Collectivist News.

One-term, collectivist disaster in the making

2008-07-03T08:00:00.000-04:00

Underperformance Down Under

In the most private recesses of their minds, some Labor figures are thinking the unthinkable: Could Kevin Rudd be a one-term prime minister, the first of the modern era? Rudd himself has warned that while the Government looks to have a healthy majority on paper, a good number of those seats are held by wafer-thin margins.

What is driving the pessimism, albeit still nascent, in Labor's ranks is the Prime Minister's style of political management, his apparently boundless appetite for so-called "gesture politics" and the increasingly fractured narrative created by a leader who consistently talks about the long term, but just as consistently acts as if his short-term political life depended on it.

Take this week's visit to Japan. First, Rudd was seen to have neglected Tokyo diplomatically by overreaching on the China relationship. Rudd was seen to have miscalculated and bruised Japanese sensibilities.

And this against a background of bellicose threats to take Japan to the International Court of Justice over its "scientific" whaling program, backed by the sending of an Australian observer ship to collect video evidence of the Southern Ocean slaughter.

This last "gesture" had enormous support in Australia. But by the time the Prime Minister reached Japan, any threat to drag Tokyo to court had been unceremoniously jettisoned.

Instead, Rudd said Australia would pursue the whaling issue through diplomacy. Given Japan's historic intransigence on the question, that's code for giving up.

And while Rudd tried to give the impression that he had never really sabre-rattled on the issue, Greg Hunt, the Opposition's environment spokesman, hoisted the Prime Minister on his own verbiage, producing 10 quotes from Rudd in which he either declared action through the International Whaling Commission useless (the path we're now pursuing), or advocated action through the ICJ.

Faced with the short-term necessity to shore up relations with Tokyo, Rudd completely abandoned his previous position.

The announcement of the so-called "Green Car" package, worth $35 million at Toyota's headquarters, was another piece of "gesture politics".

So almost immediately we found that: One, taxpayers are giving $35 million to the world's most profitable carmaker when it transpires that Toyota intended manufacturing a "Green Car" in Australia anyway.

Two, the decision was made without Cabinet approval out of a fund that has not even had its guidelines written.

Such behaviour is becoming habitual for the Prime Minister. When he thinks he needs to start his overseas tour to Japan and Indonesia with an intellectual bang, he hauls down a thought bubble about a European Union-style regional body with Australia at its heart.

It was immediately denounced as arrant nonsense by Paul Keating and Bob Hawke, the joint architects of APEC. Not far behind them was Peter Costello, who pointed out to colleagues that one of the main principles of the EU is the free movement of people across borders.

Costello observed that there would likely be a lot more people in Jakarta who want to come to Sydney, than Sydneysiders who wanted to move to the Indonesian capital.

It's likely we'll not hear very much more about Rudd's plan to rebuild the regional architecture. About as much, I suspect, as his plans to take Japan to the ICJ.

This kind of un-thought-through "gesture politics" is emblematic of Labor domestically as well.

The next piece lined up for unveiling will be "FoodWatch", Labor's promised website and the grocery equivalent of FuelWatch. Except it, too, is unlikely to do anything more than the supermarkets do now – monitoring and matching their competitors' prices.

And then we have the admission this week that the grandest piece of "gesture politics" of the election campaign – Labor's so-called "education revolution" – has slowed to become more of an "education evolution".

Julia Gillard moved this week to dampen that expectation of Government-provided laptops, saying only that it was a longer-term aspiration that probably would not be met during Labor's first term.

And then there's alco-pops, "gesture politics" aimed at parents who fail to address a binge-drinking problem that never existed while handily giving the Government $3 billion in extra revenue.

Which brings us to the Gippsland by-election where at least one big distiller is making the point that the alco-pop tax is also hitting the Bundy and Coke-drinking "ute man" demographic – a group that could prove vital to the outcome in Gippsland.

If Brendan Nelson snatches a convincing victory there later this month – and there is now some cautious optimism on this count inside the Liberal Party – he will have Rudd's flailing "gesture politics" to thank.

(news.com.au)

Venezuela Goes to the Dogs

2008-06-22T15:00:00.001-04:00

Coming just a week or so after Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) publicly said the U.S. government should nationalize the nation’s oil refineries, echoing a similar earlier threat by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) to nationalize the entire industry, it is instructive to see what has happened in Venezuela where a Communist wannabe dictator, Hugo Chávez, nationalized that nation’s oil industry.

One would think it was bad enough that Sen. Barack Obama and the Democrats want to enact a windfall profits tax on U.S. oil industry, the same action that in 1980 effectively has reduced exploration and production in the U.S. by nearly sixty percent, but Venezuela’s takeover of its oil industry is a case history example of why so many of the world’s national oil companies are badly managed and under-performing.

Venezuela has a long history of problems with its various governments dating back to the 1800s when Simon Bolivar fought for its independence from Spain. What followed “was characterized by coups, civil wars, and battle after battle,” says Kyle D. Guerrero, an academic who has lived in both Venezuela and the United States.

The June issue of Energy Tribune is devoted to Venezuela because, as its editor Michael J. Economides points out, it has the Western hemisphere’s largest oil reserves. Don’t bother looking for Newsweek or Time to provide the real story because they are still telling Americans that global warming is real and “fossil fuels” are bad, bad, bad.

Consider instead that, aside from its oil, Venezuela with a population of twenty-six million, most of whom reside in its cities, could comfortably fit its 352,145 square miles into the State of Alaska’s 663,267 square miles. Despite the billions president Chavez is spending on arms for its army of 120,000 soldiers, claiming that the U.S. intends to invade, the truth is that the U.S. is wisely waiting for the inevitable ouster of this jackass.

Economides says that “Hugo Chávez is in free-fall” and warns that “the uncertain transition that will follow him bodes ill for the stability of the country.” This is worrisome for the United States because by 2006 our Venezuelan crude oil imports amounted to about eleven percent of our needs. They represent 60 percent of Venezuela’s total exports. This mutual dependency stands in vast contrast to the diplomatic relationship between our two nations.

Chávez,” says Economides, “would be a comical character were it not for the $100-plus oil prices which have papered over his shortcomings and prolong the eventual day of reckoning.” It is astonishing to see the way he has devastated the industry that permits him stay in power. In 2003 he fired more than 18,000 highly trained oil workers who went on strike against him. This set in motion a huge brain-drain as ten thousand of them have left the country. An estimated two-thirds of the rest of the population wants to leave as well.

Proving once again that Communism is the worst possible political and economic system known to man, Chávez's only friends these days are people like Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and thugs like Iran’s Mamoud Amadinejad, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, and the FARC guerillas in neighboring Colombia. The one thing they have in common is the way they have destroyed their nation’s economies and spread misery among their captive citizens.

In 1992 Chávez led a military coup against the government of Carlos Andres Perez. In 1994 he was pardoned and, in 1998, he was elected president of Venezuela. If that sounds improbable, one has to consider the long history of coups and other difficulties endemic to the governments and economies of South American nations. The Chávez platform was one of “change” that would redistribute the wealth of the nation based on a variety of “free” programs of medical care, price controls, and other giveaways. It this sounds a lot like a certain Democrat candidate, it is not a coincidence.

The result has been the highest rate of inflation in Latin America, 23 percent last year and still increasing. The breakdown of society is reflected in the way Venezuela in 1988 had 4,500 murders and, during the Chávez regime from 1999 to 2007, this increased to over 105,000. There is virtually no foreign investment and domestic businesses have suffered. Its health system reflects his “reforms” as childbirth mortality rates rise and cases of malaria have doubled.

Poverty is the only growth industry in Venezuela. Aside from oil, its position as a place for illegal drug transit keeps the money flowing, but only for those in charge.

This is a nation that choose Communism at a time when the Soviet Union had already collapsed, whose citizens preferred a typical Latin American “strongman” over democratic reform, and who will suffer far more as the price of a barrel of oil inevitably and eventually returns to a more realistic level.

The real question will be what kind of transition will follow the fall of Hugo Chávez and his followers and the odds are the answer will be very ugly.

(canadafreepress.com)

Collectivists advance with 'Salvation Leftism'

2008-06-08T08:00:00.005-04:00

U.S. lurches away from conservative traditions

If all it takes to win the U. S. presidency is oratorical style and the ability to lift a stadium audience off the floor, Barack Obama today holds the keys to the White House. With little apparent effort, Mr. Obama routinely brings people to their feet and awe to their hearts. He performs this small miracle with a blend of soaring evangelical cadence laced with hard-boiled liberal policy pandering. Call it salvation leftism.

A perfect sample of the Obama style swept out over an arena of voters -- and millions of television viewers Tuesday night -- from his final primary season event in St. Paul, Minnesota. As he ended his speech, Mr. Obama soared into the final flourish:

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment -- this was the time -- when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals.

The religious tones are unmistakable. In the sequence surrounding the standard, even hackneyed, political promise of "good jobs," he bridges immediately into the miracle claim that, like the parting of the Red Sea, this week marked the moment when "the rise of the oceans began to slow." And then he suggested, in another miracle, "our planet began to heal."

With this uplifting promise of healing and transformation and change, Mr. Obama lifts the soul, but not without also filling the pocketbook. He promised to bring in universal health care, more school funding and to recruit an army of new unionized teachers "and give them better pay."

Has there ever been a U. S. presidential candidate so firmly entrenched in the union camp? For a man officially dedicated to bringing unprecedented change, Mr. Obama promises to dig the

United States back into a policy trench that Ronald Reagan led the country out of when he stood up to the air traffic controllers.

Mr. Obama's first public task yesterday, as likely Democratic leader, was to deliver satellite comments to the annual convention of the Service Employees International Union in Puerto Rico. The SEIU's Web site is dominated by an Obama image, as might be expected with a union that, under leader Andy Stern, has just moved to consolidate local funds under central control, the better to send millions to the Obama campaign.

The union pandering continues with promises to rework or even rescind free-trade agreements, including NAFTA. Mr. Obama supports a range of legislative changes to enhance union bargaining and organizing powers.

Mr. Obama's salvation leftism promotes deliverance from standard politics in Washington through the adoption of some of the most standard liberal policies. His speeches are peppered with references to corporate devils -- Wall Street, big corporations and CEOs. He promises tax breaks for the middle class, but tax hikes for others, and more regulation on business, forcing auto-makers to raise fuel standards and oil companies to invest in energy projects "that will create millions of new jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced."

Speaking yesterday in Washington, Mr. Obama played again with a dangerous theme he has advanced in the past. "We must free ourselves from the tyranny of oil. The price of a barrel of oil is one of the most dangerous weapons in the world. Petrodollars pay for weapons that kill American troops and Israeli citizens." The illogic of such claims -- that the price of oil is a weapon used by foreigners against America -- can only foster foreign and economic policies that are even more illogical and threatening to world peace and economic stability.

Salvation leftism has so far given Mr. Obama what appears to be a better chance at winning the presidency than John McCain. The question is whether the salvation part of Mr. Obama's appeal is strong enough to overcome the radicalism of his platform. America is a complex political and ideological place, but it is not a place that in the recent past has taken well to extreme liberalism in its leaders.

(nationalpost.com)

I am a Collectivist

2008-06-02T08:00:00.000-04:00

What exactly does it mean to be a 'Progressive'?

Our Collectivist Candidates

2008-05-28T07:00:00.000-04:00

On Sunday Barack Obama urged graduates of Connecticut's Wesleyan University to devote themselves to "collective service." This is not an unusual theme for a commencement address. But it was interesting how long he went on discussing various kinds of nonprofit activism without ever mentioning the virtues of commerce or of individual achievement.

He also did not cite the military as an example of service to one's country. This is a surprising omission in a Memorial Day weekend speech to college-age students by a man seeking to be entrusted with the defense of the U.S.

Sen. Obama told the students that "our individual salvation depends on collective salvation." He disparaged students who want to "take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy."

The people Mr. Obama is sneering at are the ones who built America – the traders and entrepreneurs and manufacturers who gave us railroads and airplanes, housing and appliances, steam engines, electricity, telephones, computers and Starbucks. Ignored here is the work most Americans do, the work that gives us food, clothing, shelter and increasing comfort. It's an attitude you would expect from a Democrat.

Or this year's Republican nominee. John McCain also denounces "self-indulgence" and insists that Americans serve "a national purpose that is greater than our individual interests." During a Republican debate at the Reagan Library on May 3, 2007, Sen. McCain derided Mitt Romney's leadership ability, saying, "I led . . . out of patriotism, not for profit." Challenged on his statement, Mr. McCain elaborated that Mr. Romney "managed companies, and he bought, and he sold, and sometimes people lost their jobs. That's the nature of that business." He could have been channeling Barack Obama.

"A greater cause," "community service" – to many of us, these gauzy phrases sound warm and comforting. But their purpose is to disparage and denigrate our own lives, to belittle our own pursuit of happiness. They're concepts better suited to a more collectivist country than to one founded in libertarian revolution – a revolution intended to defend our rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

One gets the sense that Mr. McCain would like to see us all in the armed forces. In a Washington Monthly essay published in October 2001, his vision of national service sounded militaristic. He wrote with enthusiasm for programs whose participants "not only wear uniforms and work in teams . . . but actually live together in barracks on former military bases, and are deployed to service projects far from their home base," and who would "gather together for daily calisthenics, often in highly public places such as in front of city hall."

Mr. Obama wouldn't send us into the military. All he wants is our souls. As his wife Michelle said at UCLA on February 3, two days before the California primary, "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. . . . That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

There is a whiff of hypocrisy here. Mr. Obama, who made $4.2 million last year and lives in a $1.65 million house bought with the help of the indicted Tony Rezko – and whose "elegant suits" and "impeccable ties" made him one of Esquire's Best-Dressed Men in the World – disdains college students who might want to "chase after the big house and the nice suits." Mr. McCain, who with his wife earned more than $6 million last year and who owns at least seven homes, ridicules Mr. Romney for having built businesses.

But hypocrisy is not the biggest issue. The real issue is that Messrs. Obama and McCain are telling us Americans that our normal lives are not good enough, that pursuing our own happiness is "self-indulgence," that building a business is "chasing after our money culture," that working to provide a better life for our families is a "narrow concern."

They're wrong. Every human life counts. Your life counts. You have a right to live it as you choose, to follow your bliss. You have a right to seek satisfaction in accomplishment. And if you chase after the almighty dollar, you just might find that you are led, as if by an invisible hand, to do things that improve the lives of others.

- David Boaz is executive vice president of the Cato Institute and author of "The Politics of Freedom" (Cato, 2008).

(online.wsj.com)

Nationalizing the U.S. Oil Industry

2008-05-23T15:00:00.000-04:00

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA): The U.S. government should take over ("socialize") its oil industry, in the manner of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.

Link: sevenload.com

Big George: Market-Theory is a Failure

2008-05-22T08:00:00.000-04:00

Nora Campos advances in San Jose

2008-05-11T11:00:00.001-04:00

Related story: "Collectivist Councilwoman holds sway"

As neighborhood residents were trickling into the Alum Rock Youth Center on Thursday, San Jose City Councilwoman Nora Campos grabbed the microphone to welcome them. "This is your meeting," she boomed.

Actually, it was Mayor Chuck Reed's meeting - a meeting of his Gang Prevention Task Force, and the agenda had called for him to welcome the crowd. And when Reed hurried from the back of the room to stand at Campos' side, the power of her maneuver became clear: Campos had managed to upstage the mayor again.

Mostly quiet during her first seven years on the city council, Campos is gaining a lot of attention lately, often at Reed's expense.

With a young team of hotshots newly installed in her office and the backing of the powerful South Bay Labor Council, Campos in the past six months has let no chance slip to blast Reed on everything from budget minutiae to his attitudes on gang violence to his overall vision for San Jose.

While clumsy at times in her approach, Campos has emerged as the mayor's most vocal and prominent foe.

In Reed's most notable council defeat, Campos outfoxed him in the fall on whether to rebuild Fire Station 2 in her East San Jose district. Reed had wanted a remodel to save taxpayers $2.3 million, but Campos convinced a council majority that the full rebuild was necessary - and implied it was time for the oft-slighted East Side to get its due.

Yet despite her recent shows of moxie, Campos hasn't yet perfected her public makeover. She has trouble communicating off the cuff during council meetings. She comes off occasionally as scripted, even coached.

With only two years left before Campos is termed-out of office representing District 5, her attempts to raise her profile have people buzzing over whether she will run for state Assembly - or even challenge Reed head-on in 2010.

"To be blunt, the mayor and I have very different value systems," Campos said recently from her 18th floor City Hall office. "I look at the city of San Jose through an entirely different lens."

She believes Reed sees the city as a business, with himself as the CEO focused on the bottom line. While he looks at numbers, Campos says, she thinks of people.

Mayor takes issue

Reed, who has mostly taken the high road in his quarrels with Campos, disputed her judgment of his values.

"She is wrong," he said sharply. "Public safety is our No. 1 priority. I am actually doing stuff" - such as calling for the hiring of 30 new cops over two years.

Reed said he takes Campos seriously but is not threatened.

Campos counters that she is used to long fights.

As a girl, she and her parents marched alongside farm-worker activist Cesar Chavez. Now 42, she's the only Latina on the council, representing a district where nearly six out of 10 residents are Latino.

Prior to winning a council seat in 2001, she worked as an aide to former district Councilman Manny Diaz. Politics runs in her family; she is married to Neil Struthers, head of the politically connected Building and Construction Trades Council. Her brother, Xavier, is a member of the city's planning commission.

Yet she traces her recent emergence to a chilly Friday evening in September, when she walked along King Road with a candle in her hand, alongside mothers pushing babies in strollers. It had been a little more than two weeks since the gangland-style slaying of two men on Poco Way had seared the neighborhood.

For Campos, who grew up in San Jose, the dreary vigil was both sorrowful and infuriating.

"I heard their despairs," Campos said. "I heard their concerns. I heard their hopes. At that point, I realized that no one was listening to this community crying out. I knew as a council member that I had to take the responsibility of leadership."

With no council opposition leader to Reed, who took office last year after routing labor-backed Cindy Chavez, Campos and her allies saw an opening.

The timing was ideal in another way. Last year, she hired two young political sidekicks she says have "re-energized me" - chief of staff Ryan Ford and spokesman Rolando Bonilla.

On the surface, the two couldn't be more different. Bonilla, burly and bald, grew up in San Francisco's Mission District. The 6-foot-6 30-year-old favors pinstripe suits and sounds like an old-fashioned, fast-talking fight promoter when speaking about his boss.

Ford, 26, a former college water polo star at Johns Hopkins University with wavy brown hair and piercing eyes, balances out Bonilla's high energy. His parents emigrated from South Africa when he was 6 months old, and he dreamed in college of working on Wall Street.

Bonilla, who also is in law school, once ran unsuccessfully for San Francisco County supervisor. Ford worked for former San Jose Councilman Ken Yeager and then for Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio, but bolted to Campos' office late last year.

The team has been behind Campos' newfound strategy to go after the mayor. But their attacks have sometimes overreached.

Last month, Campos called an "emergency meeting" to announce the "release of $200,000" held in a reserve account by the Mayor's Gang Prevention Task Force. Campos, whom Reed kicked off the task force last year, in fact didn't have the authority to release the funds.

Her own worst enemy?

Her critics contend that Campos in the long run is doing herself more harm than good by hounding the mayor.

"I haven't seen any change in direction as a result of the issues she has stepped out on," said Pat Dando, a former vice mayor who is now president and CEO of the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce. "The way you make change is generally in a collaborative manner."

As for safety and gang violence, "every single council member is concerned about that," Dando said. "There isn't anyone who has a lock on that concern."

Campos' defenders contend she's only doing what she believes in. They credit her with stands like refusing to cross a picket line when city building inspectors went on strike late last year.

"It is very hard as a single council member to be bold enough to take on a mayor or a majority of the council," Chavez said. "It is important for elected officials to take strong positions."

Looking ahead, Campos said it's time to start working on citywide issues. She hasn't ruled out a run for mayor in two years against Reed.

"At this point in my life, I am riding the wave and I am not going to close any door," she said. "I want to serve."

(mercurynews.com)

Obamanation: U.S. lurching leftward

2008-04-27T10:00:00.000-04:00

Nine months from now, the 44th president will be inaugurated. Looking at the debates, votes cast and money raised in this year's presidential primary races, the next president may not only be a Democrat, but Barack Obama, the most liberal of the 100 members of the U.S. Senate.

Add the announced retirement of six Republican senators and 29 Republican House members (compared with just seven House Democrats) and the Democrats are likely to control both the House and the Senate with much bigger majorities than they do today.

So both the next president and the new congressional majorities will be much more liberal than the officeholders they have replaced, and that will result in a broad-reaching, socialist-leaning, greatly expanded American government.

* * *

Four significant public policy changes are certain: the size, scope and spending of the federal government will substantially expand; income taxes will go up; protectionism will replace free trade; and a commitment to global internationalism will saddle America with a broad Kyoto global warming agreement that, according to the U.N. Climate Treaty Secretariat, should exempt China and India.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have proposed increasing annual federal spending, respectively, by $226 billion and $303 billion – the Obama total being about a 10% increase. Neither of them as president would likely limit any spending – not entitlements, not earmarks, not farm subsidies.

In the past four years, income tax cuts have been good for the American economy, raising government tax revenues by $785 billion, reducing the deficit, and helping to create more than eight million new jobs and 52 consecutive months of job growth prior to the slowdown at the beginning of this year. A Democratic administration's tax increases are likely to be substantial: Mr. Obama proposes raising top income tax rates to 39.6% from 35%, capital gains tax rates to perhaps 28% from the current 15%, dividend tax to 39.6% from 15%, and top estate tax rates back up to 55%. And he wants to raise substantially or abolish the $102,000 cap on wages subject to the Social Security payroll tax. "He is indeed a redistributionist," said blogger and Obama supporter Andrew Sullivan after watching Mr. Obama's answer to a tax question in last week's presidential debate.

Protectionism will replace free trade as American policy, even though trade creates domestic jobs. Foreign-owned companies operating in the U.S. employ five million people (think Honda's 16,000 or Nokia's 6,000), and America's exports of goods and services employs another 11 million. But earlier this month Speaker Nancy Pelosi blocked a vote on the Colombia Free Trade Agreement by suspending the requirement that Congress vote up or down for such a treaty. Both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama want to repeal or significantly modify Nafta, which Mr. Obama says has never "been good for America." Their protectionist America would limit international trade agreements, likely leading to anti-American protectionism by other nations.

Of course higher taxes and broad protectionism are not new ideas, they were tried by Herbert Hoover and led to the Great Depression.

* * *

Then will come dramatic public policy changes in the areas of labor law, free speech, election laws and national energy policy.

Significant labor law changes will likely start with the elimination of secret ballots for union organizing elections, so that unions can verbally "ask" workers if they would like to join (read: intimidate them into saying yes). Then may come repeal of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act provision that allows states to enact "right to work" laws – 22 of them have done so – that allow workers to take jobs even if they decide not to join a union.

Next would come some free-speech changes, like the reinstitution of the "fairness doctrine" that requires broadcast radio and television stations to give equal time to both sides of any public policy on-air discussions. There was such a Federal Communications Commission rule that was abandoned 20 years ago, but liberals want it back in order to stifle conservative talk radio. Such a return of government regulation of free speech would create a very different First Amendment America.

* * *

Finally would come a vast energy and global-warming-oriented policy that would begin limiting the energy resources America needs to prosper. U.S. domestic crude oil field production has fallen by nearly half since 1970, but additional offshore oil and gas drilling would continue to be prohibited, for Mr. Obama even opposes existing Gulf of Mexico oil drilling. Off the east and west coasts there is a 19-year supply of natural gas and enough oil to replace our oil imports for 25 years, but access to it will not be permitted. No new nuclear power plants have been approved since the 1970s, and liberalism's antinuclear sentiment bodes ill for any significant new ones.

Perhaps the best example of the new energy liberalism is its attitude toward coal. Kansas needs additional electricity, but the state government recently banned the construction of two new electricity generators in an existing coal fired plant, the reason being the additional greenhouse gasses the plant would emit. The state Legislature overrode the ban, but Gov. Kathleen Sibelius, a Democrat, vetoed the bill, thereby validating America's first substantial step to stop the use of the coal-based power that supplies about half of our electricity.

So America's energy policy in the new administration may be no additional nuclear, coal, or oil and natural gas power generation, which leaves us with only windmill, solar, biomass, and geothermal for additional power needs. Those sources combined provide about 2.4% of our electrical generation sources.

* * *

With such policies, we would be a far more regulated, far less prosperous nation offering far less opportunity. The 23% of Americans who identify themselves as liberals may applaud, but for the rest of us it would be an unfortunate outcome.

(online.wsj.com)

Chávez vows to 'bury U.S.' in 21st century

2008-04-25T08:00:00.000-04:00

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez criticized Washington on Friday after a U.S. aircraft carrier allegedly sailed close to the South American country border without permission.

"When Americans appear with their fleet - the George Washington - near our shores, then one must not forget, that this is happening at a time when, together with Brazil, we are establishing a defense council in South America," he told a public meeting.

"This century, we will bury the old U.S. empire and will live with the American people as brothers, as over 40 million U.S. citizens live on the edge of poverty," the president said.

He also said that Latin America had entered a new era, marked by the creation of a bloc of leftist governments, which included Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Chile and Brazil.

The USS George Washington and the George Washington Carrier Strike Group arrived in Brazil April 22 to participate in Unitas 49-08 naval exercises.

Unitas is 49-year-old annual exercise which aims to train participating countries' navies to operate as part of a multinational force employing a variety of maritime scenarios. Argentina and Brazil are also taking part in the naval exercise with Chile and Ecuador acting as observers.

The USS George Washington left its home port of Norfolk in the U.S. en route to its eventual new home in Yokosuka in Japan, where it will replace the USS Kitty Hawk.

The USS George Washington's flight deck is 4.5 acres and has a crew of up to 6,000.

(en.rian.ru)

GOP view of progressive agenda

2008-04-17T10:00:00.000-04:00

Picture this scenario: A market bubble is created by easy-money policy and speculative investment followed by a collapse in market values. Our economy teeters on recession.

Politicians reward big labor with new powers at the workplace. Large government programs are proposed to create taxpayer-funded jobs. Entitlement programs for seniors and the poor are initiated. Temporary "stimulus" packages are passed to placate seniors, farm workers, unions and the unemployed.

Presidential candidates and congressional leaders attack free trade, vow to instate an estate tax on the rich and increase taxes on corporations, individual taxpayers and stockholders. Foreign countries' economies grow at accelerated rates while American jobs disappear.

Regulations are imposed to crack down on Wall Street, while state and federal governments bring lawsuits against demonized corporations for various offenses. Private companies are more heavily regulated to "protect" the public.

Next, the Democratic governor of New York condemns the "increasing concentration of wealth and power." Outcries against excessive executive salaries on Wall Street become widespread.

Sound familiar? Although it sounds like America in 2008, this scenario describes 1929 through 1935.

In her brilliant description of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes explains how excessive taxes and regulations, along with an attack on free trade, turned a temporary stock-market correction -- which probably would have lasted a year or two -- into an 11-year Great Depression. In 1930, President Herbert Hoover signed huge tax increases on investment and income taxes, as well as the Smoot-Hawley bill that attacked free trade. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal enlarged and transformed every aspect of the federal government into a Big Brother that stifled the private sector, job growth and freedom itself.

Most of these programs and government intrusions were popular, and FDR was elected a record four times. But populism cannot reverse the laws of economics. Ireland, Singapore, Hong Kong and even China are growing faster and creating jobs faster than the United States today because their economies are becoming freer (all but China rank freer than us in the Heritage Foundation 2008 Index on Economic Freedom). Even the European Union has a significantly lower corporate tax rate than the United States.

As I write, Democrats in Congress are taking a page from Hoover's handbook. They have voted for the largest tax increase in history -- an average of $3,040 for every hard-working taxpayer in Florida, according to the Heritage Foundation. Both parties have dramatically increased federal spending and entitlement programs. Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton compete to see who can more quickly destroy trade partnerships. And every day the Democratic majority in Congress proposes huge new government programs and expenditures. New oil and gas exploration and petroleum refineries are prohibited while taxes on energy companies are increased as gasoline prices soar. Proposals to allow unions to organize workers without an open democratic vote have passed the House. To add to an already out-of-control tort system, numerous punitive and excessive regulations on business have been proposed and many have passed. Sarbanes-Oxley alone has driven many companies private or overseas, at a cost to America of $1.4 trillion a year according to one study.

As investors flee Democrats' proposed tax increases and regulatory assaults, job creation is declining. You cannot create jobs by destroying incentives for small business owners, investors and capitalists -- nor can you tax and regulate your way to prosperity. The Soviet Union tried and died. Ireland and China, however, have learned this lesson. Populist demagoguery may win this election, but it cannot revive economic growth and prosperity.

"Less government, less taxes, and more freedom" is not just an outdated slogan, but rather a universal and timeless recipe for economic growth.

- U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney, an Ovideo Republican, represents District 24.

(orlandosentinel.com)

Chávez gives labor to an old communist

2008-04-16T17:00:00.001-04:00

Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez named a veteran communist leader as labor minister on Wednesday, days after ordering the nationalization of a giant steelmaker whose workers are fighting for better pay.

The first task facing Roberto Hernandez, a long-term member of the Venezuelan Communist Party, will be to negotiate a new labor contract with the union at the Ternium Sidor steel works. The appointment was published in the government's official gazette.

Hernandez replaces former minister Jose Rivero, who was criticized for failing to resolve a fierce labor dispute that caused months of sporadic strikes and bloody clashes between workers and police. Chávez ordered the take-over of Ternium Sidor after the company refused to raise a pay offer to workers.

Chávez has spent billions of dollars reversing most of the privatization of Venezuelan industries that took place in the 1990s. The government now controls most of the energy, minerals and telecoms sectors.

Ternium Sidor is a giant steel plant on the banks of the Orinoco river in eastern Venezuela that was privatized in 1997. It employs as many as 14,000 workers, but only about 5,000 are unionized.

The union is divided between groups who support the government and others who oppose it and has blocked some steel exports since the nationalization announcement.

The plant's parent company Ternium is Argentine controlled. Investment bank UBS estimates that the Venezuelan operation is worth about $3 billion.

News of the nationalization has been welcomed by communist parties and left-wing union federations in Latin America.

Hernandez recently left the communist party to help found Chávez's United Socialist Party, or PSUV.

(reuters.com)

Barack's collectivist mentor remembered

2008-04-11T16:00:00.006-04:00

Related story: "Barack's Progressive cred checks out"

Barack Obama’s childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Moscow-controlled Communist Party USA, wrote a poem dedicated to the Soviet Red Army. “Smash on, victory-eating Red Army,” he declared. He also wrote poems attacking traditional Christianity and the work of Christian missionaries.

The “Red Army” poem goes beyond hoping for the communists to beat the Nazis in World War II and hails the Soviet revolution. It says:

“Show the marveling multitudes Americans, British, all your allied brothers How strong you are How great you are How your young tree of new unity Planted twenty-five years ago Bears today the golden fruit of victory!”

One Davis poem, “Christ is a Dixie Nigger,” dismisses Christ as “another New White Hope” and declares:

“Remember this, you wise guys Your tales about Jesus of Nazareth are no-go with me I’ve got a dozen Christs in Dixie all bloody and black…”

The revelations about Davis’ poetry will add to the controversy over what kind of role Davis played in shaping Obama’s political views. Davis (1905-1987) seems to have had the same kind of anti-American outlook that animated Obama’s longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright. In fact, Davis was pro-Soviet, not just anti-American.

The controversial poems are included in the book, Black Moods, a collection edited by John Edgar Tidwell, a professor at the University of Kansas and expert on Davis’s writings and career. He confirms that Davis joined the Communist Party but that he publicly tried to deny his communist affiliations.

Davis’ poem, “To the Red Army,” says that “rich industrialists” in Washington and London wanted Hitler to win and “wipe Communism from the globe.”

One Davis poem, “Onward Christian Soldiers,” mocks the Christian hymn by the same name. It talks of Africans being killed with a “Christian gun” instead of a spear by the missionaries following “the religion of Sweet Jesus.” Another Davis poem refers to Christians “who buy righteousness like groceries.”

Davis’ writings have become an issue because he became a father-figure to Obama, who is the leading Democratic candidate for president of the U.S., during their time in Hawaii. Obama acknowledges in his book, Dreams From My Father, that he knew and accepted advice from a black poet named “Frank” but doesn’t identify “Frank” by his full name. However, several sources, including Professor Gerald Horne and Dr. Kathryn Takara, have confirmed that “Frank” was in fact Frank Marshall Davis. Trevor Loudon, a New Zealand-based libertarian activist, researcher and blogger, first noted evidence that “Frank” was Frank Marshall Davis in a posting in March of 2007.

In remarks at a reception of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) archives at the Tamiment Library at New York University, Horne, a contributing editor of the Communist Party journal Political Affairs, asserted that Davis had come into contact with Obama and his family in Hawaii and became the young man’s mentor, influencing his sense of identity and career path.

Obama writes in Dreams From My Father that he saw “Frank” only a few days before he left Hawaii for college. He said that Davis called college an “advanced degree in compromise,” warned Obama not to forget his “people,” and not to “start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that shit.”

As we noted in a previous article, the record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where he developed his close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, and listened to his “poetry” and views.

But in the same way that he fails to identify “Frank” as Frank Marshall Davis, Obama says nothing about the nature of this “poetry.” However, Tidwell says that several Davis’ poems were viewed as “subversive” by the FBI and that they help explain why it monitored his activities. Tidwell says that the FBI maintained a file on Davis.

One Davis poem, “Peace Quiz for America,” includes the lines:
“Uncle Sam, Uncle Sam Why did you send me against Axis foes In the death-kissed foxholes Of New Guinea and Europe Without shielding my back From the sniping Dixie lynchers In the jungles of Texas and Florida?”

Tidwell asserts that Davis was a “closet” member of the CPUSA and that it’s not clear how long he stayed in the party.

The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS) reprinted the 1953 and 1954 Reports of the Commission on Subversive Activities of the Territory of Hawaii, which refer to Davis as “an identified member of the Communist Party” who was affiliated with a number of Communist fronts and circulated “inflammatory racial propaganda.” Davis also wrote columns for the Honolulu Record, a Communist paper. These were described as “unrelenting and unmitigated complaints of racial discrimination in the United States.” Davis was labeled “a bitter opponent of capitalism” and “staunch defender” of communists and communist sympathizers.

Max Friedman, a longtime writer and researcher on internal security affairs, discovered that Davis testified in 1956 before the SISS and took the Fifth Amendment on his Communist Party membership.

The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) took testimony in 1950 from a member of the Honolulu branch of the NAACP, Edward Berman, who said that Davis had showed up to “propagandize” its membership about alleged “racial problems.” Berman referred to “Comrade Davis” as someone who “sneaked” into the NAACP meetings “with the avowed intent and purpose of converting it into a front for the Stalinist line.”

Tidwell says that Davis “felt betrayed” when Soviet dictator Stalin signed the 1939 nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany, which triggered World War II, but that Stalin’s eventual decision to join the U.S. and its allies in a war on the Axis powers “restored a measure of Davis’ confidence in the USSR.”

Another book, The New Red Negro, by James Edward Smethurst, says that while Davis had said he was disturbed by the Hitler-Stalin pact, he did not leave the CPUSA in protest over it.

Tidwell maintains that Davis moved to Hawaii from Chicago, Illinois, in 1948 under “the governmental pressure of McCarthyism,” a reference to anti-communist Senator Joe McCarthy. However, the SISS and the HCUA had nothing to do with McCarthy’s committee, which was the Permanent Investigations Subcommittee of the Senate’s Government Operations Committee.

In fact, McCarthy didn’t emerge as a figure in the anti-communist movement until 1950.

The SISS hearings were held for the purpose of determining the “Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States.”

William Rusher, who served as associate counsel to the SISS in 1956-1957, has written that “It is hard for most people to imagine the influence that even a relatively small number of dedicated people can have, but the CPUSA exerted significant power in its heyday—a heyday, be it remembered, in which the Soviet Union impressed many people as the wave of the future, destined to overwhelm a weak and fading West, including the United States.”

This pro-Communist view appears to have been the mindset of Frank Marshall Davis, who spent many hours advising and reading poetry to a young Barack Obama.

(canadafreepress.com)

Chávez takes over cement industry

2008-04-08T08:00:00.000-04:00

Venezuela said it will take majority stakes in the local units of Cemex SAB, Lafarge SA and Holcim Ltd. as it divulges the first details of a nationalization plan that will affect the world's biggest cement producers.

The nationalization, announced last week, is designed to deflect criticism that the socialist government of Hugo Chávez isn't delivering on its promises of new housing and other infrastructure projects, experts said.

"The Venezuelan state will take control of these companies. We told them all three will be subject to this [nationalization] measure," Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said on state television.

The plan announced by Mr. Ramirez mirrors Venezuela's nationalization of the oil industry. Venezuela will purchase at least 60% of the local units of foreign cement companies operating in Venezuela.

No details were available on how much Venezuela intends to pay for the stakes -- and how the cement companies will respond to any future offers.

In a statement Monday, Mexico-based Cemex expressed its willingness "to engage in a dialogue with the authorities to find a mutually satisfactory solution," adding that the company was "confident that it has the support of authorities to guarantee the safety of its personnel and the integrity of its facilities" during negotiations.

Officials at the Venezuelan units of France's Lafarge and Swiss-based Holcim didn't return calls seeking comment.

While Mr. Chávez is facing criticism for failing to meet the demands of his mainly poor supporters, it is far from clear that nationalizing cement companies will help. The companies already are spending millions to fund social-welfare projects.

Mr. Chávez's nationalizations have resulted in efficiency declines in the past. For instance, Venezuelan oil production has fallen since major foreign oil-field operators were nationalized.

Details of the cement nationalization have dribbled out since Thursday, leading to topsy-turvy trading in some cement stocks. Monday, American depositary shares of Cemex gained $1.04 to $27.36 in 4 p.m. New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

Mr. Chávez said he would nationalize cement companies that had previously been owned by the government. Cemex's local unit, however, was acquired from private owners and was never in government hands.

The Chávez government last year took over a cement works owned by Cementos Argos SA of Medellin, Colombia. Negotiations over price are continuing.

(online.wsj.com)

Big George bets on the decline of U.S.

2008-04-08T07:00:00.000-04:00

Collectivist councilwoman holds sway

2008-04-07T07:00:00.000-04:00

San Jose's building inspectors have been refusing since last week to show up at work. City Councilwoman Nora Campos quietly has been following suit.

Campos, who as a girl marched with her parents alongside farmworker activist Cesar Chavez, hasn't been to City Hall since Wednesday, the day before dozens of workers formed a picket line in front of the downtown tower amid a dispute over disciplinary policies.

"It is a value system that is instilled in me," said Campos, who has been working from home and convening staff meetings at Starbucks. "I continue to honor picket lines. The fact that there is one at City Hall is no different than if there were a picket line for all workers."

City Hall is buzzing over how long Campos, perhaps labor's strongest ally on the city council, will honor the strikers. Some say her move has raised the stakes in the standoff.

And at least one fellow council member is blasting Campos. "We still have a city to run," said Councilman Pete Constant. "We have a responsibility not only to our employees, but all of our residents who are not on strike."

The council is set to talk about the labor dispute in a closed session this morning, and insiders are predicting both sides will settle their differences and forge a new contract by the end of the day.

About 90 members of the Association of Building, Mechanical and Electrical Inspectors walked off the job Thursday - the first strike by city workers in more than 20 years. The group wants the right to appeal disciplinary actions to an outside arbitrator rather than to the city's civil service commission.

Even though Campos hasn't come to work, she says she has remained busy, communicating with her staff through e-mail.

After skipping Thursday's Domestic Violence Joint Meeting between city and Santa Clara County officials and Monday's "Silicon Valley Anti-Litter Campaign" meeting, Campos offered a written explanation to the city clerk's office.

"I am conflicted because it is truly an honor to be a part of this meeting," Campos wrote of the domestic violence event. "However, I must uphold my personal values and respect" the building inspectors "by not crossing their picket line."

Campos received a letter back from those attending the meeting, signed by 18 people. "We respect and support your decision to honor the picket line," they wrote. Union leaders also are pleased with Campos' decision.

"We appreciate the support," said Tom Brim, the union's president. "We respect her very much and thank her for her cooperation."

Brim said picketers this morning will momentarily stop marching in front of the city employees' parking garage so Campos can attend the closed session without crossing the picket line. Campos hopes the issue will be resolved so she can get back to City Hall.

"I am hoping today is the last day I have to do this," Campos said. "I am hoping that in closed session we can have a dialogue and we can come to a resolution."

(mercurynews.com)

Barack wins over Communist Party USA

2008-04-03T08:30:00.001-04:00

A landslide victory over GOP presidential nominee John McCain and Republican congressional candidates is essential to “realign the political balance of forces and set the stage to move in a new direction with a new agenda and with a new sense of hope.”

This was the theme expressed by Sam Webb, national chairman of the Communist Party USA, in his main report to a meeting of the CPUSA’s National Committee at Winston Unity Center here March 29-30.

Webb hailed the Democratic turnout, twice that of Republicans in the primaries. He praised Clinton and Obama supporters for vowing to vote for the Democratic nominee in November. But Obama is leading the insurgent movement uniting African Americans, Latinos and whites, people of all faiths, immigrant and native born in the biggest voter upsurge in decades, Webb said. Obama’s call for unity, most recently in his “More Perfect Union” speech, “strikes a deep responsive chord far and wide. After three decades of acrimonious rancor and division, people yearn for a kinder, gentler and more just country.”

Clinton is “playing a dangerous game” in suggesting that she and McCain are fit to be “Commander in Chief” but not Obama, Webb continued. Clinton supporters should demand that she redirect her fire at McCain and the Republicans. Webb called on the Communist Party’s members and friends to be fully engaged in the electoral process.

Joelle Fishman, who chairs the party’s Political Action Commission, branded McCain “a favorite of the military industrial complex ... of Wall Street” who must be exposed. She also urged focus on House and Senate races to create a “veto proof” Democratic majority on Capitol Hill.

A drive is under way, she said, to register African American voters. In states like South Carolina and Georgia, a maximum Black vote “could flip those states from ‘red’ to ‘blue,’” she added. Latino voter organizations seek to enroll 11 million new voters, while “Women’s Voices. Women Vote” is targeting 15 million unmarried women who do not vote.

Fishman also called for fightback against GOP attempts to railroad through the repressive SAVE Act, a clear election ploy to whip up fear of immigrants.

Erica Smiley, national coordinator of the Young Communist League, said the youth vote has “tripled and quadrupled. Young people are simply fed up and ready for change.” She said the YCL has joined a Youth Voter Collective seeking to maximize youth turnout in November.

CPUSA Organization Secretary Elena Mora called for combining work in the elections with building party membership.. “I think our focus must be on the forces, organizations, and sections of the people coming together around the election campaign,” she said.

Judith LeBlanc, an antiwar leader, said the peace movement’s seven years of struggle against the Bush-Cheney regime helped set the stage for the current upsurge. Peace activists are popularizing the slogan, “Obama is for peace,” she said, helping draw these forces into the election.

Art Perlo, who heads the party’s Economic Commission, said Congress must enact a moratorium on foreclosures and extend jobless benefits, the SCHIP children’s health program and food stamps to deal with the “economic tsunami” engulfing the people. These battles expose Bush, McCain and GOP lawmakers who block these measures and bolster Democrats who vote for them, Perlo said.

Marc Brodine, chair of the Washington State CP, delivered a special report on global warming. The problem is not individuals with little control over sources of greenhouse emissions, he said, “but a system that privileges profit over people and nature.” The earth has already passed “tipping points” and immediate, drastic action is needed, he said.

Scott Marshall, chair of the CPUSA Labor Commission, reported on a CPUSA-sponsored conference on the collapse of manufacturing. The stress was on creating “green jobs” that also reduce carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases.

Later, Marshall paid tribute to veteran party leader George Edwards on his 90th birthday. Edwards was a founder of the United Steelworkers of America and is now a leader of the USWA retiree group, SOAR. Many younger comrades learned trade unionism from George Edwards, Marshall said. Edwards stood. “Look after yourself,” he told the crowd, “because life just keeps getting better and better.

(pww.org)

Ultra-rich collectivists cash in on global hoax

2008-04-03T08:00:00.001-04:00

Recently I emailed a gentleman who is highly regarded, nationally and internationally, as one of the top strategic, military and economic long-range thinkers of our times. He is the author of several bestselling books about the way globalization is impacting the lives of the Earth's population.

In addition to having read his books and magazine articles, I occasionally visit his blog to read what he is thinking about currently. I noticed that he was casually referencing "global warming" in a post, so I emailed to let him know that there is no scientific proof or basis for the endless global warming claims. I cited all the usual data that disputes it and I provided the URLs of several websites that could provide him with even more.

His response was quite revealing. "It doesn't matter one way or the other. All the same fixes are required for sheer pollution reasons on a global scale given population increase and consumption increase. You're arguing the past." He would later post that, so far as the data debunking global warming, he was "beyond caring."

As I interpret this, no matter how utterly false the justifications are for the global warming hoax given by Al Gore, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and others, leading to efforts to replace, slow or deter the use of energy sources such as coal, natural gas and oil, this particular influential intellectual was beyond caring because the world's population was responsible for pollution and consuming too much of everything.

At this point global warming has made Al Gore a famous and wealthy man. He and the IPCC received a Nobel Peace Prize and Hollywood conferred an Oscar on the "documentary" that advances global warming lies. He now enjoys the lifestyle of the ultra-rich.

The "solutions" offered to stop a non-existent global warming include a Gore suggestion that "pollution" be taxed; that there must be a mandated reduction of all carbon dioxide emissions; the instituting of a bogus cap-and-trade credit system for all utilities, manufacturing, transportation, and other activities; biofuels, greater use of energy alternatives such as wind and solar; and ultimately, limits on how much energy people are permitted to use who drive cars, own homes, or run businesses of all kinds.

In California, for example, proposals and legislation has been put forth to eliminate the inclusion of fireplaces in the construction of new homes and that heat or cooling should be controlled by a central command that will monitor individual energy use and, without concern for the welfare of the individual user, determine the temperature of their living space. This is Big Brother writ large.

The federal government long ago imposed standards on how much mileage a car or truck must have for each gallon of gas consumed and has since mandated that each gallon must include the engine-destroying, energy-poor addition of ethanol. The ethanol mandate has created higher prices for food as corn and wheat supplies diminish.

This is the same government that has already banned the sale of incandescent light bulbs in the coming years. In time, it proposes to eliminate the use of all light bulbs except fluorescent ones that both consume less energy and give less light.

It is the same government contemplating declaring the thriving polar bear population "endangered" for the sole purpose of putting areas off limits that are believed to be rich in new oil reserves, not unlike the prohibition on extracting oil from ANWR.

It is the same government that has declared 85% of the nation's continental shelf off-limits to any exploration, discovery, and extraction of our own oil and natural gas reserves.

Are you beginning to see a pattern here?

When the movers and shakers, the rich and powerful of our time get together in their meetings in Davos or wherever, have they secretly concluded that "pollution" and "consumption" by the Earth's six billion people can only be reduced by reducing the world's population? Do they see great profits in forcing us to only drive electric cars and the mandatory adoption of similar "green" technologies?

Serendipitously, the International Herald Tribune published an article by Andrew Ross Sorkin on March 20 titled, "At island retreat, Branson and friends seek to save a world 'on fire'." It was an astonishing revelation as it described a retreat hosted by Richard Branson, "the British magnate" among whose guests was Larry Page of Google, Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia, and Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who is now a senior advisor to J.P. Morgan Chase.

Richard Stromback, the chief executive of Ecology Coatings, "joked that a gathering like this might seem nefarious to some people." The reporter noted that, "Many executives and financiers, including some in attendance at the retreat, have a lot of money riding on global warming."

Look nefarious? Yes, it does. Some of the ultra-rich have a stake in the global warming hoax as a means to further enrich themselves.

If that means cloaking their opinion that the world's population needs to be reduced by appearing concerned for the fate of the planet, than there is no better way of doing that than advancing the goals of the environmental movement.

This is why "strategic thinkers" looked away when the use of DDT was banned worldwide and millions, particularly in Africa, continue to needlessly die from malaria.

This is why "strategic thinkers" looked away when one of the world's most extraordinary and affordable refrigerants and fire suppression chemicals, Freon, was banned from use worldwide with a bogus claim that "ozone holes" were destroying the atmosphere.

Note, too, that these bans, the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, are instrumentalities of the United Nations. These fraudulent environmental issues benefit the ultra-rich whose financial interests transcend national borders.

Presently China, India, nor any of the nations around the world whose economies are responding to the growth in global trade and the improvement of living standards for their people are going to voluntarily accept such limitations.

China has apparently concluded that, if the tradeoff is air and water pollution, that is acceptable until they reach a point where costly technology can be installed to reduce the pollution. This is already an option that a wealthy nation like the United States has adopted.

Another case in point has been the utter failure of the signatories to the original Kyoto Protocol to limit CO2 emissions and subsequent negotiations to achieve an impossible reduction of carbon dioxide, a gas that constitutes a mere 0.038% of the Earth's atmosphere.

I am still trying to understand why our government and others around the world are subsidizing "alternative energies" to the tune of billions for wind and solar power when neither is a reliable source of energy and, together, they produce such miniscule amounts of electricity as to be essentially worthless.

But my strategic thinker guru says, "You're arguing the past." No. I am arguing the future.

I am arguing about issues such as private property and the right to use it for personal gain and profit, the bedrock foundation of our economy, guaranteed in our Constitution. It is becoming a scare commodity as the U.S. government continues to declare vast areas as U.N. heritage sites, wildlife refuges, national parks, and other excuses to deny their use as sources of timber, coal, natural gas or oil.

I am arguing about the Green Revolution of genetically modified crops that can feed the vast population of the Earth without using more forested land. Despite this, supplies of corn and soy are being depleted for the purpose of burning these food sources as fuel. The nation's supply of wheat has been depleted as acreage is diverted to grow these crops and the cheaper dollar underwrites increased exports.

What better way to reduce the world's population than a manmade famine?

I am arguing against plans to merge the United States, Canada and Mexico into a North American Union to facilitate exports from China and Asia.

Meanwhile, the great engine of the world's economy and the beacon of liberty to the world is being undermined by a fifth column of environmentalists and those who expect to benefit from their agenda.

- Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com. He blogs at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.

(axcessnews.com)

Jumbo gov't-union wins Chavez Day holiday

2008-03-29T08:15:00.004-04:00

Delano, California city employees used to get all of Good Friday off until this year. “They gave up half of what they’ve always gotten so they could get all of Cesar Chavez Day off,” said Delano Mayor Grace Vallejo.

Friday, for the first time ever, Vallejo said, Delano city offices are closed in honor of the labor leader and civil rights activist, whose birthday is Monday.

“Here in Delano it is considered a national holiday now,” said Carla Lapadula, a Delano resident for more than 30 years. “The city closes down everything. I think it’s well deserved. It only makes sense to have it because Cesar did wonderful things for the farmworkers.”

In the tradition of Chavez’s hardball negotiations on behalf of the UFW, members of Service Employees International Union Local 521 negotiated with the city to get Cesar Chavez Day off, said Aimee Barajas, communications specialist with Local 521. In exchange, they now work Good Friday morning.

“Obviously, Cesar Chavez Day is just as important to them,” Barajas said. “Delano is where the United Farm Workers movement started. Cesar Chavez celebrated Delano and Delano’s people. He fought for their rights, the rights of workers, so they would be respected and paid a fair wage.”

Vallejo, Delano’s mayor since December, said Local 521 is made up primarily of City Hall, local parks and recreation and corporation yard employees.

“It was very moving to see that the employees felt so strong about what has happened here in the community all these years,” she said. “The type of negotiations they did were recognized by the city officials, and those are true negotiations in my opinion.”

She said local police department and correctional facilities will continue to operate today.

On Sunday, with fanfare that includes a march, musical performances and speeches by local leaders, the whole city will celebrate Chavez.

Cecil Avenue Park, on the corner of Cecil and Norwalk Street, will be the focal point of the all-day celebration. Highlights include:

— A welcome by Mayor Vallejo and Dolores Huerta, who in the early 1960s co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, now called the United Farm Workers, together with Chavez. Kern County Supervisor Michael Rubio also is expected at the event, according to a UFW press release.

— A march through town.

— Live music by Bakersfield Latin jazz-rock group Velorio and mariachi singer Rene Infante, son of legendary Mexican singer/actor Pedro Infante, who is sometimes referred to as “Mexico’s Frank Sinatra.”

— A carnival-like atmosphere for kids. Vendors will sell food, drinks, and arts and crafts. Lapadula is a proud vendor organizer for the event, she said.

A hero to farmworkers and Hispanic immigrants, among others, Chavez was born in Yuma, Ariz., on March 31, 1927. He is remembered for taking such drastic measures to improve the working conditions of farm laborers as participating in numerous fasts and leading a famous farmworker march from Delano to Sacramento in the mid-1960s.

Chavez died April 23, 1993, when he was 66.

BAKERSFIELD TO MARK BIRTHDAY

Bakersfield will have its own celebration in honor of Cesar Chavez from noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.

The second annual Cesar E. Chavez Music Festival, sponsored by hip-hop radio Play 103.9 FM, will rock the crowds at College Park on Mount Vernon Avenue and Panorama Drive, across from Bakersfield College.

“I personally feel that Cesar Chavez had an impact for everybody, especially in Central California,” said Adlai (DJ D-Lay) Wilson, who is hosting the event again this year.

“I think this is a way for our radio station — we’re a pro-education, pro-community radio station — to give back to the community by bringing their favorite artists to them and get together to have a good time, but also remember Cesar Chavez.”

Performers and presenters, according to Wilson, include:

— Dance groups Maximum Velocity and Eclipse.
— Latino hip-hop artist Mr. Capone-E and Filipino hip-hop artist Roscoe Umali.
— Kern County students from various schools, who will be doing presentations on Chavez’s life, Wilson said.
— DJ Felli Fel from popular Power 106 FM radio in Los Angeles.
— Latino R&B artist Brown Boy and R&B artist James Cappra Jr.

The festival is free and open to the public. People are encouraged to bring their own lunch and non-alcoholic beverages, Wilson said, as this is an alcohol-free event, and blankets for sitting on the grass.

(bakersfield.com)

Communists defend Rev. Jeremiah Wright

2008-03-26T07:36:00.004-04:00

Barack Obama is being subjected to Willie Hortoning by the right, via a made-up controversy about the pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ, which Obama attends. Rev. Jeremiah Wright is accused of being a crazed, anti-American Black racist. Fox News and others repeatedly show clips of his sermons, highly edited to shock. This is a vicious racist injustice.

Reverend Wright’s namesake is the Prophet Jeremiah, preaching at a time when the Jewish Kingdom established by Saul and David had split in two (Israel and Judah) and was beset by existential threats from within and without.

Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, had invaded Judah and destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, dragging many of the inhabitants off to slavery. Jeremiah denounced Nebuchadnezzar. But he also blasted the rulers and people of Judah for worshiping false idols and for thinking that an alliance with Necho, Pharaoh of Egypt, instead of faith in Jehovah, could save them. The ferocity of this prophet’s denunciations is the origin of the word “Jeremiad,” i.e. a fierce preaching against moral decay and evil acts on the part of the powerful.

Wright’s denomination is not an extremist cult. The United Church of Christ comes from the 1957 amalgamation of the Congregational Church, to which many of the most enlightened thinkers in our history belonged, and the German-origin Evangelical and Reformed Church. It believes in the compatibility of faith and science and that God wants Christians to worship him by doing justice to their fellow humans.

So what did Jeremiah Wright really say that got people so worked up? I will rely on some quotes from the Washington Post, March 15.

“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, we nuked far more than in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye … America’s chickens are coming home to roost.” (September 2001)

Millions think the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime. Far more died in those bombings than died on Sept. 11. Rev. Wright is pointing out that the United States cannot claim to be uniquely victimized by Sept. 11, and that the U.S. state has committed far worse atrocities. Who can deny this, except by denying history?

“We are descendents of Africa, not England …we have a culture that is African in origin — not European. The Bible we preach from came from a culture that was not English or European.” (“Blow the Trumpet in Zion,” 2005)

That African-Americans have an African cultural heritage (with European influences) is not seriously denied by any modern scholar. And the Bible came mostly out of a Hebrew and Aramaic speaking culture in the Middle East, not Europe.

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no; God damn America! That’s in the Bible for killing innocent people.” (Sermon, 2003)

The idea that the CIA helped to develop the inner city drug trade for the illegal funding of the Nicaraguan contras is based on some evidence. The rest — bigger prisons, three strike law, killing innocent people — is unquestionably true. The fierce tone may shock, but it is no fiercer than Frederick Douglass’ famous Jeremiad against celebrations of the Fourth of July, in which he said U.S. independence from Britain was a misfortune for Black people.

“Racism is how this country was founded and how it is still run.” (Sermon, 2006) Can anybody deny that this country was founded on the racism of slavery, lynch law and Jim Crow, and that even today racial inequality serves the interests of the ruling class that fosters it?

Wright’s sermons and deeds show him to be a passionate man fighting for social justice for oppressed people, and couching his rhetoric in the language of the pulpit. Compare this with people like Pat Robertson who burn incense to Ahab and Jezebel and egg them on to greater crimes.

A movement that consciously understands racism and why it’s in everyone’s interest to struggle against it is essential in order to make progress. If Wright’s sermons have served to initiate that process, then we should learn from them.

(pww.org)

Billionaire Progressives control climate

2008-03-22T07:19:00.006-04:00

William just summarized it, but today Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius just executed the broken-legged horse: she vetoed the bill that would allow two coal-fired power plants to be built in the state. Legislators tried to create a new law that would have overridden a ruling by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to deny air permits for the plants. The Senate has enough votes to override the veto, but the House does not, so lawmakers I spoke to earlier this week expect the veto to stand.

But what's of greater interest is that Sebelius, simultaneous with the veto, issued an executive order creating the Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group. This is another one of those state global warming commissions, and as I reported earlier this week, they have hired the Center for Climate Strategies to manage their policy development process. I've reported ad nauseum that CCS's work in dozens of states is funded mostly by global warming alarmists like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Energy Foundation, but in Kansas there is a new multi-million dollar resource paying the bill: the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation.

Who else has Sandler supported? They were instrumental in joining George Soros to create the Center for American Progress and Democracy Alliance. Gave nice contributions to ACORN, Oceana, and Environmental Defense too. For the first time in watching the maneuvers of CCS, we've discovered a bond not only to the environmental left, but the explicitly political activist left as well.

From the last 3 tax returns (tax years 2003-2005) available on Guidestar, other contributions (cumulative for the period) of note made by the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation (the Sandlers owned Golden West Financial until they sold to Wachovia):

• ACLU: $6.5 million
• American Institute for Social Justice: $3.2 million
• Center for American Progress: $6.7 million
• Human Rights Watch: $7 million
• Natural Resources Defense Council: $350,000
• Sierra Club Foundation: $500,000
• Media Matters of America: $100,000
• Oceana: $2.5 million
• People for the American Way Foundation: $150,000
• Sojourners: $219,000
• Pew Charitable Trusts: $250,000

(globalwarming.org)

Barack's Progressive cred checks out

2008-03-20T08:00:00.002-04:00

In his biography of Barack Obama (Obama: From Promise to Power), David Mendell writes about Obama’s life as a “secret smoker” and how he “went to great lengths to conceal the habit.” But what about Obama’s secret political life? It turns out that Obama’s childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a communist.

In his books, Obama admits attending “socialist conferences” and coming into contact with Marxist literature. But he ridicules the charge of being a “hard-core academic Marxist,” which was made by his colorful and outspoken 2004 U.S. Senate opponent, Republican Alan Keyes.

However, through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his “poetry” and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, Dreams From My Father, refers to him repeatedly as just “Frank.”

The reason is apparent: Davis was a known communist who belonged to a party subservient to the Soviet Union. In fact, the 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member. What’s more, anti-communist congressional committees, including the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), accused Davis of involvement in several communist-front organizations.

Trevor Loudon, a New Zealand-based libertarian activist, researcher and blogger, noted evidence that “Frank” was Frank Marshall Davis in a posting in March of 2007.

Out Of Nowhere

Obama’s communist connection adds to mounting public concern about a candidate who has come out of virtually nowhere, with a brief U.S. Senate legislative record, to become the Democratic Party frontrunner for the U.S. presidency. Decades ago, the CPUSA had tens of thousands of members, some of them covert agents who had penetrated the U.S. Government. It received secret subsidies from the old Soviet Union.

You won’t find any of this discussed in the David Mendell book, Obama: From Promise to Power. It is typical of the superficial biographies of Obama now on the market. Secret smoking seems to be Obama’s most controversial activity. At best, Mendell and the liberal media describe Obama as “left-leaning.”

But you will find it briefly discussed, sort of, in Obama’s own book, Dreams From My Father. He writes about “a poet named Frank,” who visited them in Hawaii, read poetry, and was full of “hard-earned knowledge” and advice. Who was Frank? Obama only says that he had “some modest notoriety once,” was “a contemporary of Richard Wright and Langston Hughes during his years in Chicago...” but was now “pushing eighty.” He writes about “Frank and his old Black Power dashiki self” giving him advice before he left for Occidental College in 1979 at the age of 18.

This “Frank” is none other than Frank Marshall Davis, the black communist writer now considered by some to be in the same category of prominence as Maya Angelou and Alice Walker. In the summer/fall 2003 issue of African American Review, James A. Miller of George Washington University reviews a book by John Edgar Tidwell, a professor at the University of Kansas, about Davis’s career, and notes, “In Davis’s case, his political commitments led him to join the American Communist Party during the middle of World War II—even though he never publicly admitted his Party membership.” Tidwell is an expert on the life and writings of Davis.

Is it possible that Obama did not know who Davis was when he wrote his book, Dreams From My Father, first published in 1995? That’s not plausible since Obama refers to him as a contemporary of Richard Wright and Langston Hughes and says he saw a book of his black poetry.

Fellow Travelers

The communists knew who “Frank” was, and they know who Obama is. In fact, one academic who travels in communist circles understands the significance of the Davis-Obama relationship.

Professor Gerald Horne, a contributing editor of the Communist Party journal Political Affairs, talked about it during a speech last March at the reception of the Communist Party USA archives at the Tamiment Library at New York University. The remarks were posted online under the headline, “Rethinking the History and Future of the Communist Party.”

Horne, a history professor at the University of Houston, noted that Davis, who moved to Honolulu from Kansas in 1948 “at the suggestion of his good friend Paul Robeson,” came into contact with Barack Obama and his family and became the young man’s mentor, influencing Obama’s sense of identity and career moves. Robeson, of course, was the well-known black actor and singer who served as a member of the CPUSA and apologist for the old Soviet Union. Davis had known Robeson from his time in Chicago.

As Horne describes it, Davis “befriended” a “Euro-American family” that had “migrated to Honolulu from Kansas and a young woman from this family eventually had a child with a young student from Kenya East Africa who goes by the name of Barack Obama, who retracing the steps of Davis eventually decamped to Chicago.”

It was in Chicago that Obama became a “community organizer” and came into contact with more far-left political forces, including the Democratic Socialists of America, which maintains close ties to European socialist groups and parties through the Socialist International (SI), and two former members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), William Ayers and Carl Davidson.

The SDS laid siege to college campuses across America in the 1960s, mostly in order to protest the Vietnam War, and spawned the terrorist Weather Underground organization. Ayers was a member of the terrorist group and turned himself in to authorities in 1981. He is now a college professor and served with Obama on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago. Davidson is now a figure in the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), an offshoot of the old Moscow-controlled CPUSA, and helped organize the 2002 rally where Obama came out against the Iraq War.

Another figure in the CCDS, Leslie Cagan, is an organizer of anti-Iraq War demonstrations through a group called United for Peace and Justice.

Former congressional investigator Herbert Romerstein, an expert on communist activities, said most of the members of the CCDS came out of the CPUSA, where they functioned as stooges of the Soviet Union until the fall of that dictatorship. He said it has “a close working relationship with the Stalinist remnants in the former East Germany, now called the Party of Democratic Socialism.” Romerstein said these were the people who ran the concentration camps and the Communist Party apparatus in East Germany.

Romerstein also cited evidence that after the 9/11 terrorist attacks Cagan organized the first meetings to plan opposition to any United States military action against those responsible.
The Nature Of The Threat

Both communism and socialism trace their roots to Karl Marx, co-author of the Communist Manifesto, who endorsed the first meeting of the Socialist International, then called the “First International.” According to Pierre Mauroy, president of the SI from 1992-1996, “It was he [Marx] who formally launched it, gave the inaugural address and devised its structure...”

Apparently unaware that Davis had been publicly named as a CPUSA member, Horne said only that Davis “was certainly in the orbit of the CP [Communist Party]—if not a member...”

In addition to Tidwell’s book, Black Moods: Collected Poems of Frank Marshall Davis, confirming Davis’s Communist Party membership, another book, The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946, names Davis as one of several black poets who continued to publish in CPUSA-supported publications after the 1939 Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact. The author, James Edward Smethurst, associate professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, says that Davis, however, would later claim that he was “deeply troubled” by the pact.

While blacks such as Richard Wright left the CPUSA, it is not clear if or when Davis ever left the party.

However, Obama writes in Dreams From My Father that he saw “Frank” only a few days before he left Hawaii for college, and that Davis seemed just as radical as ever. Davis called college “An advanced degree in compromise” and warned Obama not to forget his “people” and not to “start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that shit.” Davis also complained about foot problems, the result of “trying to force African feet into European shoes,” Obama wrote.

For his part, Horne says that Obama’s giving of credit to Davis will be important in history. “At some point in the future, a teacher will add to her syllabus Barack’s memoir and instruct her students to read it alongside Frank Marshall Davis’ equally affecting memoir, Living the Blues and when that day comes, I’m sure a future student will not only examine critically the Frankenstein monsters that US imperialism created in order to subdue Communist parties but will also be moved to come to this historic and wonderful archive in order to gain insight on what has befallen this complex and intriguing planet on which we reside,” he said.

More Confirmation

Dr. Kathryn Takara, a professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who also confirms that Davis is the “Frank” in Obama’s book, did her dissertation on Davis and spent much time with him between 1972 until he passed away in 1987.

In an analysis posted online, she notes that Davis, who was a columnist for the Honolulu Record, brought “an acute sense of race relations and class struggle throughout America and the world” and that he openly discussed subjects such as American imperialism, colonialism and exploitation. She described him as a “socialist realist” who attacked the work of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Davis, in his own writings, had said that Robeson and Harry Bridges, the head of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and a secret member of the CPUSA, had suggested that he take a job as a columnist with the Honolulu Record “and see if I could do something for them.” The ILWU was organizing workers there and Robeson’s contacts were “passed on” to Davis, Takara writes.

Takara says that Davis “espoused freedom, radicalism, solidarity, labor unions, due process, peace, affirmative action, civil rights, Negro History week, and true Democracy to fight imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy. He urged coalition politics.”

Is “coalition politics” at work in Obama’s rise to power?

Trevor Loudon, the New Zealand-based blogger who has been analyzing the political forces behind Obama and specializes in studying the impact of Marxist and leftist political organizations, notes that Frank Chapman, a CPUSA supporter, has written a letter to the party newspaper hailing the Illinois senator’s victory in the Iowa caucuses.

“Obama’s victory was more than a progressive move; it was a dialectical leap ushering in a qualitatively new era of struggle,” Chapman wrote. “Marx once compared revolutionary struggle with the work of the mole, who sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves no trace of his movement on the surface. This is the old revolutionary ‘mole,’ not only showing his traces on the surface but also breaking through.”
OBAMA’S SECRET SOCIALIST CONNECTIONS

Obama’s socialist backing goes back at least to 1996, when he received the endorsement of the Chicago branch of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for an Illinois state senate seat. Later, the Chicago DSA newsletter reported that Obama, as a state senator, showed up to eulogize Saul Mendelson, one of the “champions” of “Chicago’s democratic left” and a long-time socialist activist. Obama’s stint as a “community organizer” in Chicago has gotten some attention, but his relationship with the DSA socialists, who groomed and backed him, has been generally ignored.

Blogger Steve Bartin, who has been following Obama’s career and involvement with the Chicago socialists, uncovered a fascinating video showing Obama campaigning for openly socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Interestingly, Sanders, who won his seat in 2006, called Obama “one of the great leaders of the United States Senate,” even though Obama had only been in the body for about two years. In 2007, the National Journal said that Obama had established himself as “the most liberal Senator.” More liberal than Sanders? That is quite a feat. Does this make Obama a socialist, too?

DSA describes itself as the largest socialist organization in the United States and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International. The Socialist International (SI) has what is called “consultative status” with the United Nations. In other words, it works hand-in-glove with the world body.

The international con-nection is important and significant because an Obama bill, “The Global Poverty Act,” has recently been rushed through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with the assistance of Democratic Senator Joe Biden, the chairman, and Republican Senator Richard Lugar. The legislation (S.2433) commits the U.S. to spending hundreds of billions of dollars more in foreign aid on the rest of the world, in order to comply with the “Millennium Goals” established by the United Nations. Conservative members of the committee were largely caught off-guard by the move to pass the Obama bill but are putting a “hold” on it, in order to try to prevent the legislation, which also quickly passed the House, from being quickly brought up for a full Senate vote. But observers think that Senate Democrats may try to pass it quickly anyway, in order to give Obama a precious legislative “victory” that he could run on.

Howard Dean’s Socialist Ties

Another group associated with the SI is the Party of European Socialists (PES), which heard from Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, back in 2006. Dean’s speech is posted on the official Democratic Party website, although the European socialist parties are referred to as “progressive.” Democrats, Dean said, want to be “good citizens of the world community.” He spoke at a session on “Global Challenges for Progressive Politics.”

Following up, in April 2007, PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen reported that European socialists held a meeting “in the Democrats HQ in Washington,” met with officials of the party and Democratic members of Congress. The photos of the trip show Rasmussen meeting with such figures as Senator Ben Cardin, Senator Bernie Sanders, officials of the Brookings Institution, Howard Dean, and AFL-CIO President John W. Sweeney, a member of the DSA. The Brookings Institution is headed by former Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott, a proponent of world government who was recently identified in the book Comrade J as having been a pawn of the Russian intelligence service.

The socialist connections of Obama and the Democratic Party have certainly not been featured in the Washington Post columns of Harold Meyerson, who happens not only to be a member but a vice-chair of the DSA. Meyerson has praised convicted inside-trader George Soros for manipulating campaign finance laws to benefit the far-left elements of the Democratic Party. Obama’s success in the Democratic presidential primaries and caucuses is further evidence of Soros’s success. Indeed, Soros has financially contributed to the Obama campaign.

It is not surprising that the Chicago Democrat, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, has endorsed Obama. Schakowsky, who endorsed Howard Dean for president in 2004, was honored in 2000 at a dinner sponsored by the Chicago chapter of the DSA. Her husband, Robert Creamer, emerged from federal prison in November 2006 after serving five months for financial crimes. He pleaded guilty to ripping off financial institutions while running a non-profit group. Before he was convicted but under indictment, Creamer was hired by the Soros-funded Open Society Policy Center to sabotage John Bolton’s nomination as Ambassador to the U.N. One of the claims made against Bolton was that he had yelled at somebody 20 years ago. The allegation was made by a specialist in “recovered memories.”

After his release from prison, Creamer released a book, Listen to Your Mother: Stand up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, described by one blogger as the book that was “penned in the pen.”

VIP Clients

In addition to writing the book, Creamer is back in business, running his firm, Strategic Consulting Group, and advertising himself as “a consultant to the campaigns to end the war in Iraq, pass universal health care, change America’s budget priorities and enact comprehensive immigration reform.” His clients have included the AFL-CIO and MoveOn.org. In fact, his client list reads like a virtual who’s who of the Democratic Party, organized labor, and Democratic Party constituency groups.

Creamer’s list of testimonials comes from such figures as Democratic Senators Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Harold Meyerson, MoveOn.org founder Wes Boyd, and David Axelrod, a “Democratic political consultant.”

Axelrod, of course, is much more than just a “Democratic political consultant.” He helped State Senator Barack Obama win his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 and currently serves as strategist and media advisor to Obama’s presidential campaign.

(canadafreepress.com)

Big George wants to get on with it

2008-03-19T07:00:00.004-04:00

Top Hillary supporter and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell privately appealed to foreign, leftist billionaire George Soros for cash to help fund a new primary in Michigan -- a request that Soros is declining, a source familiar with their conversation tells Election Central. A Soros spokesperson confirmed the account.

The private appeal by one of Hillary's most important national supporters to one of the wealthiest men in the country is yet another indication of just how hard the Hillary camp is working behind the scenes to get a Michigan revote -- and how many backstage angles they're working to make it happen.

According to the source, Rendell told Soros that they were looking for around 15 or 16 people to come up with the needed funds. "He said that the total figure they needed was $10 to $12 million," the source says.

Contacted for comment, Soros spokesperson Michael Vachon confirmed that the conversation had taken place and that the governor had indeed called Soros to request his financial support for a Michigan revote. But Vachon said Soros was declining the request.

"George Soros does not support holding another primary in Michigan because he believes doing so will further delay the selection of a Democratic candidate in November," Vachon said.

(tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com)

Barack posters on-line

2008-03-17T11:00:00.003-04:00

Gotellmama.org has some very cool Barack campaign posters for viewing online. Check it out. This artist has faithfully drawn on the artistic traditions of the Progressive Era.

While you're considering progressive art, also check out Our Progressive Century at Good Intentions blog for some interesting facts about this important time in U.S. history.

Congressman comments on collectivism

2008-03-17T10:00:00.001-04:00

Winning at all costs is not worth losing one’s principles, U.S. Rep Tim Walberg told Hillsdale College students Monday night. The Republican congressman spoke to about 20 people in Mauck Hall, using the President’s Day holiday as a backdrop for a speech about that position.

Walberg warned against the philosophies that Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are advocating on the campaign trail, saying any move toward a larger government is ill–advised. “I disagree that government should do more,” he said. “Moving back toward any kind of larger government, socialist or collectivist idea is not only wrong but detrimental and evil.”

However, not all Republicans are fans of Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican nominee for president. Walberg said he is not either but that voting for McCain would be better than the alternative.

In addition, Walberg will run this fall to keep his seat in the House. He said a recent newspaper editorial criticizing his right–wing philosophies insinuated that beating the Democrat challenger in the district will be difficult.

“My race would be closer if I was more moderate,” he said.

But Walberg said he would not move away from his beliefs, which tend to run anti–abortion and anti–big government, just to win more votes. Although he said the Republican Party has compromised itself in recent years by moving away from its platform, voting–in a Democrat for either the House or the presidency would make America worse.

“We’re at a tipping point,” he said. “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face in this (election) ... This election will be a challenge because of gold–tongued speakers and people who believe they are entitled to things.”

For the good of the country, Walberg said, voters need to start taking less in order to keep their freedom. That can be difficult when the issue is universal health care or program funding, he said, but Americans and especially Republicans need to stand up for their ideals.

This being a President’s Day speech, Walberg cited his favorite presidents as Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. The students in the audience took a poll earlier in the day and found that, among Republicans, Reagan, Lincoln and George Washington were the best presidents in American history.

The worst? Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, according to the informal poll.

(hillsdale.net)