn’t fallen off the cliff is because of an increase in public sector GDP spending (this is covered well at http://market-ticker.org/archives/2551-How-To-Read-The-REAL-GDP-Chart.html ). But public sector spending does not and cannot create wealth — it merely increases transactions.
The wealth redistributionists are finding that there’s less and less wealth out there because of the perpetual crises that the power-augmenters are ginning up; the power-augmenters are catching flak because the redistributionists aren’t paying off the proles and bureaucrats fast enough.
“To crisis, or not to crisis,” is indeed the question — but neither is furthering the goals of the administration, however much its members had been hoping.
Zombie, I agree with everything I’ve read of yours. But this article just proves a point: The folks on the left don’t see the world as you do.
They WILL NOT frame the debate of your taxing points as: 2010 Republicans, Reduce taxes and decrease spending. They will frame the Republican posture as: fund capitalists and defund services.
They will nod and agree with most points you make regarding Democrat or Cloward-Piven or Obama policies and when you (we) try to argue they are not sustainable, they will argue that we are reactionary, stupid, tyrants and/or selfish/bigoted/uninformed.
There is a deep divide in this country that you can see if you visit Dailykos, Pajamasmedia, WND, etc. The most erudite leftist posting here might get lots of passionate and reasoned responses but I’d bet he wouldn’t change 1-in-100 minds. The most erudite rightist could post on Dailykos and I bet he’d get 1000 condemnatory posts.
When I read Pajamasmedia or JewishWorldReview, I think there is possible dialogue and hope for convincing others who may just not know all the facts. When I read Dailykos and other such sites, I realize that most (by FAR the most) of those people will not engage in reasonable dialogue.
And they would say the same about “us.” They are certain that we are brainwashed, stupid, ignorant, selfish or part of the rich conspiracy. No matter what the polls show, or facts point to, there are 33% or more of the people of the United States who are convinced that “the right” is made up of religionists, racists, monied paranoids or people who “just don’t care how our lifestyle screws everybody else.”
I don’t believe we will EVER change any of those minds in our lifetime. And I don’t believe we will wrest education, media or culture from them in my lifetime. I suggest we all move to Australia and try to start again. Because I don’t want to shoot the silly idiots who refuse to see history, truth or the implications of their starry-eyed social justice and one-world hegemony.
Actually, Australia might not like us all coming down there. How about if we all rush down to Mexico and push all the La Raza up over the open border to here?
Actually, I’ll amend that thought. We should all move to Israel.
Wake up folks. This is war and while Bush was a more nationalist oriented progressive, Obama is an internationalist progressive. Both of them are/were moving us toward a financial collapse and disenfranchisement of our rights and liberties. If you can’t see that clearly you haven’t been watching the game.
Our only hope to not have to go all French Revolution on them is if we can implant enough real conservatives from the Tea Party in our government and provide them broad enough based popular support to actually start moving the ball in the opposite direction. That my friends is a long shot.
So, basically, Obama is thoroughly unreflective — pathologically incapable of seeing or understanding his own motivations. That is typical of narcissists and borderline personalities.
Having watched people with very similar personality profiles in leadership positions, I’ve seen the same results — a necessary conflict between their sense that they are “doing the job” and their underlying ideological/psychological urges. And the end result is stagnation, confusion, and a total lack of direction.
And while there is some sense to the Cloward-Piven strategy, like so many essentially anarchist ideas, it requires such broad participation to make it work that it is nigh impossible to pull off. It is yet another revolutionary fantasy.
Lucius: “…nigh impossible to pull off.” Dear Leader has the Congress, MSM, judiciary and academia on his side. He has all the power to pull it off.
We have 17 million unemployed, trade deficits equal to defense spending, an economy that is 70% dependent upon services instead of indutry, a decimated former industrial backbone of America, entitlement spending that is uncontrolled and trillions in unfunded liabilities, suing a state, causing ethnic and racial division, union thugs and other anti-American ACORN dupes working for him, unaccountable czars doing his bidding and you think it is a fantasy?
He has nothing but contempt for this nation. And he is fully cognizant of what he and his administration and Congress are doing. Why everyone gives him the “benefit of the doubt” is beyond rational thought. He IS using Cloward-Piven exactly as they designed it. The final stroke will be amnesty for 12-15 million illegals.
So somebody tell me with close to 30 million unemployed (illegals plus unemployed) plus boomers retiring (60 million) and another 20 million on welfare where is the money going to come from? How is this not what C&P wanted? This is the perfect storm for C&P and Dear Leader.
Zimbabwe ain’t got nothin’ on us.
Cloward-Piven only addressed the demand side of the equation.
The Obami have refined that strategy and greatly increased the danger by including the supply-side, as well.
http://hindenblog1.blogspot.com/2010/07/burn-obamas-super-charged-cloward-piven.html
and
http://hindenblog1.blogspot.com/2010/04/burn.html
Blotto, add to your points that we will soon be bailing out public sector unions in the states such as CalPers here in California.
Rick Santelli (sp?), the guy on the NBC financial channel who first called for a Tea Party also ranted a month or so ago to “stop spending money!” We have so much money going out to entitlements and retirements that ANY attempt to seriously reduce them (by cutting/ending Social Security, MediCare and the prescription drug benefit, and by states declaring bankruptcy so they can repudiate their public-sector debts) will brand fiscal conservatives as “villains” for several elections to come.
Obama and others know we’re in financial trouble. Why else create a “bipartisan” commission to make fiscal recommendations AFTER the November elections? No matter how the November elections go, it’s almost a certainty that Obama will frame the “financial crisis” in terms that will undermine capitalist free markets. We’ll keep extending unemployment benefits, bailing out unions and spending money to shore up against home foreclosures rather than create an environment that reassures businesses/employers.
It’s not just Obama. The Dailykos people truly believe that those efforts are much more important than getting realistic about spending or creating a good environment for business and growth.
And that’s the seed of my despair. I believe a third of this country’s voters see all work/non-work/subsidies as “the same.” We’re all just drones in the service of a beneficent state that will ensure social justice.
It really is a fundamental difference in how one views life and the relationship of the individual to the “state” or the “world.” Much of the world and most of the left view *individuals* as a problem to be solved, educated away or simply coerced into submission.
When the Tea Party first started we charged the progressives with generational theft for the heavy debt stuck on our grandchildren by the big porkulous and bail out bills. Now, we see a US Treasury default coming instead. First by monetization, buying time, then by outright default when our creditors revolt or any of several financial bubbles burst. But instead of a dazed and confused population going for the Marxist solution, which has been proven so well by history, ha ha, we’ll be going for a restoration of the Constitution, sound money, free markets and an end to Congressional corruption and crony capitalism. The professional left is in the same boat as the Stasi thugs of East Germany. Change? You betcha.
“Diabolical mind” indeed. Synonym: criminal. Zombie’s analysis is brilliant yet omits to factor Mohammedanism. This cat’s roots and principal supports are not in the USA. S/he doesn’t know their mind or the consequences of their incompatible proximate agendas, true, but s/he’s also using taqiah to cover their ultimate plans and pretension, which they do know: Caliph.
There is no cause for fear. It is best to let weeds grow tall enough so that when they are yanked they come out root and all, then are cast into fire.
One commenter mentions the creation/discussion of unending crises as a tactic. Just so. Cloward-Priven is that. Eco-nazis are that. Pelosi is that. Response: remain calm, deal with circumstances as seems best in their event, don’t anticipate unless certain, have faith that reality is real and can withstand any amount of denial or assault, always prevailing. There are no crises, there are only opportunities and those only in the direction of expansion. Life is expansion. Life is a battle, fight to the finish. Life is a dream, realize it. Life is a game, play it. Above all, shun fear, there is never justification for it. Not even fear itself justifies fear. There is only reality.
#24 Mr. Graham
I believe that of all the postings to Zombie you summarize the situation with good perpective. Yes, internally the US is locked in a battle, a battle of economic systems, each juxtapositioned as cleverly as a the shell game. We the citizens of this country are being manipulated by fananciers, politicians, clergymen (mostly Islamic – might as well be politicians), news media (both mainstream and Lamestream), various organizations and lobby groups. This all comes together to form a state of complete and unter confusion. Most of us, those that are called conservatives are holding on for dear life to that last vestage of our country as founded in by our fore fathers and granted to all under our constitution. We are as insecure as an infant whose only solice is a pacifier. We are scared, mad and very, very worried. We are waiting on the life preserver to be thrown to us as if we were victims of a ship wreck, yet the water is deep and cold and slowly we are drowning in the sea of confusion. Yes, we do hold the key to our own salvation, perhaps . . . in that we will vote. Yet there is no one that we can universally place our faith in. The democratic party is hated as is the republican party. Where is the dark horse? If there exists such? Are we not again placing our faith in the likes of a, yet uknown, Obamanation? The parallelism to the times prior to World War II are incrediably analogous. Beware the winds of war . . . for they are blowing strong and the circulation of the hurricane has the worlds fate twisting in the gale.
“The 2010 Obama-Piven Economic Strategy
• Increase government programs, handouts, benefits, taxes and spending as rapidly and drastically as possible
Goal: To simultaneously destroy and improve the economy
A muddled combination of the Democratic Strategy and the Cloward-Piven Strategy”
Not muddled at all if this is the strategy being pursued because ALL of his economic “improvements” are aimed at strengthening and co-opting Big Labor, Big Finance and some other large companies that will provide an economic bulwark against total collapse while simultaneously rewarding and empowering the foundational organizations of the new Socialist economy.
Weaken & Destroy: Small business, Middle Class, anti-statist companies and industries
Prop-up & Control: Big Labor (Public and Private), key industries, pro-Statist companies and economy sectors.
Cloward and Piven are merely a part of the Leftist community. A principle that fits right in to the picture they relate to is Lenin’s comment – which needs wider distribution:
“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”
We live in incredibly dangerous times. Our media refuse to criticize any group except conservatives, Christians, capitalists, and those of the male persuasion. Women, gays, people of color, and Muslims may not be criticized. In addition, the left has systematically taken over our educational institutions and has indoctrinated so many pliable young minds.
In a recent discussion with my college educated son about the millions of people murdered by communist regimes during the twentieth century as an indicator suggesting the failure of communism, my son opined, “Yes, but a more perfect communism (yet to be achieved) would be much more humane.”
Perhaps our glorious twit of a commander-in-chief will herald in that glorious day of a more perfect communist society!
GOD SAVE OUR REPUBLIC!
The Keynes model can never help a nation out of recession; it only creates a temporary bubble which staves off the inevitable. I posit that his use of the Keynesian model to artificially inflate the bubble and thus make the inevitable crash that much worse as a deliberate part of his plan and an important partner to the Cloward Piven strategy. Indeed, simply by following the Keynes model, Obama is, in part, following Cloward Piven.
so i guess what ever he wants to do more is what will eventually win……..does he know he’s doing both?
Zombie, I’d love to see documentation showing that certain politicians have explicitly utilized the C-P strategy; ie they quote C-P’s writings. I hope they’ll come to light — unless of course they’re as well hidden as Obama’s college thesis.
The article is interesting inasmuch it is at once both correct and incorrect. No doubt he is incorporating Cloward-Piven tactics, but he is hardly doing so in a willy-nilly fashion as you suggest. Cloward-Piven strategies are being used in order to bring about a transformation that embraces the FINAL stages of implementation of Agenda 21, the overarching blueprint by which all policy and regulations are enslaved too. When Obama said “we are just 5 days away from fundamentally transforming America”, he was echoing the words of Al Gore, who said:
“We require a central organizing principle – one agreed to voluntarily. Minor shifts in policy, moderate improvement in laws and regulations, rhetoric offered in lieu of genuine change – these are all forms of appeasement, designed to satisfy the public’s desire to believe that sacrifice, struggle and a wrenching transformation of society will not be necessary.”
The United Nations Sustainable Development Division of UNESCO just held their 18th meeting of Agenda 21 in NYC this past May-3rd-14th. In attendance where all 179 signatory nations (us being among them), as well as representatives from 2,146 CSOs (Civil Society Organizations, which are non-government organizations that have obtained consultative status with the UN), and over 80,000 representatives from NGO’s with observer status. It was a HUGE event, yet chances are most people never heard a word about it. This event was entitled “The 4th Cycle of Implementation Meeting”. Kinda makes you wonder what was implemented in cycles 1-3, yes? (link to meeting) http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/csd/csd_csd18.shtml
If anyone wants to know WHAT Obama is doing, WHY he is doing it, and WHEN he will be doing it; all one has to do is look at the 40 chapter titles of Agenda 21 and it is like having a crystal ball in your hand. That can be found here: http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_00.shtml
The timelines are spelled out in another United Nations undertaking called The Marrakech Process. http://esa.un.org/marrakechprocess/
“So let me get this straight; to prove that there was no Piven et al strategy, the Dems would have had to NOT renewed unemployment benefits?”
Correct. For the best result, the government should A) encourage people to actually seek employment by minimizing unemployment benefits to the lowest level possible (e.g. right at the starvation level) and keeping them short lived – 6 months at maximum. The one thing that you do not want and cannot afford is a class of people who live full time on nothing but government handouts. The government also needs to B) encourage businesses to hire people by making it easier for them to grow and expand through such means as cutting taxes, minimizing paperwork, and easing regulatory requirements.
Never atribute to malice that which could more easily be explained by…an adherence to an unworkable economic policy now favored by college professors with no concept of how the world actually performs.
He’s driving us off the cliff because he hates us!
He’s driving us off the cliff because he is stupid!
He’s driving us off the cliff because he is mis-guided!
The OPERATIVE words here are; “he’s driving us off the cliff”.
Personally, I suspect he just was confused about how economies function in the context of industry and taxes. But over the cliff we will go, if something doesn’t change.
If Obama actually agreed with Cloward and Priven, that would make him far less socialistic than he appears to be. Replacing the current need-based welfare system with a basic income is an idea embraced by Thomas Paine, Henry George, Richard Nixon, Charles Murray, Roger Douglass, and Neal Boortz.
Switch to a basic income that is not need based, and the residents of the soon to be privatized housing developments would have a marginal benefit from getting a job, even if for only a day at a time. It would pay for them to clean Republican houses so Republicans would have more time to play golf. It’s a win-win all around.
I don’t believe that the American people want us to focus on our job security. They want us to focus on their job security. I don’t think they want more gridlock. I don’t think they want more partisanship. I don’t think they want more obstruction. They didn’t send us to Washington to fight each other in some sort of political steel-cage match to see who comes out alive. That’s not what they want. They sent us to Washington to work together, to get things done, and to solve the problems that they’re grappling with every single day.
For me he was part of the family of eurobloggers, and although this was just one part of what he was and what he did, I will remember him as one of the founders of the growing euroblogosphere – and I hope others will do so, too.