It is almost the 4th of July. It is getting hot outside and we had our first big thunderstorm of the year this past week. I love this time of the year. As we move forward celebrating another Independence Day I think it is appropriate to look at some current news stories affecting our nation.
There were two antithetical stories that interested me.
The first story involves Arnold Schwarzenegger and the State of California.
“Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday ordered about 200,000 state workers to be paid the federal minimum wage this month because the state Legislature has not passed a budget, but the state controller is refusing to comply.” (By CATHY BUSSEWITZ, Associated Press Writer)
Evidently, Arnold thinks it is fair to punish the workers of California when politicians are busy debating. He should be ashamed for even trying to implement this. But, this seems to be the new Republican strategy. Cut budgets and screw whoever is affected.
We have a budget crisis. But, our limited education spending or the little amount of money we spend each year on a social safety net is not what is causing this budget crisis.
Maybe some of you remember a fun little group called the Project for the New American Century. Here is their vision stated in 1997.
- we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;
- we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;
- we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad; [and]
- we need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.
Then, we had Bush W and his policies. Then we had the war in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. Defense spending went from $289 billion in 2000 to $533.7 billion for 2010.
From one of my other articles, “Continuation of Previous Failures,”
The US has roughly 740 military bases throughout the globe, some estimates range as high as 1000 when the clandestine operations are included. Some of these bases are located in Bulgaria, Germany, Greenland, Guam, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Kyrgyzstan, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, Iraq, Kuwait, Kosovo, Israel, Cuba, Afghanistan, Djibouti, Bahrain and Greece. Overall, there are 2.5 million U.S. personnel serving around the globe in a capacity that supports US defense.
In 2006, the Defense Department base budget was $411 billion, in 2007 $430 billion, in 2008 $481 billion, in 2009 $515.4 billion. For the fiscal year 2010, Barrack Obama has already requested $533.7 billion. This does not include additional War on Terror spending or the expenditures for the BioShield operations which is “part of a broader strategy to defend America against the threat of weapons of mass destruction” (Project BioShield Act of 2004).
On top of all of this spending, and all of the personnel involved, here is another statistic that really sums up the US Empire. There are 156 countries in the world with U.S. troops stationed there. 63 countries have U.S. military bases and troops. While, there are only 46 countries with no U.S. military presence. This adds up to 202 countries in the world which by all accounts is a high estimate.
Currently, the United States recognizes 196 independent countries in the world. This excludes Taiwan (because of China), Greenland, Palestine, The Western Sahara, Scotland, Wales and other nations as well. But, it includes Kosovo.
The Department of Defense owns 845,441 structures around the world that spans over 30 million acres, making the US department of defense the world’s largest land owner. Does anyone see a problem with this?
The United States is not only messing with the sovereignty of other nations but it is screwing itself over as well. Because of the $533.7 billion budget for the DoD, we can only spend $66.5 billion on education for our children. We are also failing at improving basic infrastructure and on providing health care for the poorest of Americans. This would drastically change if we could get our DoD budget down to the amount of $396 billion seen in 2003 or $289 billion last seen in 2000.
I read this Arnold article and I think to myself, this is all avoidable. We are dealing with this mess now because other people made stupid mistakes (Democrats AND Republicans). Are we going to continue down the same path? Unfortunately it seems that way.
Luckily, we do have a few good leaders in office who want to see the US continue.
Barney Frank is one of them,
“The math is compelling: if we do not make reductions approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an adequate level of domestic activity even with a repeal of Bush’s tax cuts for the very wealthy. I am working with a variety of thoughtful analysts to show how we can make very substantial cuts in the military budget without in any way diminishing the security we need…[American] well-being is far more endangered by a proposal for substantial reductions in Medicare, Social Security or other important domestic areas than it would be by canceling weapons systems that have no justification from any threat we are likely to face.”
When you are going to vote this upcoming November, remember that many candidates who claim they want to reduce the budget really ONLY want to reduce domestic spending. They want to INCREASE spending on our military while cutting things like unemployment benefits, welfare spending, infrastructure spending and education.
Okay. If you are still with me reading then that is awesome and I thank you.
Now, I saw another article today that really peaked my interest. A lot of people have complained because they feel that Obama is a socialist. Almost all of this sentiment seems to be in regards to Universal Healthcare and the government takeover of GM.
Well, Healthcare is not universal and it is not Single-Payer. Also, GM is not owned by the government anymore. So, do the socialists like Obama? The answer is a loud and passionate, no.
The assertion is getting louder: President Obama is a socialist, a wealth-redistributing wolf in Democrat’s clothing gnawing at America’s entrepreneurial spirit.
It’s easy to buy “Obama is a socialist” bumper stickers on the Internet. Political commentator Dick Morris said, in a column circulated on GOPUSA.com, that conservatives are “enraged at Barack Obama’s socialism and radicalism.” Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich titled his new book “To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine.”
So, is Mr. Obama trying to form The Socialist Republic of America? Or are the accusations mainly a political weapon, meant to stick Obama with a label that is poison to many voters and thus make him a one-term president?
As is often the case in politics, the answer is in the eye of the beholder. Some people feel genuinely certain that Obama aims to make America into a workers’ paradise – a land where government-appointed pay czars tell Wall Street tycoons how much they can make and where the feds take large ownership positions in companies like General Motors (GM) and insurance giant American International Group (AIG). Even if Obama is not a card-carrying Socialist, they say, he displays a disdain of the private sector.
“You start with his apparent acceptance that there are major segments of the US economy for which it is reasonable for the US government to own or manage,” says Michael Johns, Heritage Foundation policy analyst, “tea party” movement leader, and former speechwriter for President Bush. “Look at the auto industry, mortgage industry, the health-care industry to some extent, and, obviously, banking.”
Others just as assuredly refute the idea that government involvement in failing industries defines a president as socialist – or that wealth is being redistributed from the Forbes 500 richest Americans to the nation’s “Joe the plumbers.”
What Mr. Johns, Mr. Gingrich, and others brandishing the “socialist” s-word are really complaining of is a return to the policies of John Maynard Keynes, the English economist who advocated vigorous government involvement in the economy, from regulation to pump priming, says labor historian Peter Rachleff of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.
“Socialism suggests getting rid of capitalism altogether,” says Dr. Rachleff. “Mr. Obama is not within a million miles of an ideology like that.”
For what it’s worth, socialists deny that Obama is one of them – and even seem a bit insulted by the suggestion.
“I have been making a living telling people Obama is not a socialist,” says Frank Llewellyn, national director of the Democratic Socialists of America. “It’s frustrating to see people using our brand to criticize programs that have nothing to do with our brand and are not even working.”
Adds Billy Wharton,co-chair of the Socialist Party USA: “I am not even sure he’s a liberal. I call him a hedge fund Democrat.”
The socialism tag is nothing new for the White House. In speeches, Obama chalks up the criticism to “just politics.”
But he also works to counter it, sprinkling speeches with words about the appropriate role of government. “Government cannot and should not replace businesses as the true engine of growth and job creation,” he said June 2 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
That may be one reason some tea partyers doubt that Obama himself is humming “The Internationale” before breakfast.
“I’m reluctant to call him a socialist, but his policies are socialistic,” says Don Adams, treasurer of the Independence Hall tea party in the Delaware Valley of Pennsylvania.
Which policies qualify, precisely?
Gingrich, in his book, cites a “government takeover” of GM as specific evidence of the socialistic political shift.
The United States owned 60.8 percent of the common stock of GM and 9.9 percent of Chrysler as of April 21, the latest figures available. The government’s goal, according to the Treasury, is not to be long-term investors.
“With the successful restructuring of GM and Chrysler behind us, the primary goal of the administration’s auto efforts now is to monitor the investments and facilitate smooth exits from our investments in the companies,” says US Treasury spokesman Mark Paustenbach.
OK, so maybe Obama wants to get out of owning the companies, allows Johns of the Heritage Foundation. But the government has already used its ownership stake to impose sweeping mandates and regulations on the companies, such as closing hundreds of dealerships, he says.
“They forced changes in management that should more properly have been left to the company’s private shareholders,” says Johns.
Not true, according to GM. The US did not exert pressure to close the 1,100 shuttered dealerships, says spokeswoman Noreen Pratscher. “The government has taken a very hands-off approach.”
How about the Obama response to the crisis in the financial services industry? Has it veered into socialism?
The largest ownership stake for Uncle Sam in the financial world is AIG, which ran into financial difficulties (not bankruptcy) in September 2008 after a complex series of financial transactions turned bad. The US government still owns almost 80 percent of AIG, which has received at least $182 billion in government assistance.
In his book, Gingrich implies that government officials stormed into AIG’s headquarters and took over the company. “They have taken over AIG, America’s largest insurer,” he writes.
The actual “takeover” of AIG occurred under President Bush in 2008, right after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy.
The Congressional Oversight Panel, which lawmakers created in 2008 to review the regulation of financial markets, detailed in a recent report how it became impossible for AIG to find $75 billion in private funding to save itself as the financial markets crumbled that fall.
The takeover of an ailing company whose collapse might ruin the US economy is not socialism, says Van Gosse, a Socialist and historian at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. “Let’s just say AIG was profitable, and you thought it was better if it was in public hands. That would be socialistic.”
To Dr. Gosse, the most socialistic move by the Obama administration to date is the massive reorganization of student lending. In late March, as part of the health-care overhaul, Congress voted to force out commercial lenders. The government was guaranteeing loans made by private companies who turned a profit on the loans.
As for the assertion that Obama is pushing through policies that redistribute income from rich to poor, to some extent that is happening, says economist Mark Zandi of Moody’s Economy.com.
About half the growth in personal income during the Obama presidency has come from an increase in government payments for unemployment insurance, Social Security, and welfare, he says.
“The economic recovery act increased those transfer payments,” says Mr. Zandi, noting that, regardless, the government would pay out more in jobless benefits and welfare during a recession.
Tax rates for the wealthy may also rise: Obama has said he will allow the Bush income-tax cuts to expire. The highest marginal tax rate would climb to 39.6 percent, up from 35 percent. The new health-care law, moreover, raises taxes on people making more than $250,000 a year.
“Does that make it socialistic?” asks Zandi, who supported Sen. John McCain in the 2008 election. “It’s not what I would define as socialism, but there is certainly a redistributional aspect to all this. The changes are taking place at the margins; there is not a sea change.”
Probably the last president to be tagged as a socialist was Franklin Roosevelt, who took office during the Great Depression.
“FDR tried all kinds of things and was accused of all kinds of things,” says Tom Cronin, a presidential scholar at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. “But in retrospect, he is someone who helped capitalism survive.”
He suspects that Obama and his appointees are firm believers in the free-market system. But, he adds, “It’s a free country, and people can say what they want about their president.”
The 4th of July is 2 days away and in fact, July 2 is the true day we declared our Independence. It is appropriate to examine our place in history and reexamine the course we are heading on.
If you have read my previous works you would know that I am split (as most people) on Obama’s presidency so far. I am maintaining a wait and see approach. However, I know that I do not like leaders who lie, cheat and resort to scare tactics to win.
For the most part, Obama has not done this. He has been put in an extraordinary situation and has put the nation back on a course to financial stability and domestic growth.
When you are driving to the cabin this weekend or hear a friend talk about why they think Obama is a socialist. Ask for specifics. Ask them to define what socialism is. Do they understand the difference between socialism, capitalism and communism? When you ask these questions you will find that many people do not have a basic understanding of these philosophical ideals. Rather, they get their information from movies, TV, radio or the internet.
There is a difference between a President who is into progressive taxation and one that is a socialist.
Do some research for yourself with these great links!
Project for a New American Century- http://www.newamericancentury.org/
Wikipedia for Project for a New American Century http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century#Statement_of_Principles
Independence Day (USA) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Day_%28United_States%29
George W. Bush http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush
Military Budget of the USA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States
Progressive Taxation- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax
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